Royal Mail Postal Strike

After much wrangling the workers of Royal Mail have decided to strike. As a business it's going to hurt us, there's no doubt about that. We're a mail order business and Royal Mail is our lifeblood.

We do however understand that strikes are a last resort. It seems that the media, the management and the government are against the workers on this one. We are not.

Although the strikes aren't good for us, we understand that they are necessary. They are due to start on the 22nd of October.

This is an edit: just been onto the bbc and I'm shocked at the lack of empathy for Royal Mail workers. Comments like "we never have the same postman anymore", "they closed our local post office" and "they leave the while you were out card when I was in". The decisions behind these changes are not from the workers on the ground, who are striking but the management they are against. The Royal Mail service has been run down over the last decade with an eye on privatisation. That is without a doubt what modernisation means. It will mean a service where Royal Mail is only the "last mile" courier. Anything that makes a profit will be sold off and the public will be saddled with the pensions deficit.

Good Bye Italy

I've finally cracked! I've had it up to here (I'm holding my hand up above my head!) The Italian Postal Service are Thieves and due to their lack of ability to deliver my packages I have decided to stop sending to Italy.
Apologies to any existing customers, but only 1 in 3 packages gets to it's recipient in Italy. The usual procedure is that I send the items, I get an angry email 2 weeks later, then resend the items and then get a paypal dispute, which of course I lose as it is started as an item not received case. So all in all I lose 2 x the items ordered then the money initially paid.
This post is a rant but I've not posted for a while anyway.

Update: After the red mist cleared I did indeed continue shipping to Italy. Fortunately we have a new agreement with Royal Mail and we should be receiving compensation for every missing parcel.