Underpaid postage, but not really

juno

I've had a message from a buyer saying postage was underpaid by 50p, but I went to the post office and got the item weighed. I have the certificate of posting which says the weight on. The post office used stamps not the sticky labels, so some might have fallen off.

Is there anything I can do?

Sugar_Coated_Owl

I take it that the buyer then had to pay this extra 50p? If so, I would just send the buyer 50p and explain that you did get it weighed properly at the PO and perhaps some stamps did fall off.

cafenervosa_2

juno wrote:

I've had a message from a buyer saying postage was underpaid by 50p, but I went to the post office and got the item weighed. I have the certificate of posting which says the weight on. The post office used stamps not the sticky labels, so some might have fallen off.

Is there anything I can do?

I've got a big issue with postage scales that are not all accurate to one another within different post offices. I think they should all get digital scales because I don't trust the older non digital ones.

patgc

Yes, this happened to my sister. She and her partner run a small business from home and she had a parcel to go to Thialand. At one P.O it was quoted as £18+ so she took it to another one and they sent it for £10+ exactly the same, basic airmail. I do know that the 1st PO had the old type scales and the 2nd was digital.

LizD_2

I had a similar problem last week, although this was non-payment of postage.
Paid for postage, only to get a slip through the door from Royal Mail saying postage had not been paid. Had to pay an additional £1 for handling fees. Checked the box, and they've put the recorded and tracking stickers on but no postage. Now have to take it up with Royal Mail, as the seller confirmed she paid and has a receipt.

angelcake

1 out of 5 (approx) digital scales I have come accross don't start at 0.000 kg some of them have 0.006 etc... I now tell the staff to reset them but you always have to watch out!!

shelly

Has any feedback been left? If not you're lucky your buyer got in touch first. I'd send them 50p or say next time they buy from you you will deduct 50p from the transaction.

Hubby sent an item but they stuck on normal stamps instead of the printed ones we now insist on. They fell off and the buyer had to pay to collect the item, instead of getting in touch with hubby and explaining, the buyer just left a neg and complained about having to pay twice for p+p. Hubby replied to the feedback by saying "If you had contacted me I would have refunded you" cheeky so and so then e-mailed hubby to ask for the refund he mentioned :mad: needless to say hubby told him where to get off!!!

Hermia

A couple of years ago I had a big problem with my local sorting office. Basically, over a period of a few months I got several cards from my local sorting office saying that I had to pick up a parcel that didn't have enough postage on it. The first couple of parcels were from friends and so I paid up assuming they had tried to guess the postage and got it wrong. But then the next couple of parcels were from companies and I couldn't imagine a company getting it wrong. So the two companies sent me evidence and I got my money back from the Royal Mail. When another parcel turned up I insisted that the guy at the sorting office weighed it in front of me and it turned out the postage was correct. I have no idea what went wrong, but presumably they sorted it out as I haven't had any problems since.

flea72

if the postage was under on the item, they would have been charged a handling fee by the PO on top of the 50p. i think the fee is about £1, so the mimimum they would be claiming is at least £1.50

to me it looks like they are saying they paid, 50p over what you actually sent the item for, having now looked at the stamps on the parcel, not the fact that it didnt have enough postage on it

Flea

juno

flea72 wrote:

if the postage was under on the item, they would have been charged a handling fee by the PO on top of the 50p. i think the fee is about £1, so the mimimum they would be claiming is at least £1.50

to me it looks like they are saying they paid, 50p over what you actually sent the item for, having now looked at the stamps on the parcel, not the fact that it didnt have enough postage on it

Flea

No, they had to collect the item from the delivery office as apparently postage was short by 50p. They then had to pay the £1 handling charge.

But I sent it from a post office, where it was weighed, and I got a certificate of posting, so I don't see how postage can have been short (especially as it was a lgiht item, so 50p amounts to quite a lot of weight!)

Dormouse

Have you contacted the Royal Mail? I would just phone them and explain the situation -- it does sound completely weird!