I'm very sorry to report that we're currently unable to dispatch overseas orders by Airmail due to an ongoing issue with the Royal Mail. The Royal Mail was hit by a ransomware attack on Wednesday the 11th of January which has left it unable to process outgoing international mail shipments. We were rather hoping this would be resolved quickly enough not to cause any issues for us, but as of this morning (18th of January), the problem is still ongoing with no sign of when normal service will be resumed. The lack of information from the Royal Mail isn't helping much, and it seems the problem is also affecting their online tracking for parcels, so if information doesn't seem to be being updated for your order then please accept our apologies. After the problems caused by the industrial action of postal workers in November and December frankly another issue with post is really not something we need right now!

As of the moment there is very little we can do other than disabling postage as a shipping option, which will take some time to do as its quite an complex process.

This blog will be updated as and when further information becomes available.

Kindest Regards

Pete

Updated 23-01-2023: The shipping options for all small international orders were updated on 20-01-2023 to remove all airmail options. The Royal Mail are currently trialling some fixes to their systems and I'm optimistic that normal service should be resumed within a week or so. All smaller website orders, which would ordinarily go via Airmail, will now be dispatched using the least expensive courier option available.

Once normal service is resumed all Airmail options will be re-instated immediately, although we will keep the option of using a courier service as an alternative to airmail. The delivery speed of Airmail (especially within Europe) has dropped off significantly in the last few years and now seems to average 2-3 weeks instead of roughly 10 days as it always used to be.

Please note that Airmail services for South Africa and the Republic of Ireland will remain suspended until such a time as the postal services in these countries shows a decent level of improvement and international cooperation. In the case of South Africa some postal orders have taken well over six months to arrive, which is a long way beyond what we consider acceptable. The Irish postal service (Anpost) currently seems determined to reject 75% of parcels sent from the outside the EU despite correctly filled out customs declarations with correctly assigned international standard HS codes, so until Anpost can solve its problems with resolving commodity codes regrettably Airmail to Ireland will remain suspended.