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It seems the devils in Homeland Security are delaying my shirts from the UK....the sacrifices we make......


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Dear Mr McGrath  

I am writing to you today with regard to your Charles Tyrwhitt order placed on 12/12/2010

As you may already know, we are currently experiencing severe and unprecedented delays with a large number of orders shipped in the last few weeks to the US. I would like to apologise unreservedly and wholeheartedly if your order is still yet to arrive or indeed if it was delayed past its intended date of arrival but has now reached you.

I would also like to clarify the reasons for the delay to your order. Certainly there have been some delays due to the weather. Freezing conditions and heavy snow in the UK meant that transporting orders for overseas shipping became near impossible and even once the situation had improved there were large backlogs that needed to be cleared. These delays were exacerbated when goods flown into the US via the East Coast then met the same problem upon arrival with severe weather disruptions across the Eastern Seaboard hindering the United States Postal Service in their efforts to deliver on time.

The major and overriding factor, however, was not the weather. Since November, the United States Department of Homeland Security has dramatically increased its security measures following the "toner" incident.  In short, mail weighing at least 1 pound can no longer enter the US via passenger aircraft and instead must be transported via other means. It is now also a requirement that all parcels over one pound are individually scanned, which the vast majority of Airlines and Postal Authorities simply aren’t equipped to deal with. We have also been informed that Homeland Security representatives are randomly intercepting consignments and holding them for an indefinite period.

These measures were implemented without prior notice and all involved parties have been doing their utmost to work around these issues.  However despite our best endeavours these exceptional circumstances together with  the increase in mail over the festive period simply meant that there were no other options left to explore and severe delays have been occurring. 

I must stress that these severe issues with delivery  are not restricted to ourselves and over this period the vast majority of airlines, carriers, businesses and of course customers have had to bear the brunt of these problems. You may have received another order from us or another company in this time without delay (certainly the amount of successful and timely deliveries we have completed far outweighs those that have been unsuccessful).   Our major problem is that there has been no way to guarantee what will arrive and will not with any degree of certainty.

If your parcel has still not arrived then do please feel free to get back in touch with us and we will do whatever we can to assist you. We would recommend contacting our Customer Service department via telephone to discuss the specifics of your own situations but you can also email us if preferred. Our contact details are below:

Telephone: 1-866-797-2701 Monday-Friday between 0500 (EST) to 1700 (EST) and Saturday between 0500 (EST) to 1300 (EST). Please select option 2 to speak to one of our Customer Service Representatives.

Email: Please visit http://www.ctshirts.com/contactus

Again, from all at Charles Tyrwhitt, we are truly sorry for the extraordinary problems that you have experienced here and would like to assure you that we are doing everything in our power to make sure our delivery service quickly returns to the standards we and our customers expect.

Yours sincerely,

Mark Higgins

Vice President Operations