Royal Mail chaos caused by Covid-19 and an online shopping boom has left people concerned about their Christmas gifts.
Customers have spoken of presents being delayed while tracking information provided to keep an eye on deliveries is not being updated for days.
One Tyneside dad told us: "My son is waiting for a PS5 delivery which was promised today (December 10), but the tracking information provided has not been updated in days."
He claimed he spoke to contacts at the Royal Mail who said there were a number of people off work as a result of Covid-19 related social distancing at its Team Valley sorting centre in Gateshead, causing delays in offloading lorries full of packages and sorting them for delivery.
"The delay could last days or weeks depending on staffing levels," he said they told him.
A Royal Mail spokesperson didn't answer our questions about the situation at Team Valley. However the spokesperson did say: “Everyone at Royal Mail is working hard to deliver the most comprehensive and high quality service we can to all our customers, large and small.
"The combination of greatly increased uptake of online Christmas shopping, in no small part driven by the recent lockdown, and the ongoing Covid restrictions mean that all delivery companies are experiencing exceptionally high volumes this year.
"Every single parcel, letter and card is important to us. We remain grateful to all our customers for their patience and understanding as our dedicated workforce work hard to deliver these exceptional volumes, whilst also adhering to necessary social distancing measures.
"We remain determined to be there for the country, just as we have been all year, and to ensure that we help all our customers deliver Christmas 2020."
The spokesperson said ahead of the Christmas peak it had hired around 33,000 temporary workers to support its 115,000 permanent postmen and women. For the past 10 years, Royal Mail has opened a network of temporary parcel sort centres to handle additional Christmas volumes.
“Despite our best efforts and significant investment in extra resource, some customers may experience slightly longer delivery timescales than our usual service standards," said the spokesperson.
"This is due to the exceptionally high volumes we are seeing, exacerbated by the coronavirus-related measures we have put in place in local mail centres and delivery offices. In such cases, we always work hard to get back to providing our usual level of service as quickly as we can."
It is estimated there are 200 million more parcels in the postal and courier system this year due to an online shopping boom caused by the pandemic.
Online orders are expected to be up by more than 50% as internet shopping overtakes the high street for the first time during a festive season.
