Are Royal Mail being left behind?

bartelbe

I haven't sold on ebay for a long time but having some free time on my hands, have started listing. In the past using non Royal Mail delivery was like paying Russian Roulette with your parcel. Sometimes it felt like the companies just took your parcel and dumped it in a bin out back.

My experience this time has been difference, I half been using a combination of Collectplus/Yodel and Royal Mail. In terms of reliability I can see no difference in the service. Except for very light items under 2KG, Royal Mail are so expensive that I won't consider them. With non Royal Mail carriers I get tracking by default, with Royal Mail it is extra.

Even dropping off the parcels favours Collectplus, the store drop offs are open long hours, including Sundays, unlike the Post Office. I don't get twenty questions about what is inside, its value and attempts to upsell services. It is amazing how many times I have had to repeat second class to staff at the Post Office before they stop trying to force a more expensive service on me. Not to mention attempts to charge small parcel rates, until I insist they use the plastic gauge and magically the parcel is OK for large letter.

Maybe I have just been lucky, I don't know what other delivery firms are like, maybe they are still awful but I get the impression that the gap has closed. Royal Mail feels increasingly dated, behind the competition and behind the times. At the very least tracking should be given by default for all parcels, if other firms can do it, why can't they?

I honestly fear for their future because I am not sure what Royal Mail's business strategy is, with the prices they are charging. Unless they think they can survive on small parcels/letters and don't want the other business.

soolin

bartelbe said:

I haven't sold on ebay for a long time but having some free time on my hands, have started listing. In the past using non Royal Mail delivery was like paying Russian Roulette with your parcel. Sometimes it felt like the companies just took your parcel and dumped it in a bin out back.

My experience this time has been difference, I half been using a combination of Collectplus/Yodel and Royal Mail. In terms of reliability I can see no difference in the service. Except for very light items under 2KG, Royal Mail are so expensive that I won't consider them. With non Royal Mail carriers I get tracking by default, with Royal Mail it is extra.

Even dropping off the parcels favours Collectplus, the store drop offs are open long hours, including Sundays, unlike the Post Office. I don't get twenty questions about what is inside, its value and attempts to upsell services. It is amazing how many times I have had to repeat second class to staff at the Post Office before they stop trying to force a more expensive service on me. Not to mention attempts to charge small parcel rates, until I insist they use the plastic gauge and magically the parcel is OK for large letter.

Maybe I have just been lucky, I don't know what other delivery firms are like, maybe they are still awful but I get the impression that the gap has closed. Royal Mail feels increasingly dated, behind the competition and behind the times. At the very least tracking should be given by default for all parcels, if other firms can do it, why can't they?

I honestly fear for their future because I am not sure what Royal Mail's business strategy is, with the prices they are charging. Unless they think they can survive on small parcels/letters and don't want the other business.

All RM standard parcels have proof of delivery as standard which is sufficient for an eBay or PayPal claim. For standard customers LLs don’t have that yet, although some business accounts do get proof of delivery on LLs, my own account gives me that but it costs me about 6p more per LL. 

Spoonie_Turtle

Royal Mail are a separate company from the Post Office.  If you have a problem with those employees, that's down to the PO not RM.  However the questions about what's inside and the value are for your benefit, to make sure that you are sufficiently covered in the case of loss or damage (including whether there's anything restricted or prohibited inside, which at the very least would not be covered and if it were found, likely destroyed).  

At the moment it seems from anecdotal reports that RM and other couriers are equally patchy for service, just their thin patches don't tend to overlap so some people refuse to use anything but RM, whereas others refuse to use RM because certain couriers have proved more reliable.

I think there are probably enough small parcels and businesses using RM to keep them going for a little while longer  

[Also they are the only ones I've found who will carry liquids from non-business customers, which is incredibly annoying because it's expensive, but the only option unless sending to someone who lives close enough to be able to deliver it yourself!]

ReecesWaffle

I think they are. DPD is defo the market leader giving a 1 hour time slot. Every company should strive to offer this.

jon81uk

I assume if you are using other couriers you are ordering online and either printing your own label or getting the collectplus store to print them? So why bother with the Post Office, print your own from Royal Mails site too and cut out the middle-man.

soolin

ReecesWaffle said:

I think they are. DPD is defo the market leader giving a 1 hour time slot. Every company should strive to offer this.

The problem is that if RM put their prices up to match DPD people won't use them, at the moment there is open competition but ultimately a lot of the demand is cost driven. Just before Christmas when ebay were offering half price couriers, including DPD I switched to courier rather than RM , but as soon as the half price offer stopped I switched back to RM purely to keep my postage costs competitive.

NaughtiusMaximus

ReecesWaffle said:

I think they are. DPD is defo the market leader giving a 1 hour time slot. Every company should strive to offer this.

Unfortunately DPD's one hour slots are now largely meaningless. In the past year I've had DPD delivery times range from 1 hour beforehand to 3 hours after.

tbh I've found all the delivery companies are worse now than 12 months ago. My main annoyance is many now use the contact free delivery requirement as an excuse to just ring the bell, dump your package outside the front door then immediately leave, not bothering to wait and see if someone is actually in the house to pick up said parcel.

martindow

NaughtiusMaximus said:

ReecesWaffle said:

I think they are. DPD is defo the market leader giving a 1 hour time slot. Every company should strive to offer this.

Unfortunately DPD's one hour slots are now largely meaningless. In the past year I've had DPD delivery times range from 1 hour beforehand to 3 hours after.

tbh I've found all the delivery companies are worse now than 12 months ago. My main annoyance is many now use the contact free delivery requirement as an excuse to just ring the bell, dump your package outside the front door then immediately leave, not bothering to wait and see if someone is actually in the house to pick up said parcel.

There is a race to the bottom to give low prices.  The delivery people are paid a pittance and given a ridiculous number of drops to do in a day.  It is not surprising that standards and reliability slip.

bartelbe

martindow said:

NaughtiusMaximus said:

ReecesWaffle said:

I think they are. DPD is defo the market leader giving a 1 hour time slot. Every company should strive to offer this.

Unfortunately DPD's one hour slots are now largely meaningless. In the past year I've had DPD delivery times range from 1 hour beforehand to 3 hours after.

tbh I've found all the delivery companies are worse now than 12 months ago. My main annoyance is many now use the contact free delivery requirement as an excuse to just ring the bell, dump your package outside the front door then immediately leave, not bothering to wait and see if someone is actually in the house to pick up said parcel.

There is a race to the bottom to give low prices.  The delivery people are paid a pittance and given a ridiculous number of drops to do in a day.  It is not surprising that standards and reliability slip.

I agree with that and the way staff are treated is a disgrace. The problem is, if you want to sell anything, you have to offer cheap postage. The only way you'ill get better terms and conditions for staff is if regulations force a minimum standard and therefore force everyone to charge the more expensive postage rates.

custardy

ReecesWaffle said:

I think they are. DPD is defo the market leader giving a 1 hour time slot. Every company should strive to offer this.

DPD are great. They are also tiny,even if you remove RM and compare to direct competitors

RFW

bartelbe said:

There is a race to the bottom to give low prices.  The delivery people are paid a pittance and given a ridiculous number of drops to do in a day.  It is not surprising that standards and reliability slip.

I agree with that and the way staff are treated is a disgrace. The problem is, if you want to sell anything, you have to offer cheap postage. The only way you'ill get better terms and conditions for staff is if regulations force a minimum standard and therefore force everyone to charge the more expensive postage rates.

I agree some are treated badly but that seems to be slowly improving. Also they aren't all the same, so some companies have self employed franchised drivers and others are contract employees. As far as I know UPS and Parcelforce are amongst the contract employees.