Question For Those With a Royal Mail OBA....

thebestnameshavegone

.....I've been dithering about this for a while (I'm on the cusp of posting 1000 items a year), and RM seem to have got all pro-active lately and have called me twice to try to twist my arm into signing up.

I'm more or less ready to commit to RM 24/48, but would love to hear from those of you using the service (I know a fair few of you signed up after the last price hike). My main worry is that parcels are not tracked/signed for - at present I've used RM Signed For for everything that's cost me £20-£50, and haven't had any INRs when using this service. Switching to self-insurance is a risk, although obviously I'm going to save on postage costs.

What I'm wondering is if any of you noticed a significant increase in INR claims once you made the switch? Has the savings on postage costs outweighed the lack of compensation available?

Thanks in advance

lovinituk

We've been using OBA for around 3 years now and lost items are no more than they were when I was posting via a post office. At the last check, we were seeing less than half a percent of items lost.

Where and what you sell has more to do with how many INRs you receive. We sell the same items on eBay and Amazon, ship them by the same methods and sell roughly the same on both platforms. I can count the number of INRs we have on Amazon this year on one hand. On eBay we see a few a month. That says it all really!!

theonlywayisup

We ditched OBA about 3 years ago for Dispatch Manager Online. I only use RMT but for that to get a decent price you need to send 5000 items a year, we do about 45000.

DMO will give you a slick way to print your labels, they supply the thermal labels you just supply the printer. Once that's bought there are no costs as there is no ink.

DMO is a different platform to OBA and both are linked to your PPI. So the prices are from PPI and not dependant on whether you use OBA or DMO.

Pluses for DMO:

Free labels, address checking (you select an address from the post code, much like courier services use), online database of all your customers, their addresses and online proof of postage*, no inputting details at the end of the day in order to print the manifest.

*I've had Paypal accept this twice in two disputes for unauthorised chargeback.

lovinituk

We did look in to DMO and RMT this year but because the majority of our orders fit within Large Letter, RMT would have worked out much more expensive despite our volumes.

The use of DMO labels also didn't fit very well with our current order system and the use of integrated invoices/labels.

theonlywayisup

That's the problem with RMT, you need to be sending 5k of the right size. Fortunately ours are all bigger than LL and between a few hundred grams to 11kg. So it suits us perfectly.

But although DMO was originally brought in for RMT barcoded labels, it is perfect for PPI.

We don't send invoices, (we are green!) and send them via email, our software harvests the info and does it itself. If a buyer wants a hard copy then we send one but I think we must do that less in 1/100000 orders.

lovinituk

theonlywayisup wrote: »

We don't send invoices, (we are green!) and send them via email, our software harvests the info and does it itself. If a buyer wants a hard copy then we send one but I think we must do that less in 1/100000 orders.

I did consider this at one point but we would still need to print picking lists if we didn't print invoices so would use the same amount of paper anyway. As it is, the invoices are also the picking lists, we just happen to put them in with the order after the address label has been peeled off for the front of the package. It keeps packing mistakes down too as the address label and invoice/pick list are kept together all the time.

We also use the invoices to print offers and discount codes on which can attract ebay and Amazon buyers to buy from us directly instead. Even without any codes it lists our website and contact details so repeat customers often come to us directly next time any way.

winspiration

I've had an OBA account for over seven years now and I agree that the amount of losses is far more dependent on venue than on the RM service. I sell almost 100% via my website now and INRs are very few and far between.

You can still use the signed for service on OBA if you need a signature.

Savings are significant - if you use the 24 / 48 service you can average, which increases the amount you'll save.

If you aren't VAT registered (I'm not), you can use the BPL / BPR codes for 1st / 2nd class mail (you need different labels) and these don't have VAT applied. You can't average though, and the same size constraints apply for parcels as for over the counter prices.

winspiration

Oh and I forgot to say that I never claimed from RM anyway for the occasional loss (too much hassle digging out lots of different invoices as most orders are multiple items, for compensation at cost price), so loss of compensation hasn't been a big deal for me.

custardy

thebestnameshavegone wrote: »

.....I've been dithering about this for a while (I'm on the cusp of posting 1000 items a year), and RM seem to have got all pro-active lately and have called me twice to try to twist my arm into signing up.

I'm more or less ready to commit to RM 24/48, but would love to hear from those of you using the service (I know a fair few of you signed up after the last price hike). My main worry is that parcels are not tracked/signed for - at present I've used RM Signed For for everything that's cost me £20-£50, and haven't had any INRs when using this service. Switching to self-insurance is a risk, although obviously I'm going to save on postage costs.

What I'm wondering is if any of you noticed a significant increase in INR claims once you made the switch? Has the savings on postage costs outweighed the lack of compensation available?

Thanks in advance

Why would you think INRs would increase?

thebestnameshavegone

Thanks for all the feedback - lots to take in! I was given a quote for the Tracked service, but like lovinituk I have such a variety of sizes that it wasn't financially viable on the number of parcels I currently generate.

Custardy - my worry isn't that RM would lose more 24/48 post; more that without a signature or tracking it does leave you more vulnerable to scammers claiming INR when in fact delivery has been made. It's interesting (and heartening!) to hear that this doesn't appear to be the case.

celestius

I have been using OBA since April. Really pleased with it, I have had one loss that I can recall and that was more than made up for by the savings I make on parcels going by average weight rather than size!

In fact my losses have decreased, but I have a feeling that's more to do with ditching a few lines of items in a certain category which I was selling and seemed to attract lots of trouble!