13/04/2026
Having gone a bit "Pete Tong", things are now (mostly) fixed.
Fancy a story?
Sequence of events>
4 weeks ago our host for our website moves to a new server and email rejections for order confirmations, inbound emails, outbound emails, basically everything email start being mostly blocked by microsoft and Google. This has affected many hosts of peoples sites.
3 weeks ago> Mrs B falls down a hole in a shopping centre and smashes her leg, hospitals, non working, and very much a HUGE contribution to our daily efforts to get orders out..... wiped out.
2.999999999 weeks ago sales sky rocketed, no idea why.
2.98 weeks ago Royal Mail send us a notification 4pm in the evening that our booking integration is being turned off, and if we need any help do let us know. Manual booking from here on in.......
2 weeks ago we are 1 week into talking to Royal mail who do not have a clue about how their integration works, we are mostly keeping up with packages, struggling on phone and emails a little, but more importantly many emails simply not being received by customers that we are taking the time to respond to.
Loathed to rip out our email system, and open a new can of worms, we do it anyway.
1 week ago we request our entire legacy integration for booking your orders to be ripped out. Provider goes one step further and rips out all of our shipping rules, which we use to know what is Express, and what is not..... This DOES however open the door to getting shipping working.
By friday we have a working solution and we have repaired most of the shipping rules so we actually know what we are doing.
As of late friday and today we have an email system (today) that works under all tests, but we have lost dozens of inbound emails, and 100's of customers have not received their replies we sent.
We have a booking system that is more efficient than ever, but despite overtime, extra time, and working through bank holidays the burden of manual booking took a huge tole on service and communication.
As of right now, very few package despatch times were affected, however we wanted to apologise. Almost anything that could happen did, and despite best efforts it has not been great.
We should be fully up together tomorrow, and if anyone has not received a reply, PLEASE resend it. I am allocating extra time this evening and tomorrow now we have a working system where you will actually get our reply.
We are also in talks with DPD to offer an additional shipping method for customers and as a backup for us.
Aside from this we wanted to give a shout out to Stephen and Pati, who have held their cool almost the entire time, and worked through the chaos, and me shouting at various providers on a regular basis. Well done guys!
