How National Postal Services and Courier Companies Are Responding to the Coronavirus Pandemic
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, a lot of businesses have shut down, either temporarily or permanently. However, state and private courier companies continue to operate, as they’re part of critical infrastructure, and their services have actually become more important, because people who can’t leave their homes are relying on deliveries more than ever. Of course, this doesn’t mean that the pandemic hasn’t affected their operation. How are national postal services and courier companies responding to the coronavirus pandemic?
The safety of their employees and customers should be and is the top priority for courier services during the pandemic. Postal workers can’t work from home; they have to go to work to keep the mail circulating, which puts them at risk. To keep their employees safe, courier services strongly recommend they stay at home if they are feeling unwell, especially if they’re experiencing symptoms commonly associated with COVID-19, such as fever, dry cough and shortness of breath.
To protect employees who continue to work during the pandemic, postal carriers provide them with masks and gloves, encourage healthy workplace behaviors and protocols (frequent hand washing, use of sanitizers), frequently clean and disinfect work spaces (post offices, sorting facilities, warehouses, etc.), and ask customers to keep an appropriate distance from staff and one another. Customers who have symptoms of a respiratory infection are discouraged from going to a post office in order to prevent the spread of infection.
Most couriers now provide contactless delivery, meaning the delivery person leaves you package at the door, steps back a safe distance, calls you to inform that your package has arrived, and waits for you to pick it up. Customer signature guidelines have changed to minimize physical interactions. Instead of signing the proof of delivery, package recipients are simply asked to verify their name.
Although courier companies do their best to operate as normally as possible and deliver on time, shipping delays are inevitable due to employee shortage (people getting ill or self-isolating because they may have had contact with an infected person), transportation issues (a big portion of international packages used to be delivered by passenger flights, which have been suspended for the duration of the quarantine), government restrictions, abrupt increase of online shopping orders, and other pandemic-related reasons.
With this in mind, many couriers have suspended their money back guarantee for all or most of their services. A money back guarantee means that if your shipment doesn’t arrive by a certain day and time, you are eligible for a refund. As the pandemic has affected the couriers’ infrastructure, they can’t guarantee that all packages arrive on time and therefore don’t offer refunds in case of delays.
Some courier services have temporarily increased shipping rates for certain services and/or temporarily suspended deliveries to/from countries that are most affected by the pandemics. It is worth noting that these suspensions have nothing to do with the risk of spreading the infection via letters and packages; according to the World Health Organization and the CDC, the risk of contracting the virus through mail delivery is practically non-existent. The reason behind the suspension of mail delivery to some countries is employee shortage and flight cancellations.
Some post offices and courier locations have closed or adjusted their opening hours due to the current situation. So if you absolutely need to go to the post office, you should check online first whether it’s open to avoid an unnecessary trip.
To keep yourself and others safe during the COVID-19 pandemic, you should make the most of online services offered by courier companies and third parties. For example, instead of shipping a package from the post office, you can purchase a shipping label online, print it out, attach it to your package and schedule a package pickup with the courier. This will not only help you minimize contact with other people, but also save you time AND money, as online services often offer shipping discounts. Stay home, stay safe, stay responsible!
