Should I be Charitable to Royal Mail?

Hintza

The Christmas rush combined with the bad weather has meant that well over 50% of my Special Delivery items were late some upto 3 days late in arriving at their destination. I spent Thursday and Friday just chasing these up (holding customes hand in effect and offering advice; not much I could do) and to be fair I have not had any complaints of non delivery yesterday or today so have to assume that they have all got to their intended destination eventually.

So do I claim or not?

I reckon I could claim on between 20-40 items and at £4.45 a pop would be a nice little earner. The draw back is the claim form which is huge and the moral dillema of whether to refund my buyers. Also I am completely knackered and am just glad to see the back of the Christmas rush.

Any thoughts?

Jakejakejake

Why not give it a try - theres nothing to lose and they broke their promise of next day.

soolin

Claim as otherwise there will be no official record of these delays.

One of my recorded items sent 11 days ago has failed to arrive as well.

Soo

~cleo~

claim as you didnt get the service you paid for - alot of my recorded deliveries have not been updated on the RM website as recieved - but i have not had any complaints of non delivery unless there is a backlog and they are slow updating the system

mah_jong

The reason why there were many late deliveries of SD is because of the weather.

However the service you paid for was delayed. I would claim. If undelivered by 1pm you can claim your mailing fee back.

RM must surely be insured against losses beyond thier control. If you dont, you may well have to pay out if some of your buyers give you grief! Though they can see you used the service you advertised (assuming you do advertices SD) and have seen the delays at airports, however they may not be so charitable.:rolleyes:

Our local PO had loads extra SDs in and our posties had loads extra in to deliver! Along with delays in deliveries to the sorting office it must have been a bit of nightmare ..... however the bottom line is you paid for a service that was not fullfilled!

ziffius

Hintza wrote:

The Christmas rush combined with the bad weather has meant that well over 50% of my Special Delivery items were late some upto 3 days late in arriving at their destination. I spent Thursday and Friday just chasing these up (holding customes hand in effect and offering advice; not much I could do) and to be fair I have not had any complaints of non delivery yesterday or today so have to assume that they have all got to their intended destination eventually.

So do I claim or not?

I reckon I could claim on between 20-40 items and at £4.45 a pop would be a nice little earner. The draw back is the claim form which is huge and the moral dillema of whether to refund my buyers. Also I am completely knackered and am just glad to see the back of the Christmas rush.

Any thoughts?

As it was the customers who paid for the postage, shouldn't they be the ones to receive any refund from Royal Mail? this is what i've done in the past. Recipients can make the claims themselves, and I would expect some would have already put a claim in.

Hintza

ziffius wrote:

As it was the customers who paid for the postage, shouldn't they be the ones to receive any refund from Royal Mail? this is what i've done in the past. Recipients can make the claims themselves, and I would expect some would have already put a claim in.

They are all Amazon sales and I use Special Delivery as a sales incentive. To be honest though if I was going to start claiming it would be for my benefit. The form is huge and a real pain to fill in and is not worth it if all I was going to was refund my buyers. I have been working 18 hours a day for the last 3 weeks and to be honest have had enough.

I honestly think I'll probably end up doing nothing unless a customer gets really worked up.

MrB_2

As it was the customers who paid for the postage, shouldn't they be the ones to receive any refund from Royal Mail? this is what i've done in the past. Recipients can make the claims themselves, and I would expect some would have already put a claim in.

The contract for delivery is between RM and the sender, not the recipient, therefore the sender should claim any compensation. The sender could then have the discresion to refund the recipient an amount of money paid.
Asd for being charitable to RM. NO. They knew Christmas was coming, it's the same date every year. They knew the weather could be bad, as it is winter. They still took your money and failed to provide the service they guaranteed

pinkgem

i would claim from royal mail and refund buyers the postage if they complain

whenever i have had a refund of special delivery postage due to a delay all i have had to do is phone the royal mail and give then the tracking number, they can see the day it was posted and the day it was delivered, there is no need to fill in a claim form they should just send you a cheque in the post.

Benji

The form is large - but most of the info is the same on every form.

Fill one out by hand with all the 'unchanging' info and then scan/photocopy it.

The only info you should have to write into the photocopies is Customers name/address, SD reference, value and your signature.

pinkgem

Benji wrote:

The form is large - but most of the info is the same on every form.

Fill one out by hand with all the 'unchanging' info and then scan/photocopy it.

The only info you should have to write into the photocopies is Customers name/address, SD reference, value and your signature.

i have a master copy of a claims form with a label of my address which i colour photocopy, but i have just noticed that royal mail have changed their claim forms to be more ebay friendly though so i will have to print out a new copy and do the same.