The delivery firm recently informed its clients – including businesses such as Gousto, eBay, and New Look – that it has been impacted by operational challenges that would cause “significant delays” to deliveries
Yodel has urged its customers to switch to rival courier firms after being hit by major capacity issues.
The delivery firm recently informed some of its clients – including businesses such as Gousto, eBay, and New Look – that it had been impacted by a series of operational challenges that would cause “significant delays” to deliveries.
In a memo sent to customers this week, which was seen by Sky News, Yodel said the “significant delays in processing [parcels]” would “therefore impact the availability of empty trailer[s] and our planned driver schedules”. It continued: “Unfortunately, this combined with a number of our peak HGV drivers not arriving for their agreed time slot has impacted our ability to provide the number of agreed collections.
“Upon investigation, we uncovered that this was due to significant financial incentives being offered elsewhere. We are working closely with these drivers as they had made a commitment to Yodel for the peak period.”
The memo went on to say that due to this and “the reduction in network productivity due to the… high numbers of large, manually sorted parcels entering the network” it recommended that businesses “reduce” the planned deliveries for Yodel and to “divert parcels through your other carriers” for the next week.
Yodel was set to hire thousands of seasonal staff members to help it manage the period from Black Friday until Christmas; however, it now warned that it could not guarantee a 24-hour service. Yodel makes more than 190million deliveries each year from its sites across the UK.
A spokesperson for the company told Sky News: “Due to record-breaking volumes and a surge in larger parcels over Black Friday week and Cyber Monday, we worked with a small number of clients to adapt collection schedules to maintain smooth operations. We are grateful to these clients for their collaborative approach and ongoing support.” They added: “Our teams are working tirelessly during the busiest time of the year, and we expect to clear a small backlog by this weekend.”
