Where would we stand ?

[Chuckie]

Hiya im just trying to clarify where we would stand if the following were to happen, maybe someone could help me with this.

We have 3 ways of shipping:
1) Royal Mail Recorded Delivery - A cover of up £28 is available as standard
2) Royal Mail Special Delivery - A cover of up £250 is available as standard
3) Carrier (ANC) - A cover of upto £250

This is what have in our t&c regarding lost parcels:
"Lost Parcels
ModelPower.co.uk accepts NO responsibility, If the Customer (YOU) places an order over the value of £28 and only uses Signed For Service, If this parcel were to get lost in the postal system - The Maxium Compensation you would be able to receive would be £28. If the Customer(YOU) uses Special Delivery or ANC Carrier Service then the full order value can be claimed. "

If royal mail lost a parcel that was covered upto £28 but the parcel was worth £50 would we still have to refund the customer the £50 or send him another parcel to complete his order ?

Can actinic be told to say, if the value is over £28 only allow special delivery or carrier service and not allow signed for ?

Thanks in advance for the help i hope to get

[Mike Hughes]

Legally the distance selling regulations place the onus on the retailer to deliver goods to the customer. If you don't deliver you have to refund their money.

That's the short summary. If you're going to do business online you need to understand the 'distance selling regulations' and the 'sales of goods act'.

Mike

[fleetwood]

James
The only way to cover yourself is if you manually check the postage on orders.
If the scale of your business allows this, then you could email any customer who placed an order with an unsuitable postage choice and inform them that this postage choice is unsuitable for the order they have placed, and in order to process their order the postage charge will be xyz.

I am asuuming you are using postage by weight. If you were using postage by value, you would not need to offer the customer the 3 choices, but simply configure your postage to increase with order value.

What is really needed (and I have gone on about this before) is for the software to allow postage to be configured by a combination of both weight and value, as this is how postage is charged in the real world (ie carriers mostly charge by weight, but have set compensation limits on any one particular service, meaning that at certain value breaks, you need to charge a different rate regardless of weight).

If you feel that this would be a useful addition to the software, please add your name to the wish list for this feature.

Martin

[Chuckie]

Hiya Martin, Thanks for you reply i will add my mark to the wish list.

[steveaich]

Where is the wish list? This is something we desperately would like to see in Actinic.

[Chuckie]

Hiya steve i have added a message on the developers thing asking for it to be added, but i could see it being very handy
http://community.actinic.com/showthread.php?t=14395

[jont]

We took the "brave" decision to stop using RoyalMail due to the extremely fragile nature of our products and the lack of compensation / insurance cover. We now use only a carrier and charge accordingly - this does deter some people from buying but the level of service we provide (goods arrive next day and intact) to those that do buy and the lack of hassle of re-sending damages and placing claims more than compensates for this.

If something does go missing we resend immediately and then start the claim against the carrier - the customer has paid their money to receive our goods and until they have arrived safe and sound we have not fulfilled the contract. I would modify your T&C to comply with Distance Selling Regs - this will also add to customer confidence before they place an order.

[fleetwood]

Steve
The 'wish list' is basically a list of things we (the end users) we like to see added to future editions of the software.
Its maintained by Actinic.
The best way to add it to it simply posting your 'wish' in a forum.
The more people who express an interest in a particular feature, the more likely it will be considered.
Martin

[Chuckie]

Jont, using carrier for all your goods maybe a good alternative for you, but just wouldnt happen here, if someone orders and item worth 1.95 charging 7-9 quid for carriage just aint on now is it. So we have to use royal mail, just trying to reword the shipping part of the t&c and its not going to well

[jont]

Yep - my average spend is much higher so the cost for delivery is a very small percentage - but I still get people moaning about £6.95 shipping costs on orders over £500.00!!

Could you not set shipping as just the one class so if someone spends the £1.95 in your example it defaults to say £1.50 carriage and you send via RoyalMail and if they spend over £30.00 you charge the ANC rate and send via carrier. As you know the typical spending patterns of your customers you can set the price breaks accordingly for the RoyalMail low value orders. This is not ideal as you will have to take an average of costs but it will remove the unlawful T&C you are battling with.

Just a thought.

[Chuckie]

Yes this one is becoming a real pain, because we stock a few items which are under the £28 barrier but are very heavy i think i will go down that route i think because i think that would be easier to control.

[Darren B]

This a similar situation to what i require,

Where as you would like actinic to look at the product values of each item ordered and if any one is more than £28.00 then only offer the special delivery, As stated earlier your best bet for know is to set it up with weights, any item over £28 give a higher weight say 1000 then any thing under give it a weight of 1 then set your shipping bands for special delivery to start at 1000, this way the customer should not get the option to have recorded delivery.

I want it to look at length, simply take the longest item (specified in the weight field) unfortunatley the current set up adds the contents of the order. I just want it to take the highest lenght(weight) value.

the way i have suggested for you will not be effected by the sum of the weight, unless someone orders enough of the small items to make 1000, in which case i guess you would send it special anyway.

hope this helps
Darren

[compendia]

We ship by weight and then treat the weight as a code, you can group your products by what you want to charge for shipping, treating heavy items over £28 as their own class.

1 kilo: £2.50
2 kilos:£3.50 And then forget what anything actually wieghs, just put what code you want. You could have a code for recorded delivery with enhanced compensation.

You could tell your customer, 'we use Royal mail recorded and special delivery or a courier and packages must be signed for'. That would cover everything.

Also I send a lot first class and have received more than £28 compensation so you may solve your problem with a conversation with post office cusomer services. What does 'standard' actually mean.

When things get lost in the post we send out a replacement and then claim ourselves for the cost price of the goods. We've never had an argument from the post office, and that is sending it untraceable first class post. Lost parcels are, at a guess, under 1% of what we send out.


Megan