A statement on Royal Mail’s Click and Drop status updates website said: “We have been made aware that there was an issue affecting Click & Drop which meant that some customers could see other customers’ orders. “As a protective measure, we have temporarily stopped access to Click & Drop.” The issue was first acknowledged by the company on Tuesday afternoon when it said it was investigating issues with Click and Drop access and orders not appearing for users. Later that afternoon, the issue was treated as a “highest priority,” the Click and Drop status update website said. Complaints on Twitter in response to the status updates had increased since the afternoon. Some users have reported seeing details of people’s orders, business order history and their customer details. “We fully understand and apologize for the inconvenience this has caused,” the Click and Drop status update site said shortly before 2pm on Tuesday. “Our engineers are working as hard as possible to get the site back up and running as expected.” Click and Drop is Royal Mail’s parcel delivery service used by both businesses and regular consumers. The service allows postage to be paid online and packages to be collected or dropped off at a specific location and shipped. Royal Mail and the Information Commissioner’s Office have been contacted for comment. On Monday last week, the company was spared two weeks of strike action by the Communications Workers Union (CWU) after the union called off planned strikes on November 2, 3, 4, 8, 9 and 10. Royal Mail’s parent company, International Distributions Services plc, announced just last month that it would begin a process to cut 5,000 to 6,000 roles by August next year. The announcement blamed industrial action taken by Royal Mail workers, delays in improving productivity and a reduction in parcel volumes. A “vesting consultation” process is to start cutting jobs by about 5,000 full-time positions by March 2023 and 10,000 by the end of August 2023 to achieve near-term cost efficiencies, the parent company said.
