Royal Mail have apologised for its performance during the festive period as it emerged last Christmas was the worst performance since records began. Only one in three letters sent via first class mail met the companies target of arriving on the next working day. Some customers only received their cards and presents in the middle of January. Royal Mail has said that the delays were caused by extremely bad weather during December but consumer groups are unconvinced. Here at PC2Paper we certainly experienced delays in December due to very deep snow meaning Royal Mail vans were unable to collect from post boxes and businesses. The knock on effect and huge backlog of mail caused delays well into the middle of January. We did also experience more lost mail during this period as a result. That being said, we did have rather a lot of snow with up to 18 inches in the area local to our office so we can understand why there was so much disruption to the usually very good service.