Royal Mail's "cyber incident"

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

48 minutes ago, e8n2 said:

Russian criminals doing the cyber attack or ransome ware attack are NOT responsible for Hannants not saying word one about the problem until AFTER their customers started complaining.  Again, it doesn't cost them anything, or a lot of staff, to put up a hard to miss notice on their home page, as they eventually did, about RM not taking overseas deliveries because of the attack.  They should have done it as soon as they became aware of it.  Their failure to do so is the problem and could cost them in the long run.

Later,

Dave

 

Hi Dave, RM have been particularly opaque about this unfortunately. We don't use RM much any more but do still maintain a business account. Comms from RM? Zero. Actually there's a small group of small business owners who have each been asking the other if anyone else knows what is going on. I can't imagine Hannants or indeed any other business accounts have been kept informed. Naturally there's a reluctance to over-dramatise in case it's back up and running 10 minutes later.

 

RM seems to have been trying to keep an especially low profile since most of the publicity they have had recently has been footage of RM's greasy CEO Simon Thompson being roasted by MPs over the abysmal performance of the organisation, rock bottom morale amongst the staff, and the curious change of the success criteria of his rather handsome annual bonus from a spectrum of KPIs of a healthy, profitable business to simply "deliver shareholder value" for last year which netted him an extra £140k. Word has it that RM's head of cyber security was out delivering mail the day the attack happened due to core staff shortages. All Thompson is concerned with is syphoning off as much cash as possible to dividend payouts so he can walk away more wealthy himself and the board has ratified the change in bonus criteria to encourage that behaviour. That is not a well-led company.

[Julien]

3 hours ago, Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies said:

 

Hi Dave, RM have been particularly opaque about this unfortunately. We don't use RM much any more but do still maintain a business account. Comms from RM? Zero. Actually there's a small group of small business owners who have each been asking the other if anyone else knows what is going on. I can't imagine Hannants or indeed any other business accounts have been kept informed. Naturally there's a reluctance to over-dramatise in case it's back up and running 10 minutes later.

 

RM seems to have been trying to keep an especially low profile since most of the publicity they have had recently has been footage of RM's greasy CEO Simon Thompson being roasted by MPs over the abysmal performance of the organisation, rock bottom morale amongst the staff, and the curious change of the success criteria of his rather handsome annual bonus from a spectrum of KPIs of a healthy, profitable business to simply "deliver shareholder value" for last year which netted him an extra £140k. Word has it that RM's head of cyber security was out delivering mail the day the attack happened due to core staff shortages. All Thompson is concerned with is syphoning off as much cash as possible to dividend payouts so he can walk away more wealthy himself and the board has ratified the change in bonus criteria to encourage that behaviour. That is not a well-led company.

He plain lied to MPs if you speak to my local posties, so I hope he will get some comeback on that one. He does though seem determined to grind RM down while extracting maximum benefit for himself it would seem. 

[e8n2]

22 hours ago, Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies said:

 

Hi Dave, RM have been particularly opaque about this unfortunately. We don't use RM much any more but do still maintain a business account. Comms from RM? Zero. Actually there's a small group of small business owners who have each been asking the other if anyone else knows what is going on. I can't imagine Hannants or indeed any other business accounts have been kept informed. Naturally there's a reluctance to over-dramatise in case it's back up and running 10 minutes later.

 

RM seems to have been trying to keep an especially low profile since most of the publicity they have had recently has been footage of RM's greasy CEO Simon Thompson being roasted by MPs over the abysmal performance of the organisation, rock bottom morale amongst the staff, and the curious change of the success criteria of his rather handsome annual bonus from a spectrum of KPIs of a healthy, profitable business to simply "deliver shareholder value" for last year which netted him an extra £140k. Word has it that RM's head of cyber security was out delivering mail the day the attack happened due to core staff shortages. All Thompson is concerned with is syphoning off as much cash as possible to dividend payouts so he can walk away more wealthy himself and the board has ratified the change in bonus criteria to encourage that behaviour. That is not a well-led company.

USPS is just as bad if not worse.  My problem is NOT with RM as it is with Hannants being the ones who are opaque about the whole problem.  Instead of laying it out in big letters so it is obvious to everyone to see that overseas orders are not able to be shipped at this time because of the RM cyberattack, they didn't say diddly squat until after I, and probably many others, complained about why our orders were not being shipped.  They finally started saying something last week and this past Saturday they said they hoped to have 90% of the back log shipped out by close of business Monday.  It is now after 10:00 PM Pacific time, 0600 GMT, the message on the home page has not changed, and my order from the 13th still has not shipped.  Of course my credit card has already been charged long ago.  I'm about ready to have them dispute the charge for non-shipment.  Just glad I never had any problems like that when I ordered from you!

Later,

Dave

[stevehnz]

3 hours ago, e8n2 said:

USPS is just as bad if not worse.  My problem is NOT with RM as it is with Hannants being the ones who are opaque about the whole problem.  Instead of laying it out in big letters so it is obvious to everyone to see that overseas orders are not able to be shipped at this time because of the RM cyberattack, they didn't say diddly squat until after I, and probably many others, complained about why our orders were not being shipped.  They finally started saying something last week and this past Saturday they said they hoped to have 90% of the back log shipped out by close of business Monday.  It is now after 10:00 PM Pacific time, 0600 GMT, the message on the home page has not changed, and my order from the 13th still has not shipped.  Of course my credit card has already been charged long ago.  I'm about ready to have them dispute the charge for non-shipment.  Just glad I never had any problems like that when I ordered from you!

Later,

Dave

Dave, I'm going to play the devils advocate here, just the once. I've followed this from the start & like most things, there are more than likely several issues interacting here, RM's non communication to begin with & then I'm guessing some obfuscation with respect to what it did eventually communicate to its clients. Whether or not Hannants is a big enough client to warrant direct communications from RM is something only they can know, but I can easily believe they may well have laboured under the belief that a couple of days & it'll all be jake. Oops, not so, RM's woes have lasted longer than they initially hoped they would & this has left a heap of clients, none the least  Hannants, up the creek without a paddle. Stuck in the middle of all this is you, our dear friend e8n2, who understandably feels miffed to blazes & probably feels like Hannants have it in for him. Ok, I'm exaggerating now to make a point, but yes, RM could have done better by their clients & yes, maybe so could have Hannants for theirs. In the interim, you appear to have had a vendetta on Hannants & won't/can't be mollified. Ok, so  be it, but surely it is time to move on, there's more to worry about, the floods in your home state & the floods in the north of my country strike me as a couple of things way more important. I'm confident your order from Hannants will arrive, I've had many from them & they have been incredibly reliable. They rely like most others in their situation on outside agencies & occasionally things go nipples up but I've had packages from across the world when the whole globe was in lock down, I've had packages from Ukraine as it fought for its existence. Maybe its time to give Hannants some slack & leave off flogging the deceased equine. Just saying.

Steve.

[Admiral Puff]

It does look as though the flood gates have opened - there have been parcels from the UK for me at the post office for the last two days, all apparently dispatched during the "troubles". Hopefully this will continue ...

[Circloy]

13 hours ago, stevehnz said:

Dave, I'm going to play the devils advocate here, just the once. I've followed this from the start & like most things, there are more than likely several issues interacting here, RM's non communication to begin with & then I'm guessing some obfuscation with respect to what it did eventually communicate to its clients. Whether or not Hannants is a big enough client to warrant direct communications from RM is something only they can know, but I can easily believe they may well have laboured under the belief that a couple of days & it'll all be jake. Oops, not so, RM's woes have lasted longer than they initially hoped they would & this has left a heap of clients, none the least  Hannants, up the creek without a paddle. Stuck in the middle of all this is you, our dear friend e8n2, who understandably feels miffed to blazes & probably feels like Hannants have it in for him. Ok, I'm exaggerating now to make a point, but yes, RM could have done better by their clients & yes, maybe so could have Hannants for theirs. In the interim, you appear to have had a vendetta on Hannants & won't/can't be mollified. Ok, so  be it, but surely it is time to move on, there's more to worry about, the floods in your home state & the floods in the north of my country strike me as a couple of things way more important. I'm confident your order from Hannants will arrive, I've had many from them & they have been incredibly reliable. They rely like most others in their situation on outside agencies & occasionally things go nipples up but I've had packages from across the world when the whole globe was in lock down, I've had packages from Ukraine as it fought for its existence. Maybe its time to give Hannants some slack & leave off flogging the deceased equine. Just saying.

Steve.

Well said.

 

If RM have been remiss in notifying their customers then it is entirely pausable for Hannants not to have been aware of the issue until they started getting enqiries about delayed delivery, it's impossible to keep abreast of every internet/ newpaper announcement of this type.

 

 

[bentwaters81tfw]

Still waiting for 3 xmas cards. Local postie tells me RM hired a warehouse here on the docks to store all the undelivered mail in. Wouldn't surprise me at all. They did say we would get xmas cards in February, and that's without a 'glitch'. Absolute shower.

[John Laidlaw]

14 hours ago, stevehnz said:

RM's non communication

 

Getting a leg up from Steve's post with the Devil's Advocate role, larger companies who have been compromised in this way are usually advised by ITSec consultants to keep as quiet as possible about it during the initial mitigation phase. Recovery from these things can take weeks, if not months, and there is a huge amount of work involved in simply finding out how the systems were infiltrated. After that, blocking those routes and others identified as vulnerable, together with cleaning up the malware and the mess they leave is time consuming to say the least. The fewer people that know, the lesser chance there is of some opportunistic scumbags (AKA, thieves, to properly describe them) trying to sneak into an already-compromised system and causing even more damage whilst they're trying to clean up after the last party.

 

In short, Hannant's and all sorts of other companies would not have known until it was absolutely necessary to tell them. Frustrating, but essential.

 

RM has many, many problems, but their response in this case was reasonable. Not good for the likes of thee and me and our orders, but understandable.

[e8n2]

21 hours ago, stevehnz said:

Dave, I'm going to play the devils advocate here, just the once. I've followed this from the start & like most things, there are more than likely several issues interacting here, RM's non communication to begin with & then I'm guessing some obfuscation with respect to what it did eventually communicate to its clients. Whether or not Hannants is a big enough client to warrant direct communications from RM is something only they can know, but I can easily believe they may well have laboured under the belief that a couple of days & it'll all be jake. Oops, not so, RM's woes have lasted longer than they initially hoped they would & this has left a heap of clients, none the least  Hannants, up the creek without a paddle. Stuck in the middle of all this is you, our dear friend e8n2, who understandably feels miffed to blazes & probably feels like Hannants have it in for him. Ok, I'm exaggerating now to make a point, but yes, RM could have done better by their clients & yes, maybe so could have Hannants for theirs. In the interim, you appear to have had a vendetta on Hannants & won't/can't be mollified. Ok, so  be it, but surely it is time to move on, there's more to worry about, the floods in your home state & the floods in the north of my country strike me as a couple of things way more important. I'm confident your order from Hannants will arrive, I've had many from them & they have been incredibly reliable. They rely like most others in their situation on outside agencies & occasionally things go nipples up but I've had packages from across the world when the whole globe was in lock down, I've had packages from Ukraine as it fought for its existence. Maybe its time to give Hannants some slack & leave off flogging the deceased equine. Just saying.

Steve.

If I've been beating a dead horse it is because people seem to think I'm mad at RM and not Hannants.  My package has finally shipped so hopefully it will be here in 10 days.  I will not cut Hannants any slack because of the fact that they waited well over a week, and probably only after customers like me complained, to finally tell us what was going on.  I will still order from them, but I will not be the totally happy customer that I was before and maybe try some other places to order from that I wouldn't necessarily have tried before.

Later,

Dave

[e8n2]

7 hours ago, John Laidlaw said:

 

Getting a leg up from Steve's post with the Devil's Advocate role, larger companies who have been compromised in this way are usually advised by ITSec consultants to keep as quiet as possible about it during the initial mitigation phase. Recovery from these things can take weeks, if not months, and there is a huge amount of work involved in simply finding out how the systems were infiltrated. After that, blocking those routes and others identified as vulnerable, together with cleaning up the malware and the mess they leave is time consuming to say the least. The fewer people that know, the lesser chance there is of some opportunistic scumbags (AKA, thieves, to properly describe them) trying to sneak into an already-compromised system and causing even more damage whilst they're trying to clean up after the last party.

 

In short, Hannant's and all sorts of other companies would not have known until it was absolutely necessary to tell them. Frustrating, but essential.

 

RM has many, many problems, but their response in this case was reasonable. Not good for the likes of thee and me and our orders, but understandable.

If you want to keep customers, you tell them upfront what is happening, just not how it happened, IT consultants be damned.  If you are one, sorry, but that is not the way to keep customers happy.  Don't know if you are old enough to remember the Tylenol poisoning attack, but just think what would have happened to them if they listened to PR people and didn't come forth immediately.

Later,

Dave

[dcrfan]

I've given up on a parcel that was picked up by RM in October 22 and according to their tracking system is still sitting at the first place it was scanned on the first day 😪 

[stevehnz]

On 2/1/2023 at 7:55 PM, dcrfan said:

I've given up on a parcel that was picked up by RM in October 22 and according to their tracking system is still sitting at the first place it was scanned on the first day 😪 

I hope you've been in touch with this company & told them to initiate a claim with RM & either refund you or replace the goods. I've got one in process with a Japanese merchant, from mid October, must have been a bad month for shipping  & I've told them that I want some action on this, at least one item in the order may be hard to replace & I'm not thrilled at their response so far.

Steve.

[dcrfan]

42 minutes ago, stevehnz said:

I hope you've been in touch with this company & told them to initiate a claim with RM & either refund you or replace the goods. I've got one in process with a Japanese merchant, from mid October, must have been a bad month for shipping  & I've told them that I want some action on this, at least one item in the order may be hard to replace & I'm not thrilled at their response so far.

Steve.

The company has been excellent.  Full replacement already on the way. At least this one has got past the first scan. 8 days from  uplift in Birmingham to Milton Keynes.  The Royal Mail is still carried by horse coach isn't it?

Edited February 2, 2023 by dcrfan

[RAF4EVER]

I ordered from Royal Mail themselves[ Stamps] on 12 Dec 2022, order was dispatched 16 Dec 2022,allow 20 days European delivery,up until now I have sent them 4 e-mails,have had 2 responses from them,1 x phone call, ,to say that the order had been considered lost, and 1 x email to say that the replacement order was being processed.

 

The value of the order was 204 pound Sterling,and it was sent as normal post with no option to pay extra for tracking

[Julien]

As the incident is now closed and this thread is going off course its being closed.