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A Solihull jewellery business claims thousands of pounds worth of stock shipped to customers a month ago has been either “lost or delayed” – sparking Christmas delivery chaos. Katie Belle Jewellery says Royal Mail strikes have caused “up to £4,000 worth of stock” most of which was Christmas presents, to be delayed, with some still unaccounted for.
Bella Trifonos, co-founder of Katie Belle jewellery, said it has led to her small business, which she founded with partner Katie Rowlands, to get “nasty” feedback from some customers. The jewellery boss told BirminghamLive the chaos has been a bitter blow to profits in an already “tough” year.
Bella said: “When the strikes hit, our biggest batches of orders during November, happened to go missing we thought. We sent them on the 28 and 29 of November and they only started arriving last week. In most part customers have been really been understanding but we’ve had some really nasty emails and comments from customers and it has been disheartening.
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“As soon as we realised the batches were stuck we spent hours trailing through orders and worked out which ones were stuck.”
Royal Mail staff are set to continue their strike action, in a row over pay and conditions, on Friday and Saturday. Royal Mail say they will be doing what they can to keep services running.
Bella and Katie set up Katie Belle Jewellery – which specialises in luxury personalised and bespoke jewellery – in 2019. “We personalise jewellery and send it out within 24 hours, we will dispatch and it usually arrives within 48 hours, before all the Royal Mail issues” Bella explained.
“With the war, cost of living, it had already impacted sales but we were pinning a lot on November, it had been a really tough year anyway, a lot tougher than last year…. we have Black Friday sales on during November, it’s always our biggest sales month of the year, we were basically building everything towards that, and Christmas.”
Bella claims around 30 to 40 orders, with an average order value of £100 was so severely delayed, the company was forced to re-despatch some products, spending days trying to trace them. She emphasised the majority of parcels were delayed and not missing – but the headache caused uncertainty over an estimated £4,000 worth of stock.
(Image: Birmingham Live)
At the time of interview, two orders still hadn’t turned up to customers. “Getting through to Royal Mail was near enough impossible, they said they can’t guarantee it wasn’t lost.
“Customers didn’t know whether the item had been lost or delayed and we didn’t know either. We have empathy for the Royal Mail staff, we understand they’ve gone to these extreme lengths for a reason, but it is such a shame for these small businesses, that we are suffering as a result of that” she said.
The chaos has left them questioning the future: “It’s been quite a depressing month to be honest, it makes you after the difficult year we’ve had, after November and December, it has made us feel, is it even worth having a small business?
“Christmas is down more than 50% compared to last year, we do believe a big part of that is Royal Mail, we’ve seen people go to checkout and then seeing we dispatch via Royal Mail, we believe they pull out. We’re worried about January.”
(Image: PA)
Royal Mail response
A Royal Mail spokesperson told BirminghamLive: “We are very sorry for the impact that the CWU’s strike action is having on our business customers. We have been clear with the CWU that industrial action undermines the trust of our customers. We operate in a competitive market, and our customers have choices.
“Continued strike action will force our customers to make those choices sooner rather than later. We are doing everything we can to deliver Christmas for our customers, and would like to thank the increasing number of posties returning to work each strike day, temporary workers and managers from across the business who are helping to keep the mail moving. However, this task becomes more challenging as Christmas nears.”
Workers confirmed two more days of strikes before Christmas on Friday December 23 and Saturday 24. The Communication Workers Union (CWU) which represents workers said Royal Mail had turned down negotiations to resolve a dispute over pay, jobs and conditions.
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