Monday, July 30, 2007

Special Delivery 'v' Recorded Delivery

With the current Royal Mail Strike we're getting more enquiries than usual about the differences between recorded delivery and special delivery. Firstly I'll cover it from Royal Mails' point of view. Recorded delivery items are treated in exactly the same way as normal mail, except that upon delivery the postman gets a signature from the recipient, or if no ones available to sign for it, it's returned to the local delivery office for collection or re-delivery. Special delivery on the other hand is tracked right through the delivery system by means of a bar code which is scanned through out the journey from dispatch to delivery. The special delivery service we use also guarantees delivery the next working day after posting. There are of coarse several other differences in the services, such as compensation levels and what types of things can be carried.
At our end we treat both order types slightly different. The special delivery items have to be brought individually to the post office, where as recorded items are collected in bulk by Royal Mail. This obviously makes the special delivery service much more time consuming which is why it's more expensive than standard recorded delivery.
We do our best to dispatch special delivery items within 24 hours of receiving the order but we can't guarantee this, so it's best to give us a call and check when we can get your order to you. If the order is urgent we can usually make time to get it packed and posted.

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