With the national lockdown currently being applied in England and Scotland, we write to provide an update on how we will be dealing with Advertising Mail seed check adjustments during the national lockdown period.

We fully appreciate that the national lockdown may be placing additional pressures on Wholesale customers and their supply chains, in already extraordinarily challenging times. Therefore to support you through this period we are adopting the same measures we took during the national lockdown from March until July 2020, in relation to Advertising Mail seed checks. These measures will apply to all Wholesale customers across the United Kingdom.

As a default, we would ask that customers continue to comply with their contractual obligation to provide a seed on the same date as the mailing being posted to help ensure a level playing field for all in the letters postal market.

Non-Mailmark Advertising Mail and Partially Addressed Mail seeds

We are suspending adjustments for non-receipt of seeds for non-Mailmark Advertising Mail and Partially Addressed Mail, until a provisional date of 20 February 2021, due to our inability to carry out physical checks of seeds for those services.

We will continue to keep this end date of 20 February 2021 under review.

Mailmark Advertising Mail seeds

We will, however, continue to check receipt of Advertising Mail seeds posted using the Mailmark service via the weekly Advertising Mail seed check report and will continue to apply adjustments for non-receipt of seeds.

To make things easier for customers, where you have not sent us a seed at the time of the Advertising Mail posting, and we subsequently request you to send us a seed within 4 weeks, you should email only a PDF copy of the posted pack to dsacc@royalmail.com, to enable us to verify compliance. The PDF should include a copy of the front, back and insert (if applicable) of the mail piece.

Extending window for customers to send us seeds

The resource constraints caused by the national lockdown, may make it difficult for customers to make the necessary arrangements to send us Advertising Mail seeds within 2 weeks (as per the contract requirements) of us notifying you that we have not received one. Therefore, as we did for the first and second national lockdown, we are extending this period to 4 weeks. 

This process change shall apply to Advertising Mail seed check reports you have received since 4 January 2021 until 20 February 2021.  We will keep this end date of 20 February 2021 under review.

The Wholesale team will continue to work collaboratively with our customers to provide the best delivery service for you and your customers, whilst protecting the health and wellbeing of all our people, during this lockdown period and beyond.  We are keeping our ways of working under continuous review and will update you accordingly.

Royal Mail Group have developed some useful Covid-19 related resources and updates which you can find at www.royalmail.com/coronavirus including an opt in to service updates  Additionally, if you have any queries regarding this communication or the impact of Covid-19 on our services, please contact your Account Director.