Royal Mail are taking my profits - advice please

dbramley

If you buy an item to sell and that item costs you £5 but you sell for £15 you'll 'lose' £10 profit should it go missing.

But you do get the item refunded which means you are free to sell it again and make your £10 profit.. so you're not really losing out (other than a waste of time!).

If RM refunded your profit and your item, then you still have an item to sell and you would stand to make that profit again. So it could be in your interests for items to go missing...

Hope that makes sense, but I think its clear why RM operate that policy.

twotimes

dbramley wrote: »

But you do get the item refunded which means you are free to sell it again and make your £10 profit.. so you're not really losing out (other than a waste of time!).

If RM refunded your profit and your item, then you still have an item to sell and you would stand to make that profit again. So it could be in your interests for items to go missing...

Hope that makes sense, but I think its clear why RM operate that policy.

You can't really sell it again if Royal Mail have stolen/lost it. Royal Mail can though so it could be in their interests for items to go missing.

dbramley

They refund you the money so you can buy it again to re-sell....

cyberbob

dbramley wrote: »

They refund you the money so you can buy it again to re-sell....

That doesn't really apply if your a private seller selling your own stuff though

Kestrel

dbramley wrote: »

They refund you the money so you can buy it again to re-sell....

Unfortunately it isn't that simple, sometimes you have to place minimum orders with wholeslares, sometimes items are one offs, some items are personalised/made to order, many ebay businesses buy liquidation stock - each business will have different suppliers and each supplier will have different terms and conditions. What about antique/vintage items that businesses sell? and what about the ebay businesses who make a living selling items they have sourced at car boot sales and charity shops? So you see it is just not that simple to say "go and buy another to sell" if it were as simple as walking into Marks & Spencer or John Lewis on the high street and then re-selling then yes it would be possible but being realistic that is not how most ebay business sellers operate as it wouldn't bring them much of an income.

I would still like to know how someone at Royal Mail would like it if I told them I wasn't giving them some of their wage for the month when they have a family to feed and bills to pay

Kestrel

Kestrel wrote: »

and what about the ebay businesses who make a living selling items they have sourced at car boot sales and charity shops?

Come to think about it how would such businesses provide Royal Mail with proof of what they paid for items purchased this way? I can just imagine asking a car booter to provide a receipt! Maybe I'm one of the lucky ones as I do have purchase invoices to provide to RM, but as far as I can tell since looking into this, if you can't provide proof of what you originally paid for an item you will get a big fat nothing back form RM - let everyone be warned get receipts no matter how you source your stock

cyberbob

I'm afraid no system is Perfect. RM are a business like many others will try there best to minimize there liability. Similar problems occur with couriers and claims as well. As sellers all we can do is to work potential losses into our business model the same way B&M business's have to take account of possible shoplifting we have to think about losses due to the postal service

Kestrel

It seems to me that the RM system is far, far from perfect.

I am now dealing with 4 missing parcels from within the past 3-4 weeks. These are not small parcels and I refuse to believe that these items can simply vanish into thin air - as far as I'm concerned Royal Mail ARE the shoplifters and are taking my honest earnings away from me.

I think RM are suffering from self-inflicted problems and are trying to keep their financial losses (which have occured as a result of their own doing) to a minimum. During recent strikes RM have employed temporary staff and from what I understand many of them have not had full checks run on them. Perhaps if they hadn't employed light fingered temporary staff they wouldn't have as many claims to protect themselves from? *I am not saying all RM staff are thieves so don't hang me! All the RM staff I deal with on a regular basis are supportive, helpful and courteous and go out of their way to help me. I pity them working for such a shoddy organistaion.

RM will (if they haven't already) shoot themselves in the foot. Also the strikes have lost them business (I know they have lost the Amazon account for one and that must be a considerable amount of business) many sellers (myself included) have begun to send more and more items with other couier companies as a matter of course where it is financially feesible to do so. I get questions everyday from buyers enquiring about alternative delivery to RM as they have heard about the huge backlogs etc. and even though an alternative is more costly, in many cases my customers are happy to pay the higher fee. From now on I will offer an alternative to RM on all my ebay listings and I too will hit RM as hard as I can in my own small way by moving my business elsewhere.

I have learned quite a lot from my local delivery office in the past 2 weeks since I have been looking into this whole situation and even the RM staff I have spoken to are disgusted that RM do not pay out the market value for "missing" items - in fact the depot manager was shocked

soolin

Kestrel wrote: »

I

RM will (if they haven't already) shoot themselves in the foot. Also the strikes have lost them business (I know they have lost the Amazon account for one and that must be a considerable amount of business) many sellers (myself included) have begun to send more and more items with other couier companies as a matter of course where it is financially feesible to do so. I get questions everyday from buyers enquiring about alternative delivery to RM as they have heard about the huge backlogs etc. and even though an alternative is more costly, in many cases my customers are happy to pay the higher fee. From now on I will offer an alternative to RM on all my ebay listings and I too will hit RM as hard as I can in my own small way by moving my business elsewhere.
d

Actually Amazon still use Royal mail for most of their items, for some reason people seem to believe that they gave up with RM entirely.

Most of my items go at elss that £5 postage so for me I have no alternative other than RM as no one else wants my end of the business with high volume but low cost postage items. I have also never had a cistomer ask me about using a service other than RM, and i send approx 100 items a month.

Kestrel

soolin wrote: »

Actually Amazon still use Royal mail for most of their items, for some reason people seem to believe that they gave up with RM entirely.

Most of my items go at elss that £5 postage so for me I have no alternative other than RM as no one else wants my end of the business with high volume but low cost postage items. I have also never had a cistomer ask me about using a service other than RM, and i send approx 100 items a month.

It was the manager at my local depot that told me they had lost the Amazon account so I suppose if RM staff are telling the public that they have lost it what are people supposed to believe?

My smaller items/low cost postage items also unfortunately have to go with RM but on larger/heavier items where P&P is upwards of £5.99 people are happy to pay an extra £1.99 and have it sent with DHL. Perhaps becasue your items are low cost postage people don't enquire about alternatives.

Copy and paste of question I received from a buyer last night on a £3.99 P&P item
"how would this be posted, what with all the backlog in the post office?"

my answer:
"It would be sent via 1st class recorded delivery but if you prefer I can dispatch this with DHL which would cost £7.99

She bought it and opted for DHL at an extra £4 (item value £37.95)