Great Tips to Cut Postage Costs Hunt

lynedoch

snax wrote:

Just a comment or 2 about Posties - so not strictly on topic.
The vast majority of Postal workers in this country are, I'm sure, reliable, honest and consencious people - however there are always bad apples in any 'barrel'.
Large inner cities with high density population and heavy postal delivery obligations are more prone to rely on temporary and casual staff, some of whom are supplied by agencies, and are mostly unvetted as far as criminal disclosure is concerned.
Use tiny bits of tape to secure the corners of notes to the inside of cards .. or wrap in a sheet of kitchen wipe and tape that to the inside of the card - anything that prevents movement.I personally would never send cash by Recorded or Special delivery ... you'd be as well writing "£20 note inside - please steal" on the envelope - so obvious.
CD's and DVD's are by the RM own admission the items most often claimed for as non delivered by senders/sellers ... don't see that as a situ which will
Anyway just my thoughts prompted by the comments earlier from the poster who was/is a postie for 30 yrs. Most mail is safe in this country, try to make it safer by sealing all envelopes properly and by not being to obvious about what your mailings contain.

Why does a package from Hong Kong, costing £6 in postage, arrive in 4 days yet 3 weeks later cannot be found in Swansea?
A card was put through the door to tell me the postie had come and gone - without knocking - and I tried on 4 seperate occasions to pick it up only to be told that the postie had left it in HIS local post office and they hadn't yet
forwarded it to the main office.
So, yes the new charges - and still no size guide - disgust me.
If they manage to deliver the unwanted junk mail why not the one I pay for?

:mad:

RedLetter

lynedoch wrote:

Why does a package from Hong Kong, costing £6 in postage, arrive in 4 days yet 3 weeks later cannot be found in Swansea?
A card was put through the door to tell me the postie had come and gone - without knocking - and I tried on 4 seperate occasions to pick it up only to be told that the postie had left it in HIS local post office and they hadn't yet
forwarded it to the main office.
So, yes the new charges - and still no size guide - disgust me.
If they manage to deliver the unwanted junk mail why not the one I pay for?

:mad:

Being a Postie, I knock on the door/ring the bell/knock the knocker at least 3 times. Then leave a slip.
I guess you never go toilet/sleep or do you have a doorbell ringer in the loo!

You ring door bells, not knowing if they work, you can see a TV on but no one answers, so you can see the problems. People asleep at 11.00am (No they aren't on a nightshift) open the door bleery-eyed wondering why the've been woken. You ordered the packet/parcel,

Some drivers do put slips through without knocking because the want to finish their job as quick as possible.

The Royal Mail have just started to trial in some areas a system where you can tell the sender that the item can be left in a safe place or with a neighbour. OK if the parcel is from a major supplier such as Amazon not from a purchase from ebay.

I can understand the frustration, I have to collect parcels from my "local" delivery office, It's 6 miles from my home with no parking. The reason for this: I'm out delivering your mail :rolleyes:

pinkfluffybabe

RedLetter wrote:

Some drivers do put slips through without knocking because the want to finish their job as quick as possible.

This is very frustrating though if you are actually at home!! Also it means the added time taken to travel to the sorting office to collect the parcel, the additional petrol, plus Royal Mail staff time in having to administrate the collection of parcels - everyone loses.

Royal Mail are meant to deliver mail, not keep it at their depot for collection, that is not the service paid for. If people are not in, fair enough, but if they are then it is just adding hassle to their day.

I appreciate that you can phone to have it redelivered another day, but not everyone can guarantee having someone home on the second occassion, particularly when the postman can arrive any time between 7am and 3pm!!

Our local sorting office is opened 8.30 til 12.30 each day. I commute to another city and cannot collect mail on weekdays between these hours - hence I need to spend my Saturday in a queue to collect things. Particularly frustrating if I have been at home on the day a 'while you were out' card appeared.

misterthrifty

The confusion at post offices continues......the first one I went to wouldn't accept my letter because it wouldn't fit smoothly through his plastic slot, he shrugged his shoulders when I explained it had been OK at home and refused to shake the letter to re-settle the contents. The next accepted it without a problem! Where do you stand if the PO accepts a letter and then charges extra postage later?

Mr T

echo

its ridiculous.last wk i sent my daughter's passport application form back 2 her ( got it signed 4 her),put first class stamp on it ( bought b4 they went up) and it was over.nxt time i was in the PO the woman showed me the size chart/letterbox size.wot i find stupid is that that surely first class post is bl**dy enuff? i only posted an envelope with a form.now we either go 2 the PO or have tape measure/scales handy-inconvenient.wud it b cheaper 2 keep pigeons?

planenut

Postage has always been a problem for me with regard to having Slide film processed. Kodak now only have a lab. in Switzerland, and recently with 18 films to go individually (in their designed envelopes ) would have cost me about £12, putting them together in a small box cost me less than £3.
It's always worth considering the packaging weight as well.
You could get a free cardboard balance to weigh your letters prior to "size change", 'sno good now.
Junk mail from the postie? sorry, I stuff it back in the pillar box; "unsolicited mail" as far as i'm concerned, and I know where it came from!

rowdyyates

I need to send a small but heavy (2kg) package to the USA from the UK but the cheapest rate I can find is Parcelforce Worldwide at £27 !
Any ideas please?

xadoc

lynedoch wrote:

A card was put through the door to tell me the postie had come and gone - without knocking

:mad:

I agree this is incredibly annoying and has happened to me and friends several times recently (inner city Birmingham). I have complained. Haven't received any parcels since, so don't know if it has done any good. Haven't received an offer of compensation - possibly as the sorting depot is very close, but all the same not a lot of use to me with such limited opening hours.

As far as I'm concerned, the sender paid for a 'to the door' service, not a collection from a depot in my time.

I'm happy to collect from a depot on occasions when items are received from couriers, but guess why? Because the depots are open decent hours, weekends, and have parking.

I did point this out to RM in my complaint.

RedLetter wrote:

Being a Postie, I knock on the door/ring the bell/knock the knocker at least 3 times. Then leave a slip.
I guess you never go toilet/sleep or do you have a doorbell ringer in the loo! :

I take umbridge with this. Obviously you give people a chance to actually get their post. As you can see from other posts here - that isn't always the case with the service other people are receiving.

No need to get sarky. Most people can hear their doorbell from the majority of their house, mine included, and I have checked my doorbell on the occasions when I've received a 'you're not in' card. It works fine.

My doorbell is loud enough to wake me, and given that two of us have been in on more than one occasion, and that at what point we notice the mail/card we can often pin it down to a 10minute slot when that mail must have been delivered, it is obviously not an issue with us hearing the postie - he/she blatantly couldn't be bothered, and frankly, I don't think that is good enough.

He/she is paid to deliver my mail, after all.

RedLetter wrote:

You ring door bells, not knowing if they work :

Mine is loud enough to be heard by postie too, if he/she bothered to ring it.

It's a big circular brass thing, so unlikely to be overlooked, before you point out that some are hard to find.

RedLetter wrote:

People asleep at 11.00am (No they aren't on a nightshift) open the door bleery-eyed wondering why the've been woken. You ordered the packet/parcel,

Again I take umbridge. Since when did you become arbiter of when an appropriate time to get up is?

And how do you know who works nights/is ill/had to care for a sick child all night/were called to some emergency/has a well earned day off and fancies a lie in? (Or were posting on MSE in the middle of the night...)

We order the packets/parcels, true, but unless psychic, have no knowledge upon which particular upcoming day it will arrive!

RedLetter wrote:

Some drivers do put slips through without knocking because the want to finish their job as quick as possible.

Yup, and that's all we're complaining about. Don't take it personally, most posties do a great job, with not great wages, terrible hours, in wind, sleet, snow, rain, hail, and sun.

As a consumer, I'll try not to take it personally either that you'd rather I wasn't asleep at 11am (whatever the circumstance) when you've been up since the crack of dawn. On the plus side - you'll be done and sat at home long before I return at 7-8pm...

On a completely separate note... Has anyone else noticed that 2nd class mail seems to be arriving faster and faster these days?

I posted a smallish parcel 2nd class on Monday and it had arrived in Northern Ireland on Tuesday!! That's incredible, and seems to be happening a lot; with letters too.

I wonder in these days of automatic sorting machines if it's more hassle to sort the mail into two piles just to make one go slower!

Are pennypinchers like me getting an unexpected bonus?

5hreek

"Stop junk mail for good"

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money-savers/article.html?in_article_id=414110&in_page_id=5

You can tell RM to stop putting unaddressed junk mail through your door - it's much more effective to email or write to them ad opt-out than stuff it back into the pillar box (which just annoys the RM staff and doesn't bother the manager who's making the decision to use posties to distribute junk - opting out will bother that manager).

And the Mailing Preference Service should take care of addressed mail.

scatz

NatFeerick wrote:

the ridiculous way these new price structures work only serves to defraud us consumers of our hard-earned.

I beleive that it costs Royal Mail somewhere in the region of £1 to actually deliver a regular letter, therfore, running at a loss to do so, bearing in mind a first class stamp costs only 32p. Royal mail make their money from business contracts not the average Joe and are, as such, NOT defrauding consumers but actually providing a very good service (albeit some misshaps bearing in mind the millions upon millions of correctly delivered mail) for a very reasonable price.

If Royal Mail were not to 'hike' prices then, due to the deregulation, consumers may end up with NO Royal Mail altogether and a rather heftier price to pay to a competitor for the delivery of their mail.