Royal Mail up to scratch?

JPS

Have been selling online for 18 months now, going to the Post Office almost every day ::)

I recently thought to myself, "Royal Mail do a really good job". I am not sure how true that statement is....

Just this week, 2 customers have e-mailed me telling me they have not received their Special Deliveries! One of them was attempted to be delivered to a customer, but Royal Mail did not leave a card. To make matters worse, my e-mails wern't going through to the customer, so the customer became a bit worried, as anyone would. I have just rang them tonight to explain the situation and how it is not my fault, but I am not impressed by Royal Mail's service at the moment.

It really annoys me they have a complete monopoly on the market - can you imagine having loads of different post boxes and you could choose who delivers your mail lol - obviously wouldn't work but as Royal Mail are the only people there to deliver mail I feel it is so important that they get it right.

Any thoughts?

Josh

barjam_2

my hubby is like you uses the post office most days the staff in our local po no him well as being very thorough in the way he has his parcels organized but once they have left his hands its pot luck wether they are received! lately he has been filling in a few lost or damaged forms i think if there was another company in competition with the po he would prob give them ago he is getting a bit sick now and the buyer usually gets on his case even though its not his fault i wonder if these buyers think my hubby delivers these parcels himself hmmmm

System

You get what you pay for.

A First Class 20g letter posted in the UK costs 28p. It costs between 33p to 45p across the rest of Europe.

However a First Class 60g letter posted in the UK costs 28p. It costs about 60p across the rest of Europe, increasing up to £1.12 in Italy.

http://www.royalmailgroup.com/news/expandarticle.asp?id=1344&brand=royal_mail

alexj2002

I don't know about you but id rather pay more and know its gonna get there.

It seems that Royal Mail isn't delivering on even its premium services such as Recorded Delivery (ive had about 3 people say they've recieved recorded items without signing and according to the checker online they havent been delivered - what is the point then of the 66p or whatever charge)

Alex

Hintza

Touch wood

But I am still pleased with the Royal Mail.

However I imagine its just a matter of time before things go wrong.

Best thing though is we have a regular postie who I am on first name terms with and who alsu uses e-bay a lot for Eastern Curios and ships them in from all over (China, USA etc). So we exchange our tales of woe about non performing sellers over zealous Customs and Excise etc.

But I think it helps yo be chummy with your postie as I imagine most items go missing on the last leg of the journey (TV documentary).

I have had more problems with the courier companies who seem to give up very easily when they can not loacte your address. I live in a small hamlet and asking anyone would elicit where my house is. You phone their despatcher and get some !!!!!! and bull story.

So for now I am happy with Royal Mail. To the extent that I am thinking of stopping using Special Delivery and resorting to Recorded Delivery and saving myself £2.68 per item sent.

Which is about 10% of my purchase price and I will shoulder the additional risk (ie self insurance). I know its a risk, but I will receive roughly what I paid for the item in compensation should the item go missing.

But I will watch this forum to see how others are faring.

Am I being a bit naive here?

JPS

Not really Hintza - sounds like a good idea to me. What kind of things are you sending? Obviously if it is things like mobile phones then Special Delivery is the best but for smaller things recorded delivery does work out a lot cheaper and the service seems to be the same.

And ye I think it is a good idea to be chummy with ur postie - but at one point we seemed to have a new one every week!! :-/

Hintza

The items tend to sell for about £35-£50.

And are obviously only covered upto £28 by recorded delivery.

The thing is once you have paid ebay and paypal ones margins start to get really squeezed.

And a saving of around 10% somewhere in the chain can not be sneezed at.

debbiet

Hi

Royal mainly seem to get increasingly worse, in the past month (I sell about 50 items amonth, mostly books) i've had 4 items that haven't got to their destination, 1 item really badly damaged, I haven't recieved 2 cheques that 'claim' to have been posted, I've not had 3 bills a very important letter and £10 for doing a bit of mystery shopping, next door have popped mail round 4 times, i've popped mail round to the next street 2 times..

one of the bad things is we don't have a local postie, it seems to be a different person every day and most of them don't even wear royal mail uniform, what's that about???

So no, not happy, i use 1st/2nd class with a cert of posting, as many items are £5 or less it doesn't really warrant recorded delivery...

deb

Hintza

If the postman is not in uniform its one of 2 things:-

1. Contract worker....arghhh...will I ever see my mail??

2. New postie in training...receives uniform after some time (finished training??)....hmmm...hopefully he is trying his best.

quoia

90% of all the items I post 2nd class are delivered the following day.
This was how I found it 2 to 3 years ago and it has not changed.
Posted an item after 17:30 Friday evening (12th Nov) collection 18:30 in Derby.
It was delivered Saturday morning (13th Nov) in Braintree Essex.

nicki_2

We seem to have a very sporadic postal service. Some weeks we only get post on a Friday - the other week we had no post all week then on the Friday we have 4 deliveries in one afternoon! ::)

Also, the way they've been shutting down the post offices around here is causing major nightmares for local people. If you try to use the post office before 10am any given day (except Saturdays) you can be sure that you will be standing in a queue for at least 10 miuntes and sometimes the queue is out of the door and halfway down the block. I've resigned myself to going at 10-10.30am and letting other people go first if necessary so I can get one of the counters that have parcel facilities; otherwise they just pass me out a sack and let me put my own parcels in which is not easy when putting the item on the scales (now digital and a pain when someone is using the next counter and keeps knocking it), filling out the postcodes on proof of purchase and trying to get the right postal amount on the right parcel ::)