Covid-19 Virus – VOTN remains open

Here at VOTN we’ve had a few people emailing asking if we are still trading during the Cornona virus outbreak? The answer is very definitely “yes”. Mail is being shipped same day as payment or no later than the next day.

The postal system in the UK seems to be working totally normally and in many overseas territories it seems fine, but there are inevitably going to be some delays as places go into lockdown. Mail to Italy seems especially slow.

The advice is definitely to send items of value overseas via registered mail so that if the parcel gets stuck due to a lockdown we’ll know where it is awaiting the mail to strart moving again.

In terms of stock acquisition it’s obviously problematic, although it’s given us the chance to trade with some foreign labels and sort out stock that’s here so there’ll be no slowdown in the newsletters for the foreseeable future. Already 266 items have been entered into the database as part of the next update.

If this depressing virus news wasn’t bad enough, Royal Mail have just increased their prices by far more than inflation, overseas packages under 250g and 500g have been hit the hardest with increases of 10%. Bastards! No need for that. It’ll be interesting to see how the couriers respond and whether they push prices up further. I noticed they’d increased, especially to USA, but that might be due to fewer transatlantic flights. Maybe they’ll drop the prices again. Wishful thinking.

Hope you all manage to stay safe, well and avoid the dreaded pathogen.