This week we are going to start of with yet another update on our postage options we offer. We have paid a hefty upfront extortionate fee to Royal Mail, sorry ‘Royal Fail’ to attend our premises every working day of the year at four in the afternoon to collect our orders and deliver them. Not a difficult business model, but it seems that their monopoly, the high costs they have is their their blasé weakness too.

We are now stopping our Royal Fail’s postage offering.

Why?

For the last couple of months we have been getting complaints about deliveries. We as a team have had a few meetings to see if we can improve, or how we can get an improvement to the services offered to us. There has been a few frantic phone calls to Royal Fail with us complaining to them. Nothing has changed so a difficult decision was made.

• We have no control over their poor service, once it leaves us we – have no control on when it will be delivered.
• We also have to jump through expensive hoops buying specific size boxes from Royal Fail for different items; small parcel, large parcel, then work out if the item is a large letter or small parcel, tube, then have to weigh them out for different bandings of payments, areas etc etc.
• There is no consistency of delivery. We have had good reports that items picked up on 4pm on a Friday afternoon and the item has been delivered on a Saturday morning. That is a really great service, we can’t knock that, but that’s an exception. However, the majority of time “First Class” is now [and we quote], “anything from 1 to 10 days”. That’s right we rang up and asked, that is exactly what they told us. That is totally unacceptable for us and our customers.
• When Royal Fail go on strike which they have done many times over the last year, we haven’t been reimbursed for them not collecting from us as per thhe agreed contract.
• We have even had the odd job’s-worth employees of Royal Fail stand in our offices measuring the various parcel’s dimensions and checking if it will fit through their plastic guides.
• They often turn up late and will miss their own last posting times for that day.
• We don’t always get our expected post from Royal Fail either.
• We get complaints about Royal Fail’s service, when it has nothing to do with us once we have had the items collected. NOTHING, it’s out of our control. Have we mentioned that already? Are the customers complaining about the products, no. But, they are starting to complain about a service they have chosen from the various options available.

Our contract with Royal Fail was due to be resigned by the end of the month, with a price increase, which we were going to do as most of the customers liked the service that we re-introduced by customer request, even though we as a company don’t like what they offer or the service they provide. Adam called Royal Fail to say that we were not going to be renewing the contract. The Royal Fail’s customer service person at the end of the phone said, “You can’t stop the contract without filling in a form first”. Adam asked – ‘if I don’t pay then what?’ ‘Well we won’t collect from you’, was the reply. Adam retorted with, ‘well I ain’t paying, so it’s problem solved!” It was a short conversation served up with contempt they deserve which they supply to us regularly, their customers.

How did this all come about?

Adam is tolerant man, (of most things), but a “Mr. L…” has now managed to ruin it for everybody, the final straw has broken the camels back, as the saying goes. Mr L. is now on the “C” list pretty much at the top of said list and will not be buying from us again. It has gotten back to us that he has been giving us a hard time on social media for poor customer service. Is it really poor customer service when we respond to emails late at night? If you do find this person online, you could thank him personally for being instrumental in our decision to phase out the Royal Fail postal option for everybody. If this scenario had been a couple of weeks later then the contracts would have been signed with Royal Fail and we would have carried on. So it seems that fate has brought this to a head for us. The story is quite a simple one as follows:

Mr. L’s order was placed on Friday 28^th July 2023 at 22:51, which means it wouldn’t have been processed until Saturday 29^th and then collected by Royal Fail.

On Wednesday 3rd August 2023 at 20:34 we get an email from Mr L to ask where the parts were: “Hi there, unfortunately my items have not arrived yet reference MM-4xxxx”. That was it. Adam checked the orders and could tell the order was processed and dispatched. All takes time and well after our office closing hours.

Adam responded by pointing out that he (Mr. L) did not pay for a courier, nor did he ask for a tracking service when he made his purchase, he obviously wanted the cheapest option. We then get another email from him replying to Adam with: ‘So where do I go from here? As I needed these parts this week can you send me proof of posting thanks’. Adam again responded saying he would have to wait as it’s now Royal Fail’s process causing the delay, also pointing out that if the parts were urgent he should have used a courier, but he didn’t want to pay for that, nor for a next day delivery option.

To cut a long story short, and a number of emails were exchanged where Mr L. was asking for Mustang Maniac to prove the item was sent by providing a tracking number, which he didn’t ask for and didn’t want to pay for. We could interrogate our franking machine yes, but that all takes time. We can prove that Royal Fail picked up the packages as we have CCTV to prove it along with the log of the visit from Royal Fail. Mr. L’s short curt emails was basically calling into question Adam’s, thus Mustang Maniac’s integrity. Mr L even hinted that Adam didn’t know how to run a business. Adam is an honest man and will not tolerate that from anybody. His reputation has been built up over many years of outstanding service to the Mustang community.

So, where are we now?

Adam believes the aggravation that recently been coming his way and the potential of ruining his business’ reputation due to Royal Fail is just not worth it for the cost and their ‘services’ provided. Time spent replying to our customers on behalf of Royal Fail has become unacceptable of late. We shall now be phasing out the Royal Fail options again and our customers will now only be able to collect from us or pay for the courier services, or provide their own collection if they want to. This was the reason that Mustang Maniac stopped using Royal Fail a while ago.

We sincerely apologise to those who are understanding and have had no problems with the services. We as a company have to protect our reputation. Where a ‘partnership’ by contract can jeopardise that, difficult decisions have to be made. We have tried all sorts of things to help our customers and we have put up with a lot. Some of the costs we incur are not even passed on to you, our valued customers. Sadly we have made the decision to stop Royal Fail services for the reasons we have stated. A customer bad mouthing us for poor delivery service is not acceptable. However, very small packages link window rollers or a couple of bolts etc could be Royal Fail at our discretion.

We hope you understand our decision, we will probably loose some custom over it, we can’t help that and will be sad to see them go. We dare say that they will of course they will go elsewhere for their parts, paying the import charges and taxes themselves, then waiting for their delivery.

We appreciate this may upset a few people, hopefully most will understand our decision.

Our Cars

Work is continuing on our ’65 Ranchero, we are starting to add some paint to the shell and some running gear. We hope this week we will have a rolling project once the suspension has all been fitted. Inside the engine bay was red oxide, seam sealed and black top coats.

The etch and primer coats always seem to make the the project jump a few steps forward.

OEM engine bay black applied.

The rear axle has also been getting paint.

We will be bringing you more progress next week.

Stay Safe & Take Care!