Temporary Shop Closure

Lambert matey I wouldn't have thought your comment too cynical at all, as the EU states gave way the French need fishing rights to placate their crowd.
This however is not the reason for the courier system failing , the ports have no impact . The reason is the restrictions on working practices / places , hubs are stacked up with parcels as people do their shopping on line into a system where the manpower is spaced out more ( not in that way...though....) workers taking the oppotunity to take an extra 7 days off , no real questioned asked .
This year more and more buissiness won't open between Christmas and new year because of the weekend / bank holiday means less time in than out , so more parcels stuck in the system. Of course all this also means a chance to recharge a higher price ...or that too cynical!

Latest news we have at the Post Office...

Last day for first class was yesterday.

Special Delivery is now NOT guaranteed if sent tomorrow to be there on Christmas Eve, so the only options to guarantee anything to get there before Christmas is Social Delivery sent today, or if it's a larger / heavier item, the only services available fr guaranteed delivery from Parcel Force are AM services, so 24 or 48 hour services are no longer guaranteed for Christmas Eve delivery...

Meanwhile because of COVID travel restrictions we have to politly refuse to take any items to Europe by both Royal Mail and Parcel Force for the foreseeable future... apart from Southern Ireland. The rest of the world is not (currently) affected as they are flown out of the country...

The world has indeed gone bonkers!

To the contrary though, I'm still shipping eBay items as I don't ship internationally apart from through eBay's GSP - the Global Shipping Program - and as far as I am aware so far, they aren't disrupted.... yet?!

When I went abroad everyone in Europe loved the British, except the French. Scandinavian countries spoke english as well as we do, sometimes better. Greece, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Turkey and Russia less so but still acceptable. Germany even less so but not nasty. France on the other hand treated us like lepers and made life difficult. I once repaired a punctured tyre on a womans bike and she treated me like dirt.

Roger

Makes you wonder who won the war.

“Je ne suis pas Anglais, je suis Gallois”

Always worked for me...

Roger Fairclough wrote: When I went abroad everyone in Europe loved the British, except the French. Scandinavian countries spoke english as well as we do, sometimes better. Greece, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Turkey and Russia less so but still acceptable. Germany even less so but not nasty. France on the other hand treated us like lepers and made life difficult. I once repaired a punctured tyre on a womans bike and she treated me like dirt.

Roger

Makes you wonder who won the war.

I cant say that's ever been my experience of France. Just like the UK its just full of people that are just going about their lives, with a similar diversity of its people.
I have briefly worked in retail, you don't need to go to France to find a woman to treat you like dirt, plenty in the UK.

Don't get me wrong , I go to France a lot and love the place and in general the people. The French are French and in France you do it their way or just don't do it. Like their language, this is part of the charm , up until Msr Macron was elected everything was as it was ...BUT their policy of only French stuff for the French was not sustainable unless taxes were raised even more and they pay a lot of tax anyway....the answer to privatise everything which they have done and boy they didn't learn from us ...prices up overnight, trying to get utility stuff sorted..ha ha ..then add covid ...at least that stopped the Gillet jaun ( yellow jackets) from stopping cars in the streets and riots .
Could you imagine here in the UK , that you need to take your all refuse and recycling to a local collection point personally and bins not in your local village have key pads to stop other villages putting stuff in them ...there are no council refuse collections.
Should you visit a doctor and don't speak French take an interrupter with you , they don't supply ....any language!
They pretty much think like we did 30!years ago , this is changing now .
The government need to appease or be seen to be strong ... And fair play to them ..

They are all at it Martin. We ship 2.5m aluminium mast at work using TNT, they are one of the few couriers who will ship that length. A couple of years ago, they slapped a £15 surcharge on anything over 2.4m, although they don’t always charge us.

We got a letter this week, new charges are £46 surcharge on anything over 2.43m. Guess we will be taking a hacksaw to the 2.5m mast, I can’t see any of our customers wanting to pay the surcharge.

DX will ship 2.5m but I don’t have a price yet.

Just read Norwegian news on this, and it did say that mail and shopping should not be affected as the agreements between our countries is still on.
Said fishing agreements is still ok too so still hadfock for the fish and chips