Following on from my rant at Royal Mail earlier in the week, it seems I am not the only one who has lost faith in them!

I came across an article today whilst on Twitter stating that Amazon has decided to drop Royal Mail for all parcels weighing more than 500 grams.

What must be even more of a kick in the teeth for them is that Amazon are actually Royal Mail’s second largest customer!! It seems Ebay are now to follow suit also..

Here is the snippett from the Guardian newspaper online… www.Guardian.co.uk

It seems the backlog of undelivered mail has worried customers, particularly small businesses and internet retailers who argue that the unpredictable nature of the strikes has led to a collapse in reliability. The loss of this business will be a severe blow to Royal Mail, which was relying on the growth of online shopping to compensate for the decline of its letters business due to rising email use.

Customers of eBay have already been particularly vociferous, claiming the strikes are causing damage to small businesses that suffer negative feedback and lose their online reliability ratings. (Ah ha – it’s not just me then!)

Now the Guardian has learned that Amazon.co.uk has cancelled its long-term contract to use the Royal Mail for parcels over 500 grams and will use a rival service, Home Delivery Network (HDN), which also delivers for Tesco and Argos.

HDN declined to comment directly, citing commercial confidentiality, but the Amazon contract is thought to be worth at least £25m and is one of the first times a major sender of medium-sized parcels has chosen to defect from the Royal Mail in this way. Until now, the state-owned operator has won the bulk of new internet business.

HDN’s chief executive, Brian Gaunt, said he expected others to follow suit once the national strike ballot was passed. “We are seeing a number of our customers preparing to start marketing their deliveries as free of Royal Mail risk,” he added.

Two years ago Royal Mail lost a smaller Amazon contract worth £8m to deliver second class parcels during the last national strike, but fought hard to win the business back, claiming improved industrial relations. Losing the new, bigger contract will exacerbate the operator’s financial woes, which lay behind its need to cut staff, but more worryingly sends a dangerous signal to other suppliers about Amazon’s faith in the network during the crisis.

Even if private sector rivals do step in to take some of the contracts, it is unlikely to prevent major disruption. HDN says it would be unlikely to get enough resources in place at short notice to compensate.

More importantly, there is very little alternative for delivery of letters, with private operators such as TNT and DHL using Royal Mail for crucial parts of their delivery infrastructure.