DHL Manchester Collection Problems December

Yesterday the 6th December and today the 7th December, DHL have suspended collections from some parts of Manchester. Predictably, one of the areas affected is that covered by the notorious Ashton Service Centre.

DHL have not bothered to tell anyone about this though. Affected businesses have not been informed by DHL and are just sitting waiting for the yellow van to arrive.  It isn’t coming today! Like it didn’t come yesterday!

One of the parcel companies who resell DHL deliveries posted this today on their website:

The recent spout of bad weather and the effects of the backlog from last week continue to cause problems across the DHL Domestic network, their depots and the sorting hubs.

New collections were suspended by DHL in the second half of last week. We have been accepting new bookings from our customers and moving your orders forward in anticipation of DHL being able to arrange these from Monday 6th December. Unfortunately DHL have informed us that they do not expect to be able to make new collections until Friday the 10th December or perhaps even Monday the 13th December. This is a very disappointing situation and you can be assured that we are doing everything we can to make sure that your orders will be collected as soon as possible. All resellers and booking agents are similarly affected although you may see different messages coming out from some.

Edit: DHL update, from Despatch Bay:

Scotland Christmas Deliveries
We have been informed by DHL that any parcels collected after 09/12/2010 destined for Scotland will not arrive in time for Christmas. Further to this, you will also find that all services to certain Scottish postcodes have been temporarily suspended meaning that you will not be able to create labels for these destinations until normal service is resumed. This is in order to clear the current back log of parcels in these areas.
Time Stamp: 09/12/10 – 17:00

Ad-Hoc Collections
Although roads in many areas have been clear for some time now, we’ve been dealing with the large number of parcels which proved undeliverable last week, whilst struggling to collect the large volume of parcels that were still left uncollected. This created an enormous backlog of parcels, which lead to Ad-Hoc collections being temporarily suspended.
DHL took the difficult decision to delay collection requests by a full 7 days, but have been working with extra capacity to clear the backlogs in all affected areas. Same day collections have now been restored for many areas of the UK. Other areas are still closed for collections. The upshot of this is that most users should be able to book a collection as normal again. When booking your collection please be sure to check back on the ‘Book a Collection’ page to see if you collection has been confirmed.
Unfortunately there is still widespread disruption covering most of Scotland and Northern England. Collections and deliveries in affected areas are unfortunately still likely to be severely delayed.
Please check the list of depots below who are still not accepting adhoc collections but will hopefully be restored as soon as possible.

Depots not accepting adhoc collections:
Aberdeen
Ashton
Croydon
Dartford
Chelmsford
Canterbury
Stoke on Trent
Perth
Preston
Redhill
Sheffield
Lichfield
Loughborough
Sheffield
Kilmarnock
Gateshead
Stockton
Goole
Lincoln
Edinburgh
Glasgow
Inverness
Hull
York

Anyone with any further news about this, or if you want to tell people what other areas are affected by this, feel free to use the “comments” box below.