small 'help I'm a newbie' courier thread

soolin

In the light of the new Royal Mail sizes which mean anything over 8cms deep is now a parcel with a minimum cost of £5.20 2nd class I am sure I cannot be alone in wanting to investigate couriers.

I am quite sure that couriers will also increase their prices once they see the volume of new work they can achieve, but maybe we could just update this thread as they do so. This thread will not replace the main courier thread that is useful for large shipments and sepcialist queries, but more designed for small courier companies that newbies like me could actually access and use.

I am not in all day so would be looking for a courier that has a drop off point- do they exist or am I limited to Collect plus?

campdave

Myhermes has pickup points, starts at £3 dropping off I think for anything up to 1kg. Luckily for me, I have one quite close, though I send very little parcels these days.

soolin

campdave wrote: »

Myhermes has pickup points, starts at £3 dropping off I think for anything up to 1kg. Luckily for me, I have one quite close, though I send very little parcels these days.

The shop that used to be the Collect Plus shop is now a Myhermes one- I can walk to that in 5 minutes- so thank you for that tip. I know they have a poor reputation but the difference in cost (as it stands at the moment) will mean I am going to have to risk it.

I assume their prices will go up, but will list my 30 day BINs starting next week with the current prices and hope for the best.

EDIT: Jutst noticed that 90% of the things I sell are excluded from claims of damage- so I'll have to keep my packaging strong and hope for the best. I rarely get damage so it shouldn't be an issue.

excluded items:

https://www.myhermes.co.uk/wps/portal/PN_CTR/Home/excluded-items/!ut/p/b1/04_SjzS1sLQwNtaP0I_KSyzLTE8syczPS8wB8aPM4kONDEIdnQwdDQxMvFwMPF28fA1DzI0NvT2N9SOBCsxxKnA00w_RjzAwiQ_OqizwDgku8fZJNg_Mqiwv8M42DqsyDgsNcwx0jApPdCsoV1TUD9ePxG9YbpR7WaWjoiIAeg2Pcg!!/?content=Excluded%20Items

campdave

As a buyer, myhermes are one of the best for me. In my area, it's subcontracted out to a person that lives a few streets away, who gives you her phone number if you're out and is happy to redeliver on Saturdays and will always try to fit in when you're available. Obviously service will vary from area to area depending on who they farm it out to.

My large items have become a very small part of the items I sell, so I think with these new charges I'll just run down what I have and add a few items to my other line of business to compensate.

purple321

Our Hermes man is good too, lives by my daughters school and knows when to catch people in and to avoid the school run for us. We don't have a printer set up all the time which would be the most hassle for me with using a courier aswell as staying in but I may have to try it with a couple of things. I think i'll avoid selling things that can't go Royal Mail as much as I can for now at least.

I think one problem with more people using couriers is that I don't think ebay have the facility to put separate postage costs for parts of the UK that couriers charge extra for like NI and the highlands & Islands, so would we just have to put in the listings postage extra for these areas? Could see people buying and paying the UK postage and then not being happy about being asked for extra. As a buyer too I don't want to see an increase of listings that just say courier and have to read each listing to see the postage price.

soolin

Well, depending on how this all goes and what I decide to do with my current stock I may well give Myhermes a try. I'll be dropping off at a shop though rather than arranging collection.

steveo3002

im up for trying hermes , the find a store thingy doesnt seem to do much

how can i find out where i can drop off

soolin

steveo3002 wrote: »

im up for trying hermes , the find a store thingy doesnt seem to do much

how can i find out where i can drop off

It did work for me using my post code.

Strapped

purple321 wrote: »

Our Hermes man is good too, lives by my daughters school and knows when to catch people in and to avoid the school run for us. We don't have a printer set up all the time which would be the most hassle for me with using a courier aswell as staying in but I may have to try it with a couple of things. I think i'll avoid selling things that can't go Royal Mail as much as I can for now at least.

I think one problem with more people using couriers is that I don't think ebay have the facility to put separate postage costs for parts of the UK that couriers charge extra for like NI and the highlands & Islands, so would we just have to put in the listings postage extra for these areas? Could see people buying and paying the UK postage and then not being happy about being asked for extra. As a buyer too I don't want to see an increase of listings that just say courier and have to read each listing to see the postage price.

No they don't, and it's really annoying. I use ParcelForce and try to keep things simple. I list the price and then put in the description that if you live in one of these postcodes:

there is a supplement of [£x]. Unfortunately, if you use the word "supplement", your listing gets flagged by ebay and doesn't get published for about 24 hours while they "review" it. Whereas if you just put "the postage price listed is for Zone 1 addresses only" and are coy about the rest, it doesn't get flagged. Stupid really - the more upfront you try to be, the worse it is for you. And you will always come across the militant buyers who live in the Outer Hebrides but think you should be able to send them something large and heavy for the same price as to London. ETA: I don't like myHermes. And I think that they will get a rush of new business from this, which will make their service even worse.

Strapped

I know that this won't be a suitable solution for the casual, occasional sender of parcels, but I use DespatchBay to send my larger stuff with ParcelForce. It costs £6.13 + VAT (=£7.36) for 48hr service. For smaller items, DespatchBay have a packet service, which is £2.48 + VAT (=£2.98) - but the definition of packet is larger than for Royal Mail, at up to 1.5kg and no longer than 60cm per side. (This is also CHEAPER than myHermes who charge £2.75+VAT for up to 1kg).

If you are a higher volume user then the prices decrease per item.

You do have to sign up for an account with DespatchBay, and pre-pay for shipping (minimum pre-pay £50). They say on sign-up that you need to send at least 50 parcels a month, but to be honest, I haven't been shipping this amount over the last year, and they haven't queried it. (Although I'll be shipping more from April!)

If this interests any of you, then there is a code you can use on sign-up to get £12 worth of free shipping: http://despatchbay.com/s/1GD59

I will say that you may be able to ship mid-sized stuff more cheaply with the likes of myHermes, so check them out too. But I had several bad experiences with them, which is why I now avoid (and I live far away from any drop-off point). I guess it depends on your business model too - I'm lucky enough to have made it to a point where I'm not selling purely on price, so I don't mind being a pound or two dearer than the competition. It's more important to me to be hassle-free. (Which *touches wood* I have been so far).

soolin

I've just been down to the MyHermes shop and they were really nice. They used to do Collect plus but say they had 'issues' and have found MyHermes much better , they even gave me a discount code.