Here is an important update from Trust Distribution on how business will continue during the Coronavirus pandemic.

The COVID-19 virus situation is having effects on businesses in the UK, just like many other countries. As of 23rd March, we are required to remain in our homes in most circumstances, but we are permitted to go to work if it is not possible to do our jobs from home. Please take note of the following information:

Day-To-Day Operations
Many of Trust’s employees are now working from home, and our homeworkers are set up to be contactable by phone and email as usual. Our warehouse team will continue to work inside our building while taking all the recommended precautions to keep each other safe.

Shipping
We are keeping in touch with our logistics partners all the time in order to stay up to date with news about any issues that they are experiencing. The situation changes all the time but the latest position is:

  • Sea freight from Hong Kong to UK – this is how we import the majority of our VTech stock and it is operating normally
  • Air freight from Hong Kong to UK – we only use this service on rare occasions. There are currently fewer flights and this has led to severe delays and sharp price rises
  • Air freight from USA to UK – we purchase our customised faceplates from a printer in the USA and deliveries have continued as normal with no delays
  • Road freight within the UK – everything is operating normally and we can deliver next-day to all mainland addresses except the Scottish Highlands
  • Road freight from UK to other countries in Europe – we can still deliver almost everywhere except a few areas in Austria and Italy. There can be delays of up to 24 hours at the borders of Austria, France, Italy and Spain. Because we ship from the UK, then those delays will also affect shipments that transit through these countries

Manufacturing
VTech’s factory was a little late reopening after their New Year holiday, but it has now returned almost to full capacity. There are challenges for all manufacturers in sourcing certain components from vendors, so we have been advised that our stock orders could take longer than usual to be manufactured. In our experience though, production times now appear to be returning to normal. We hold very high stock levels of VTech phones here in the UK, so we can cope even when there are delays between the factory and our warehouse.

Summary
We are confident that our service will be mostly unaffected. Please have patience with us during this difficult time, and be prepared for your orders to take a little longer to fulfil than usual. Please keep us updated on the delivery dates that you require, and if we become aware of any problems we will let you know immediately.

If you have any questions, or if there are any specific matters you wish to discuss then please feel free to get in touch with me any time by phone on +44 (0)1706 694 075 or email roy@trustdistribution.com.

We will update our website www.GuestPhones.com and our LinkedIn page https://www.linkedin.com/company/guestphones regularly so please keep checking them.

Roy Stephenson
VTech Brand Manager
Trust Distribution Ltd