Amidst all the scrambling to perhaps get a nice early Christmas gift over Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and over some of the other days leading up to Christmas, a different set of numbers surrounding all the festive season expenditure makes for some staggering reading, although not really all that unsurprising given the sheer spike in volume at this time of the year. I’m talking about those parcels we all love to send over the festive season, but more specifically about the age-old tradition of sending Christmas cards.
In line with the upcoming festive cheer and the Christmas shopping rush to go with it all, a new study was conducted, revealing that a staggering 30% of people missed the delivery of their parcels by the time Christmas arrived, while 15% sent Christmas cards which never arrived. The study surveyed 1008 people, all of whom are over the age of 18 and residing in the UK and they were asked two questions:
“Are you aware of any Christmas cards that you have sent to friends or family not arriving in the last 10 years?”
“Have you ever missed delivery of an important Christmas parcel?”
At first glance the numbers may not seem as bad as they’re made out to be, but if one considers the bigger picture, beyond the surveyed individuals, the economic implications perhaps better put things into perspective. What undelivered Christmas cards add up to is a whopping £750,000, as per the cost estimations for Christmas 2016!
The survey was conducted by specialist label manufacturers, Data Label — http://www.data-label.co.uk, bringing to light how less than a fifth (15%) of respondents had the Christmas cards they’d sent out to friends and family go missing, while 30% admit to having missed delivery of their important Christmas parcel.
To further put this into perspective, Oxfam’s 2014 study revealed that 88% of people actually engage in the tradition of sending Christmas cards, which comes up to around 56 million people in the UK all sending Christmas cards every year. The average cost per greeting card is at around 89p and so the estimated cost of undelivered cards over a period of the past decade could be sitting at up to £7,476,000 for plus-minus the 8,400,000 cards that have gone missing.
Philip Carlyn, managing director at Data Label, is of the view that Christmas is a stressful enough period without the added knowledge of the shocking amount of people experiencing problems with the delivery of their post around what should otherwise be a festive time of the year. “While, of course, we’d recommend ensuring clear and correct labelling on your Christmas packages, it’s easy to see why, with the massive cost wasted on missing cards, many are now turning away from the traditional route of sending Christmas cards by post and sending their greetings cards online instead,” Carlyn added.
This would otherwise mean that this coming Christmas, 840,000 cards could potentially go undelivered, which comes up to a cost of nearly £750,000 wasted on Christmas cards that will never reach their intended recipient.