interesting WHICH article

black-saturn

It annoys me when you have to pay extra charges at the post office to ensure your parcel arrives at its destination. If the post office employed trustworthy staff your parcel would always get there without being stolen regardless of whether you paid any insurance.

princessmoneysaver

I have had many an item go missing, usually about 6/7 a year easily. I rememeber one ebay parcel taking 18 MONTHS to get to me too!

nightswimmer

The items I sell are sent out in envelopes, and I have consistently been losing 1 to 2 envelopes, out of every 100 I send out. They all have return addresses on them, yet none of the missing orders have ever been returned.

Luckily the items I sell are usually low cost items, so I just suck up the extra costs and send out replacement orders, but it's very frustrating to have to deal with irrate customers, and frankly, losing 2% of the mail, just ain't good enough.

smartie1976

I always seal my envelopes/packages around all the edges with heavy duty tape.
This way it is not quite as easy to slit open the edges 'by accident'

HOLsale

soolin wrote:

WHICH suggest that all high value items should be automatically sent in tamper proof plastic bags, the kind that can't be opened without tearing, or if you sign for a package in paper or a brown envelope make the postie wait until you check the contents are complete.

Soo

the royal mail special delivery bags turned inside out are perfect for safe mailing. i still tape them well too though

in fact i tape ALL my outgoing gifts and ebay stuff (even envelopes) at least two times in either direction this makes certain that nothing can just 'fall out' i've not had a single complaint of non delivery or damaged items since i started doing this a year ago. prior to that it was at least one claim per month!

i don't trust anyone between me and the receiver and the tape is cheap as i get full rolls 6pks for £1 at quids inn...well worth it!

Contains_Mild_Peril

I send most eBay items in plastic mailing bags like these
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/15-Medium-Weight-Strong-Mailing-Bags-230x310mm-9x12-5_W0QQitemZ5638356460QQcategoryZ72355QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
which can't "accidentally" come open, and while they may not be quite as cheap as adding lots of sticky tape to paper envelopes or recycled packaging, they're very convenient, and light enough that they don't add unnecessarily to postage costs.

Searcher

Funnily enough I was discussing this with my sister a couple of weeks ago.
She works for Royal mail customer services and I was asking why so much of my mail simply doesn't arrive.
Her simple answer was It goes through the Greenford mail centre. She even went so far as to suggest that any claims for lost mail going through there aren't even contested.
I'm pretty sure that anyone Living in NW London will know what I mean :mad:

Dumbledore55

I must be unique but out of nearly 400 postings to and from not one has ever gone missing!!

soolin

Contains_Mild_Peril wrote:

I send most eBay items in plastic mailing bags like these
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/15-Medium-Weight-Strong-Mailing-Bags-230x310mm-9x12-5_W0QQitemZ5638356460QQcategoryZ72355QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
which can't "accidentally" come open, and while they may not be quite as cheap as adding lots of sticky tape to paper envelopes or recycled packaging, they're very convenient, and light enough that they don't add unnecessarily to postage costs.

I use the big silver bags as well, and was surprised to find how convenient they are. I used to use jiffybags for everything with tape, but of course if you send something taped up it can easily be opened and retaped (as per the WHICH article) whereas a sealed plastic bag cannot be resealed.

The bags also have a major advantage, they cost me the same as the jiffy bags but for my larger stock items they weigh less and I save about 15p per item on the cost of postage. I can't remember who first told me about these bags, but it was someone on here, so thank you!

Co incidentally, both the claims I have going through at the moment were sent in jiffy bags as I do still use them for a couple of my items.

Soo

soolin

Searcher wrote:

Funnily enough I was discussing this with my sister a couple of weeks ago.
She works for Royal mail customer services and I was asking why so much of my mail simply doesn't arrive.
Her simple answer was It goes through the Greenford mail centre. She even went so far as to suggest that any claims for lost mail going through there aren't even contested.
I'm pretty sure that anyone Living in NW London will know what I mean :mad:

There are a couple of these 'problem' offices. I got paid out extra compensation last Christmas after the RM confirmed they were aware of a specific problem, and I'm not NW London.

Soo