I post using Royal Mail. My local depo is open 8am-10am everyday, so when you place an order with me - whether your are purchasing or arranging a postal hire - I will pack your order up the night before and then take to the post office the following morning. During the week this forms part of my school run... I ensure everything is packed up the night before and then the parcels come with me when we leave for school at 8.20am and gets dropped off immediately after dropping the kids off. For Saturdays and during school holidays I simply take a 8.30am ish stroll, occassionally accompanied by one of my kids - if I am lucky! All of which means that in general I post 6 days a week, unless I am away and then I clearly state the next posting date on the banner at the top of this website so you know what to expect.
Then how long it takes depends in part on the postage you select. In theory Tracked24 should take 24 hours and Tracked 48 should take 48 hours, but in practice I find these "best case" estimates. Royal Mail's fine print states this is the "delivery aim" rather than a promise. Instead I find Tracked 24 and first class services generally take 1-3 days, while Tracked 48 and second class services generally take 2-5 days. Occasionally a package will randomly take quite a bit longer. There never seems to be any rhyme nor reason, but often something like staff shortages or something will cause a package to take a lot longer. Quite understandably when this happens clients are always worried that their sling or carrier is lost in the post. It is worth noting that Royal Mail doesn't consider anything lost until it has taken more than 10 working days which works out as about 3 weeks. This is for posting within the UK, for posting internationally they state 32 working days. From my experience posting over the past 3 years, its extremely rare for something to actually be lost. In fact in 3 years of posting I've had zero parcels that I have packaged and labelled go missing. I have had 4 take 3 full weeks and 1 take 6 weeks but I've never had any that I have posted out go missing. (I've had 2 go missing whilst attempting to be returned, but none that I have posted). Instead almost all packages that are a few days late will arrive before the 3 weeks is up. And this is because it turns out Royal Mail operate the "late train" approach to their parcels. They aim to deliver within 24 or 48 hours and if they can do this or deliver only 1 day late then they will, but if something happens and this parcel is already going to be more than a day or two late they will literally prioritise everything else that is not late over it. They now no longer care about how late just so long as they don't hit the magical "10 working days" line, so many that are past 2 or 3 days late will then be 2 or even the full 3 weeks late. It is extremely frustrating.
It is particularly extremely frustrating when you offer 2 week hires so quite easily the carrier could end up not arriving until the very end of your hire period. Please know that you get a full 2 weeks from whenever your carrier hire arrives (or 4 or 12, whichever hire period you selected). Just simply let me know that the carrier was late, when it arrived and I'll manually reset your hire dates to reflect.
It can also be tricky to navigate if you are trying to time a hire or purchase to arrive before a particular event or holiday. If you are hiring before going away, please do put your travel dates in the comments section at check out. That way I will know when you need the carrier by and if it is possible for me to post a few days early to allow extra time just in case I will. Another option is to pay for guaranteed next day delivery 1pm because almost always these do arrive the next day (although I have had 2 that have taken 3 days and on neither occasion did I get a reimbursement!). But usually selecting 1st or 2nd class and letting me know your dates is enough! As is ideally selecting a hire start date a couple of days before you go away so you have some leeway and aren't worried about it not turning up.
And it is worth saying that most parcels do arrive in the 24 or 48 hour windows - I'd say generally around 70%, with another 25% arriving within the next couple days. Its only a relatively minority that go on to be really late, and only around 1-2% taking over a week. Although I appreciate that is small comfort to those unluckly 1-2%.
As ever if you have any questions about hiring or purchasing and if it will be possible to deleiver within a certain time frame please do reach out and ask. Likewise if you have ordered something and its not arrived yet and you'd like me to track it from my end.
-Madeleine