What do we all pay for shipping

[runningwolf]

I am yet again trying to look at shipping costs, i have had a few losses recently with royal mail so would like to get more sent through City Link if I can.
Currently I pay £5.85 for Citypacks (5Kg), LinkLetters £5.20 (1Kg), Parcels £6.95 (10Kg)
I really want to get the bagged stuff down in price so it can replace royal mail, really angry with them after they seem to have lost 3 parcels in 6 weeks then lost another after I started using signed for, something that seems a waste of money as they say its not even on their system.

So before I tackle city link again and try to get them to lower some prices what do you guys have to pay for your carriers?

Cheers
Paul
www.theorderofinitiative.co.uk

[parklifeclothes]

city link

Currently I pay £5.50 for city pack, £5.19 cityletter and about £6.50 parcels.
A friend who recommended City Link was paying about £2 more than the prices I managed to get.
Don't use City Link for Northern Ireland, I didn't realise they charge £20!!!

[acompton]

What kind of numbers do you need to be shipping to get these prices?

Alan

[runningwolf]

I only said about 10 per week, i could do a lot more if i can shift the small packets I send royal mail over to city link.

I sent a parcel to N Ireland on friday
I had thought there was a surcharge of £0.60 per kilo, £20 is going to kill that profit.

[chris ashdown]

we are at £4.23 link letter and £5.13 for city pack but have now started tto use packetpost for most items on next day service with massive savings and no losses todate, even cheaper than sending via the post office

sending about 15-40 small 1-2kg packets per day on average

Citylink was based on 20 per day, but found to be impossible to claim for for lost or delayed parcels as paperwork requirements to demanding

Still use them for larger parcels over 2kg as cheaper

[runningwolf]

We dont do enough per day to use Packet post

[buspassjohn]

We dont do enough per day to use Packet post

So just tell them you do, the only problem is you will have to pay for collections, which bumps it up.
We send about 100-150 a day by packetpost, averages £2.00 ish, losing about .1% of sendings, next day delivery (mostly) to Hebrides, Channnel Islands, etc., you cannot complain about Royal Mail performance in our experience.
Most of the 'lost' packages turn out to be non deliveries when no one at home and customer couldn't be arsed to collect or contact sorting office.

[jont]

found to be impossible to claim for for lost or delayed parcels as paperwork requirements to demanding

We trialled them for 2 weeks and binned City Link for this very reason - we were spending insane amounts of time processing the claims (which were far too high to start with) .... then they refused to pay out

[Darren B]

I use royal mail for just about all mine, standard parcel service for big stuff £3.85 upto 1kg + £1 for every £100 of extra insurance, signed for for my small envelope and jiffy bags.

International signed for for europe around £3.50 on top of standard UK signed for.

nevr lost anything with them, just returns from customers not collecting missed deliveries. I tell my customers when the tell me it has not arrived that if it is return not collected we will charge a redilivery fee, funny enough only ever had two returned the rest send you an email saying they found it at the sorting office.

I am looking at a new franchise that is offering me £2.45 for local next day and £4.45 for national next day think they were call fastway couriers

Cheers
Darren

[Mark H]

Anyone any experience of Home Delivery Network?

[runningwolf]

Sounds like people have had problems with city-link losing parcels, Ive not had any lost myself but its a little worrying if its hard to claim. I also dont like the booking system for city-link, seems very long winded compared to Interlink, that I was using.
Maybe I need to speak to interlink and see if they can drop prices to compete with city-link. I thought I read somewhere that these companies are reluctant to reduces prices once set.

Cheers
Paul
www.theorderofinitiative.co.uk

[Stereo Steve]

Mark, I think HDN have a minimum send of around 1000 per week! Try Parceline who have hooked up with Homecall and have a very cheap 'leave safe' 2-4 day service. It's similar to the service catalogues use. Up to 5kg and signiature not required. No insurance though so only suitable for low value stuff. They do get a sig in about 70% of cases apparently. We are trialling it very soon.

[Stereo Steve]

#11 Many people talk of the unlimited cover you get with City Link but I'm guessing they have not tried to claim! Insurance is only good if they pay out. Also the double money back is invalid if the driver is caught in traffic I believe! Don't want to slag them off too much, I'm just saying don't believe the flannel they will tell you at sign up. That goes for all couriers though.

Anyway, couriers are much of a muchness really and will vary from depot to depot so it's a case of try and see. You will hear horror stories about all of them. I can recommend Interlink/Parceline as being reasonable and we are sticking with them. Only City Link can match their prices for us and I'm not keen on switching as the few niggles I have with Interlink will no doubt be replaced with new niggles with CL.

[chris ashdown]

I also dont like the booking system for city-link, seems very long winded compared to Interlink, [/url]

Paul

Have you tried the Transparant Communications Citylink software, this links with the actinic database and copies all the details over to print your own labels for citylink

[jont]

We also found their software a bit cack-handed compared to that supplied by APC and Amtrak - but this was manual entry not linked to Actinic