• We had our accounts cleared out by some lovely fraudsters

• We had 4 disputes ongoing with Royal Mail over lost ‘signed for’ packages and after 7 weeks of arguing and filling in forms, we got the money back, but, ironically, 2 of the original cheques sent to us as a refund got ‘lost in the post’. Royal Mail loses Mail. Brilliant.

• We have another 2 new claims to now file with Royal Mail as in the last 3 weeks they have managed to ‘lose’ another 2 of our signed for parcels that we sent out to clients.

• We pulled an all-nighter completing an urgent piece of work for a client that called in last minute – but after 1.5 hours sleep between 2 of us, we made it through the night and got it completed. Well done us!

• We signed up new repeat clients which is always great news and are of course, always welcomed.

• We spent time working for clients in London and Essex, planning events and managing them, which was a lovely break from the office and was great to get out there and meet prospective clients, suppliers and people. And of course the events were a hit, had raving reviews and gained us more repeat custom for 2010. Yay!

• We saw our SEO stats increase since the launch of our new website and branding and now rank one of the highest on Google for Virtual PA’s.

• We had our busiest month of the year so far… and loved every minute of it!!

Lets hope December is just as fun and crazy and we have an even busier month yet…..

In our earlier blog we ranted about how the brilliant Royal Mail had managed to lose our letters, parcels and so on and after being made to wait 3 weeks before we could send them claim for off and then another 29 days (Out of the 30 day time frame) we finally got a call from someone who advised they will be refunding us the costs of the items AND the cost of the postage and services. How very kind of them.

See men….sometimes us women really do get places when we moan and raise our voices and this time it has paid off! Yay!!

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.