Royal Mail £8 Internal Post Handling Fee scam?
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If RM handle a package valued at £30 and this gets picked for customs charges, they have to fill out a form, send this form along with the payment for VAT to HMCE, then print out the required charges form and advise the intended recipient of the payment due and collect it from them
All of which must be automated, otherwise, they would never get enough throughput.. How many such packages do you think rm handle every day ?. Hundreds, thousands, ten thousand ?. Assuming a 24 hour continuous operation and a thousand packages, thats only 1.44 minutes per package.
8 ukp for 1.44 minutes = 333.33 ukp per hour. Nice little earner, rm
Regards,
Chris0 -
If RM handle a package valued at £30 and this gets picked for customs charges, they have to fill out a form, send this form along with the payment for VAT to HMCE, then print out the required charges form and advise the intended recipient of the payment due and collect it from them
All of which must be automated, otherwise, they would never get enough throughput.. How many such packages do you think rm handle every day ?. Hundreds, thousands, ten thousand ?. Assuming a 24 hour continuous operation and a thousand packages, thats only 1.44 minutes per package.
8 ukp for 1.44 minutes = 333.33 ukp per hour. Nice little earner, rm
Regards,
Chris
automated? so there is no manual handling in the customs clearance process at all?
if its automated then i would guess a 99% 'success' rate in charging items for RM as well?
so no subsequent manual handling until the item is delivered either i suppose?0 -
If RM handle a package valued at £30 and this gets picked for customs charges, they have to fill out a form, send this form along with the payment for VAT to HMCE, then print out the required charges form and advise the intended recipient of the payment due and collect it from them
All of which must be automated, otherwise, they would never get enough throughput.. How many such packages do you think rm handle every day ?. Hundreds, thousands, ten thousand ?. Assuming a 24 hour continuous operation and a thousand packages, thats only 1.44 minutes per package.
8 ukp for 1.44 minutes = 333.33 ukp per hour. Nice little earner, rm
Regards,
Chris
automated??? a thousand packages?? dear me :rotfl:0 -
If it's automated, I think it's time for a new machine.
In the past 3 years I've imported approx 25 to 30 packages from the USA (all fairly small so came via RM), and to date, I've only ever been charged duty once.
The goods varied in value from about £20 to £150, with an average of round about £40.
Even an exceptionally good optical reader can difficulties with many peoples writing, so imagine the trouble trying to get one to understand and interpret writing in thousands of different styles.
It may one day be possible to automate it slightly (but even then, this can only happen if every country in the world had a standardised customs declaration form which was computer generated), but due to smuggling problems, there will always be humans involved in a lot of the importing procedure.0 -
oooh I wish it was automated. Would save me scanning customs charges into the office, logging them in the customs book,writing a card out, scanning the items as being delivered and then marking them in the book as being paid. Now that's just at delivery office level. Pretty sure there's a lot more to be done at the customs side of it.
Shaun, I think you've been lucky. Everything i seem to order gets stopped :rotfl:4 Stones and 0 pounds or 25.4kg lighter :j0 -
With such a labour intensive operation, it's no surprise that they need to charge 8.00 to cover costs.
Ideally, it would be data entry and bar code label at the port of entry once only, then central database, comms and automated handling at the local office. It's what business does these days, so why can't rm do it ?...
Regards,
Chris0 -
With such a labour intensive operation, it's no surprise that they need to charge 8.00 to cover costs.
Ideally, it would be data entry and bar code label at the port of entry once only, then central database, comms and automated handling at the local office. It's what business does these days, so why can't rm do it ?...
Regards,
Chris
what businesses?
so how would you automate the handling of packages of any shape/size
with customs labels on random parts of the package in various forms
how would you program that machine to judge what items are due duty by the declaration and those which which don't actually fit in with whats declared
If all these machines are great.why is it that the push to automated letter sorting in RM slows down the sorting process vs human sorting?0 -
With such a labour intensive operation, it's no surprise that they need to charge 8.00 to cover costs.
Ideally, it would be data entry and bar code label at the port of entry once only, then central database, comms and automated handling at the local office. It's what business does these days, so why can't rm do it ?...
Regards,
Chris
probably because the cost of setting up the infrastructure to do all that isn't cost effective0 -
Custardy said:
"Data entry": Staff at port examine package, key in name, house number and postcode and enter address for packages without postcode. Nice shiny white label with all info and barcode gets printed, data sent to central database, later accessed by local office to make charge and cross verified by package barcode. Local office has terminal based form from database with fields for item id, time, date amount and payment method.so how would you automate the handling of packages of any shape/size with customs labels on random parts of the package in various forms how would you program that machine to judge what items are due duty by the declaration and those which which don't actually fit in with whats declared
If all these machines are great.why is it that the push to automated letter sorting in RM slows down the sorting process vs human sorting?
Wow, look doc, almost no paperwork. It's so obvious that I would be surprised if most or even all of the above is not already in place.
One other minor irritation: Local office doesn't accept debit cards, so I either have to take cash, or write a cheque.
Neanderthal or what ?...
Regards,
Chris0 -
Great idea. But it'll cost a load of capital investment, from an already starved and abused business.Ideally, it would be data entry and bar code label at the port of entry once only, then central database, comms and automated handling at the local office. It's what business does these days, so why can't rm do it ?...
That said, if Fedex charge a tenner, and the're a well capitalised internationalised business, perhaps it's just not cost effective to do so?0
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