{"id":293843,"date":"2026-01-20T11:28:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T11:28:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/293843\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T11:28:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T11:28:07","slug":"an-post-apologises-for-late-christmas-cards-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/293843\/","title":{"rendered":"An Post apologises for late Christmas cards \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

An Post<\/a> has apologised to customers for postage delays over the Christmas<\/a> period.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith such huge volumes even a tiny percentage of late items will affect a significant number of customers and for this we apologise,\u201d a spokeswoman said.<\/p>\n

Over the 2025 Christmas period, An Post handled upwards of three million parcels and three million Christmas cards each week, with even more cards in the days before Christmas.<\/p>\n

An Post also reported that parcel volumes were up more than 35 per cent over the festive period compared with the same time in 2024.<\/p>\n

\u201cApart from the items posted or received into An Post from abroad after the advertised latest posting dates, and those Christmas parcels and letters still arriving from abroad, a small number of items were delayed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The postage service said it did everything \u201chumanly and technologically possible\u201d to deliver to all customers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe moved straight from Christmas shopping to sales shopping, and national and international parcel volumes remain very high,\u201d said an An Post spokeswoman.<\/p>\n

The postal service said it is aware of items dispatched from Ireland in mid-December that are only now being delivered in their destination countries, including parts of Australia and the US.<\/p>\n

It also said that Christmas mail continues to arrive from various parts of the world, such as the US. <\/p>\n

At the end of October, Fastway Couriers\u2019 parent company Nuvion Group entered receivership, leaving staff, contract drivers and customers stranded.<\/p>\n

An Post said \u201cconscious of the impact of Fastway\u2019s sudden closure … at An Post we did everything possible to provide services to customers\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat said, we made it clear that we wouldn\u2019t be able to take on all the former carrier\u2019s contracts, simply due to capacity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The postal service also said it was \u201chit hard\u201d by absences due to illness in the post-Christmas and early January period, which in some areas affected a small number of delivery routes and arrangements were made to cover as many routes as possible each day. Since then, most staff members have returned to work following illnesses. <\/p>\n

Several Irish Times readers expressed their dismay at the delays in postage over the Christmas period through letters to the editor<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One reader, who still has Christmas cards arriving, said \u201cinordinate delay in delivery of Christmas cards took the joy out of the cards this season. Each year, I would string my received cards along my entrance hall wall. Delighted to be able to display my wide range of contacts. Not this year, unfortunately.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Dublin reader said only last week, they received a Christmas card from Co Meath that had been posted on December 22nd.<\/p>\n

Another said they received a Christmas card from Canada this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Post has apologised to customers for postage delays over the Christmas period. \u201cWith such huge volumes even…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":293844,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[13803,79,16838,18,19,17],"class_list":{"0":"post-293843","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-an-post","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-christmas","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115927194232206022","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}