Help with Royal Mail claim - handmade item

curlychick

Hi there,
I wonder if you could help me..
I sell handmade fabric flowers on ebay, which sell for around £20. The materials cost me £3 ish!
Recently I have had a few of these get lost in the post, so I have sent out replacements to my buyers.
I would like to make a royalmail claim for the missing items (sent first class standard royal mail) and when looking at the form, it says I have to provide a recipt or bank statement for when I purchased the item. obviously as these are andmade I don't have this.
any advice?
also, How do you track your claim once it is with Royal mail> I have sent in one for something else over 2 months ago and heard noting.
I would really appreciate your advice on this one!
Many Thanks,

soolin

As you are a business you can only claim the cost to you of the loss, not the item cost. Although sometimes RM just pay the actual ebay cost regardless!

As for tracking claims already with RM there is no way of doign that, but if you phone them with the name on the claim they can check their log to see what is happening. It is not unusual for the claim to be lost (unbelievable but true as it has happened to me on a large percentage of my claims)

Also if you are getting a lot of losses (and i average out at about 1 every 500+ items) you may need to review your packaging or labelling.

curlychick

Hi there, Thanks for your reply, I am not registered as abuisness seller, as I don't sell loads.. should I be?
Thanks for the info. should i just miss this bit off of the form?

soolin

curlychick wrote: »

Hi there, Thanks for your reply, I am not registered as abuisness seller, as I don't sell loads.. should I be?
Thanks for the info. should i just miss this bit off of the form?

Yes you should be registered both with ebay and with HMRC.

However it might be worth in this case just claiming for the actual ebay value of the item. RM do check ebay and of course as they will have your ebay page showing value can see if you are selling a number of these or just one from your own personal collection, and that might be just enough to stop them paying out the full amount as they also will deem you to be a business.

If you are really not selling a lot then I am even more worried by this from your OP;

Recently I have had a few of these get lost in the post

Any unusual number of losses should be investigated to see what or why this is happening to you.

curlychick

OK, Thank you xx