An “unexpected surge” in the number of consumers from the Republic seeking bargains on UK websites after the post-Brexit collapse in sterling has seen a leading delivery company struggling to keep up with demand.
Parcel Motel offers a “virtual address” service which allows consumers to shop on UK websites which normally don’t deliver to the Republic.
However, hundreds of consumers have taken to social media platforms in recent days to complain about the level of service it offers.
Problems with orders being delivered on time – or at all – and the company’s apparent inability to handle queries or telephone calls have been at the centre of complaints made on platforms such as Boards.ie, Facebook and Twitter as well as directly to this newspaper.
When contacted by The Irish Times the company accepted it had been experiencing difficulties in recent weeks but said it had been taking steps to resolve issues in as timely a fashion as possible.
A spokeswoman said that during the busy period in the run-up to Christmas it usually experienced an increase of 25 per cent in the number of parcels it processed.
“This Christmas was unprecedented, as we are seeing an increase in delivery volumes of over 80 per cent more than this time last year,” she said. “This has resulted in a backlog for processing parcels, which we are currently addressing.”
She said the company had already boosted its customer support and operations teams by more than 120 to manage the seasonal increase in volumes and said that as a result of the “unexpected surge in parcels” it had now expanded its services.
Online criticism
Parcel Motel has started running a seven-day delivery system as well as opening 2,400 extra lockers and arranging for timed bus deliveries to offer a four-hour window for its members to pick up at the most popular collection times in key locations.
The spokeswoman also said that about 5 per cent of all the parcels it handled arrived at its “virtual address” in Northern Ireland with “insufficient information in order for them to be checked into a customer account, without a manual query process intervention”.
She said the company was aware of the online criticism but said it could not address a number of the complaints directly given the anonymous nature of many of them.
“We apologise for any inconvenience caused and we would like to reassure customers that we are actively addressing the issue,” she said.
The increased popularity of UK websites is not confined to the Republic. Consumers across Europe are cutting their shopping bills by ordering on British websites to take advantage of the weak pound, according to online retailers and delivery companies.
Amazon said exports from UK businesses on its marketplace website were on track to increase nearly 30 per cent this year to £1.8 billion (€2.15 billion), a trend replicated at other internet retailers. Delivery companies also reported a rise in the number of parcels they collected from British warehouses to ship overseas.
DPD and UPS have both registered double-digit percentage increases in the number of British parcels they deliver to overseas addresses against comparable periods a year earlier.
“We’re seeing a lot of orders from Ireland, in particular,” said an executive at one UK-based shopping website, who said that currency arbitrage had long been a pastime of shoppers on either side of the UK-Irish Border.
Retail executives said that the rise of internet commerce had propelled a trend towards cross-Border trade, even before the price gaps opened by the falling pound.
