The Earplugs Files – News from Snorestore

Just a v quick reminder that this week sees some important last posting dates if you want to get your Snorestore stuff before Christmas.

1) Second Class post is now no longer an option as the deadline for posting Second Class Royal Mail items was Saturday 17th December

2) First Class and First Class recorded orders must be placed by 2pm on Tuesday 20th December

3) Next Working Day (Special Delivery) orders must be placed by 2pm on Thursday 22nd December

4) If you’re taking things down to the wire, then if you use the Saturday delivery option and we receive your order by 2pm on Friday 22nd December, then your item(s) will arrive on Saturday 23rd.

5) Airmail: it’s too late now to guarantee that any items sent to Europe or beyond will arrive by Christmas. Sorry. You can still order of course, just please don’t expect your stuff to be with you by 25th December.

6) Er that’s it.

While Snorestore staff work on Bank Holidays, a lot of Britain’s infrastructure doesn’t. This isn’t only trains and tubes (forget trying to go anywhere by public transport on a Bank Holiday), it also means couriers and Royal Mail.

So, if you order something from us on a Bank Holiday, even if you choose “Next Working Day” delivery, you’re not going to get it the next day. Just can’t happen.

At Easter it’s even worse: you have two Bank Holidays straddling the Easter weekend*. So, any orders received by us from about 2 o’clock on Maundy Thursday, can’t get into the Royal Mail system until the following Tuesday. With an earliest possible arrival day on your doormat of Wednesday.

Confused? We’re not, and we hope you’re not either.

*in England. Scotland is different again.

Snow? What snow?

Perhaps if you’d been ensconced in a cosy shuttered room, blindfolded and with some of our excellent earplugs stuffed in your ears, you’d have missed the fact that the weather outside has been pretty rubbish for the last couple of weeks.

OK. That’s pretty unlikely.

But clearly some people have indeed missed the “snow event” as the broadcasters would call it. Because this week we have had a steady stream of emails from people asking, mostly politely (some actually very rudely) where their orders are.

Royal Mail, gawd luv ‘em, have done an amazing job in the most trying of conditions to get mail out to people. But some delays have been inevitable. If your postie can’t get to work, then your mail’s not going to get sorted. Or delivered to your door.

So we’ve been alerting people to the possiblity of delays via a note on every page of our website, with a link to our own Shipping info page and from there, to Royal Mail’s.

Snorestore’s team diligently complete dozens of posting certificates a day, which are then hand-stamped by the guy who collects our mail, or by Mrs. Patel at the Post Office if our collection has been cancelled by the weather. So if your order hasn’t yet arrived, and you’re a bit anxious, just let us know (politely if poss.) and we’ll be able to show you where and when your order entered the Royal Mail system.

It's not too late ... yet

If you want to get your earplugs well and truly in place before the hordes of relatives (“geri mentalmen” as some would have it) descend, then you can order from Snorestore right up until 23rd December.

Royal Mail’s official last posting date for First Class items is Monday 21st December. The last date for Second Class has already passed – it was on Friday 18th.

If you do leave it until the last minute to place your order, you’ll need to select “Special Delivery” from the Snorestore Shipping options. Otherwise you might find Christmas rather less bearable than usual.

True to their word, DHL today delivered us a further huge shipment from the USA, less than 48 hours after we placed the order with one of our suppliers over there. This is a fantastic feat of logistics on the part of the brilliant folk at McKeon’s, the DHL co-ordinator who called yesterday to say the shipment was on a plane over the Atlantic at that moment, and the DHL driver who brought the towering stacks of boxes to our warehouse this lunchtime. A belated thanksgiving thanks to everyone involved.