back to article Royal Mail fights to address website outages

Parts of the website for the Royal Mail still aren't operational today, after the site reportedly went down over the weekend. Using the website at the time of publication was very slow going, and Reg readers said that the Smartstamp service for printing postage was offline. The website wasn't carrying any message for …

COMMENTS

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  1. Martin 71 Silver badge
    FAIL

    Royal mail need to get to grips with the innertubes

    I mean it. They keep using incomptetents to program their site! The 'downgrade' to online postage 2 years ago broke everything, you can't have long names apparently! It also loads every. single. field. in. a. new. page.... it's like it was designed for and by 4 year olds!

  2. Jay 2
    FAIL

    The redesigned price finder page was palying up last night. Couldn't get it to work at all in Firefox and after several attempts it worked in Safari. Not sure if it was due to the outage, or just the new redesign.

  3. annoyedretailer

    Fantastic!! Well done Royal Mail!! You took the old clunky site(that replaced one that worked just fine a few years ago) and replaced it with this. Only it hasn't worked ALL weekend and ALL day Monday!! What great planning, dire economy, hard enough as it is. I know, lets roll out a new site prior to Christmas and not be bothered to tell anyone, the first they will know is when nothing works Monday morning.

    1. Martin 71 Silver badge
      FAIL

      It's not just me that remembers that debacle then! Site that only just worked, now it doesn't at all. And they won't tell you the name of the IT companies involved. I think they should name and shame.

  4. David Harper 1
    FAIL

    Even more annoying

    I tried to use the Royal Mail web site on Saturday to check on a delivery that I was expecting. The holding page had a list of telephone numbers for various services, including one for tracking deliveries, so I called it, and got a cheerful recorded message which told me that it would be much quicker to use the web site.

    Eventually, an automated system asked me to read out the tracking reference, which I did. After a short pause, it told me the stunning news that "Your package is progressing through our network."

    So, not only a FUBAR web site, but a truly useless alternative.

    1. spiny norman
      FAIL

      Recorded Delivery is 75p for nothing. I have tracking codes that still say "in our network" months after I know the thing was delivered.

      1. anon01789

        ***spiny norman*****

        Do as I do and claim for what you can, at least the cost of 'non-delivery' or even the value of the item

  5. Julian 3
    FAIL

    The Royal Snail

    Was down on Saturday, Sunday and Monday its spent most of its time not working properly for tracking items. The Royal Snail strikes again!

  6. mark l 2 Silver badge

    Although with the site being so slow it was virtually unusable this morning, for the 10 or so minutes i tried the new website i found they had made things worse and what used to take 2 steps to do now takes you 4 steps.

    I really hope they don't require you install Adobe acrobat and refuse to work with foxit reader like they did after their last 'upgrade' to the site

    1. Martin 71 Silver badge
      FAIL

      Unfortunately Mark, that is PRECISELY what they've bloody well gone and done. IDIOTS. Any idea who we can complain to to get some upper boss fired? PLEASE?

  7. Revelation
    Unhappy

    Royal Mail

    No online Royal Mail services have been available since Saturday morning, including Smartstamp and Paypal postage. We are now into the 4th full day. Why do we all have to put up with this incompetent monopoly?

  8. W3dn3sd4y
    Facepalm

    Errm

    Is thaaaat why postal services etc are going up so much - costly business that - implementing new sites that don't work!!!

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    $ ping www.royalmail.com

    PING www.royalmail.akadns.net (77.95.81.226)

    $ whois 77.95.81.226

    % This is the RIPE Database query service.

    % The objects are in RPSL format.

    % Information related to '77.95.81.224 - 77.95.81.239'

    inetnum: 77.95.81.224 - 77.95.81.239

    netname: Capgemini-RMG

  10. annoyedretailer
    WTF?

    Oh what joy, STILL DOWN! How can this happen? It must be costing millions in lost revenue for online retailers (after being spanked by Google all year long with their Panda updates!!). I was up until midnight last night "using" the site, worked OK in Chrome.

    spiny norman-you aren't alone, why bother sending things recorded? Absolute joke(but non funny).

    Blood pressure rising.

  11. philpem

    Can't say I'm surprised...

    ... given that in the past month they've:

    1) Lost nearly £300 worth of kit, and are trying to get out of paying by whimpering that the "insurance" on Spec Dev is for "damage only, not outright loss"

    2) Basically stuck their head in the sand -- an interesting way of fielding complaints. Contacting Customer Services is pointless (lots of kind words, bugger all action). The local delivery office either doesn't answer the phone, or someone answers it, utters a choice of "colourful adjectives", hangs up, then leaves it off hook for the rest of the day.

    These assclowns need to get their act together, and fast.

  12. annoyedretailer
    FAIL

    By the way, if you DO manage to print a label check what comes out. The new system has a habit of missing half the address off! Well done Royal FAIL!!! National disgrace.

  13. mark l 2 Silver badge
    FAIL

    Its now 3.30 a day after the original website problems and their site still isn't working properly. It took me 15 minutes to book one parcel as their site was so slow and when the label printed it came out with SAMPLE across it (even though it says Sample will not appear when printed), so it looks like they have fcked it up again and made it only work with the bloatware that is Adobe acrobat reader.

    Anyone know of other sites that allow you to print postage online? I know you can do it with paypal but i want to give them my money even less than i do the royalmail at the moment

    1. Revelation
      Facepalm

      I'm afraid all payment roads lead to the same crap non working Royal Mail web site!

  14. annoyedretailer

    http://www.postaltechnologyinternational.com/news.php?NewsID=23688

    Stuart Curley, chief technology architect at Royal Mail Group, said: “This contract is great news for our business, our customers and our employees. Once the migration is complete, we will be paying for the IT we need as and when we need it, so that we can for the first time bring our IT costs firmly in line with revenues.”

    http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/andre-peppiatt/3/87b/a97

  15. annoyedretailer
    Alert

    Pay Pal uses Royal Mail's systems! If you are using Chrome then save the file rather than print it, THEN print the pdf download, it will print without sample written all over it. You'd think this would hit the news more the amount it will cost small business!!!

  16. austint
    Thumb Down

    CapGemini

    FFS. It's a CapGemini site.

    Why am I even remotely surprised?

  17. annoyedretailer
    Happy

    Looks like it is working!! Just managed to print TWO, yes TWO labels in less than an HOUR!! What a novelty that was!! Wonder if we will get any explanation? Doubt it, question is will it flake out again today? I put £££ on this not lasting............

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Still down here. FFS, this was amusing to start with but it has gone beyond that.

  18. annoyedretailer
    FAIL

    & i was right!! FFS it's up & down like a tarts knickers.

  19. annoyedretailer
    WTF?

    Try it in Chrome, it works (just) VERY S L O W L Y.

    I've got it now anyway, last winter was a farce, they blamed the weather. This winter is looking mild so what do we do? I know, pull the plug on the website for a week so we can blame the back log on that for this year. Not the fact that we are useless. Honestly, HOW, just HOW can an update cause so much grief? Did the clowns not make a back up? I mean, others have had issues in the past & when it goes tits up roll back to previous version.

    Not to mention what dickhead thought now was the right time of year to do this?

  20. 8Tech
    FAIL

    Complete Incompetance

    This is yet further proof that Royal Mail is one of the worst run major organisations in the UK. Incompetance, failure to take responsibility for its failures yet are the first to complain about streamlining the dreadful service.

    Prices go up yet service goes down. If anyone was to compete on a fair footing (Royal Mail are exempt from charging VAT as a right!!) they would be thrashed. Its only their organisation, paid for by the taxpayer over the years that keeps them in the monopoly.

    Hopefully DHL will take over and clear out all the incompetant dead wood. meanwhile my business is suffering as I cannot even get pricing from the site let alone postage.

    Absolutely atrocious service.

  21. annoyedretailer
    WTF?

    & here we are well into December and the sites are still not working correctly! Price finder DOWN, online postage, more flakey than the choco bar you can buy! "Access denied", "A techinical problem happens"...just some of the random messages you can expect when trying to buy a bloody stamp online!!

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