RMDO Down

[saucysal]

We despatch packages using Royal Mail Despatch Manager Online, but this has been down since Friday early morning and still down Monday afternoon. We have had to send packages out using a courier, at twice the price, and some packages which have to go by Royal Mail we cannot despatch at all. I am surprised that nobody else has mentioned it. I am amazed that the Royal Mail do not have a backup system that can restore the site under such circumstances. They must be losing a lot of custom. Are any of you in the same boat or are we the only users of RMDO? It is embarrassing for us to have to apologise to customers (eg in Channel Islands) to say that we cannot despatch their order as the Royal Mail booking site is down; they just won't believe it.

Sarah

[guccij]

We don't use that system so can't help with that aspect.

However, could you use a local sub or main Post Office as your back up? I am certain they would welcome the extra revenue as a one-off.

We use a franking machine for 95% of our items. We take these in the correct sacks to our local sub post office half a mile away just before it closes. We pay for Next Working Day and Signed For items at the counter, because although it would be cheaper to do these on the franking machine, it is only fair to the postmistress that she gets some benefit from us depositing 4-6 sacks of packets and large letters with her daily.

[Mike Hughes]

Hi Sarah,

Sorry to hear about your problems. I use Royal mail's Online Business Account which looks like it's operating fine (fingers crossed). For this they have a manual paperwork option so deliveries can go out whatever happens. Did you try calling RM? they might have a manual template for use when the system fails.

Smartstamp might be useful as another backup option. It's is also handy for sending out orders on Saturday mornings.

Mike

[saucysal]

We used Tracked

Thank you for your replies. We use Tracked mainly, and were told that packages have to be booked using RMDO and not to use OBA or paper. RMDO is (was) set up with all the available services that we use, which also include Royal Mail 24 Signed For, Contract Airsure, etc. I have rung the Royal Mail twice a day since Friday morning but not received any assistance or advice, so have despatched with another carrier where possible, and emailed the remaining customers to apologise. If their system is not fixed today (fifth day, third working day), we will have to consider your suggestion of taking some packages to a post office as the public do, and send Royal Mail 24 Signed For.

Sarah

[saucysal]

Amazingly still down 5th day

I am amazed that the Royal Mail have still not fixed their booking website, making it impossible for anybody to send anything Royal Mail Tracked. The site is used to create and print address labels (with barcodes), addressee email addresses/phone numbers for delivery updates from Royal Mail, to print the daily manifest, and update invoicing.

Sarah

[Golf Tee Warehouse]

Are you sure it is a problem effecting other users and not just yourself.
Have you tried accessing it using alternative browsers in case it is a problem that is only effecting one browser.

[guccij]

Are you sure it is a problem effecting other users and not just yourself.

Good point. Just logged in to demo it and it worked fine. Had to use IE mind, doesn't work on Firefox or Chrome.

[saucysal]

Works with some businesses and not others

The Royal Mail says that the problem is only affecting some businesses, which is why they are having problems idenfifying the cause. If it were all cases, it would have been clear-cut and easy to fix. I have tried different browsers, different computers with different operating systems, different ip addresses and different broadband suppliers. For example, at work is XP Pro, IE8, Firefox, GoogleChrome, broadband with Eclipse, all fails. At home is Windows 7, IE9, broadband with BT Infinity, fails. However, we have found a neighbouring business, which my husband luckily owns, with Windows 7, IE9 and BT broadband, which can book on. We only found this out this morning, so are rather frustrated that we didn't find out last Friday (now Thursday). We are now popping over to this other business to do the bookings. It took a while to re-install the printer, and not perfect, but better than nothing. Unfortunately, in some cases where we could not upgrade to a different carrier as the despatch had to be by Royal Mail, we have had some angry customers cancel their orders, even though we had contacted them on the day they ordered to apologise and explain.

Sarah

[Mike Hughes]

Royal Mail are ridiculously behind the times. Their OBA screen has this wonderful message to greet you.

Customer notice: Did you know that OBA supports the following browsers: IE7, IE8, Firefox (up to version 20) and Chrome (up to version 26), with IE9 coming soon.

Like most other people I'm on IE10 and Chrome 28. In the days of auto-updates it's maddeningly slow for them to be two major releases behind.

Mike

PS. and this isn't just an old message. IE9 and above does work properly with OBA.

[saucysal]

RMDMO now working for us

Despatch Manager Online is now working for us, only 8 days after the start of the failure! Hoping that it stays that way (Royal Mail yesterday said that when they tried a fix, it fixed the problem for some and gave the problem to others who were previously fine).

Curiously, before it was fixed, last night, I could get onto RMDO with no problems using my tablet with Windows 8, latest browser etc. Just no printing.

Sarah

[Donna Kempster]

Barcodes on all parcels by 2015

Hi All

Has anyone heard that all business parcels irrespective of whether you use tracked or not will have to have Royal Mails Barcode on it?

We have just had a call from RM trying to get us to trial RMDMO and saying that by 2015 all our parcels will have to have barcodes and therefore we will have to use it by then.

Will SD be changed to either print the allocated barcodes or a simple output to upload??

[saucysal]

Use RMDMO then will have the barcodes

I can recommend anyway using RMDMO. We use this for all our RM despatches, regardless of service used, whether straightforward letters or packets, or recorded, or tracked, or overseas services. It also serves as proof of despatch of all items whether trackable or not. Using this system, you will be printing the address labels through it, and the barcodes will be automatically on the labels. At present most services have barcodes, except for post that is not signed for or tracked. If they are changing the system in 2015 as you suggest, then they will upgrade the RMDMO accordingly to provide the barcodes for all items.

Sarah

[Donna Kempster]

Hi Sarah

Tracked is just not cost effective for us so dont want to go down that route. But how do you get the orders into the RMDMO to print the labels with the bar codes on? Is there a report or do you key them manually - we send over 150 a day so don't want to be rekeying which is what the girl on the phone implied! Do you therefore print a packing list out of SD and a label out of RMDMO and thenmatch them?? Seems a nightmare to me but to be fair haven't had any experience of it.

[Mike Hughes]

Would be interested to hear this too.

Flipping OBA is down at the moment, so DMO might be a good alternative but it appears I have to have a uswername and password before I can use it.

Mike

Update 5.45pm : OBA came back up so at least I got todays mail out.

[saucysal]

Somebody is confused?

The RMDO is for entering address info for printing the labels, and at the same time is automatically creating the manifest and billing (unseen behind the scenes), and a record that you can use for tracking. With RM services that have bar codes, these are auto printed on the address labels. The RMDO have nothing to do with processing orders.

In our case, we enter the address info ourselves from the Data Sheets, but save each for future use, autofilling, as we have many repeat customers. However, the address info can be imported into the system but we choose not to, such as the address data could be taken from Sellerdeck into RMDO, or via Excel or other software.

We learnt many years ago from bad experiences, never to despatch any goods to any customer by any means that is not either trackable or requiring proof of delivery, ideally fully trackable. Without this, there is no parcel reference to identify a parcel, and no means of knowing where it is or what happened to it, and people knowing this can take advantage of it. We happen to know (through an employee who no longer works for us) that some people will automatically say that they did not receive something if it cannot be prooved that they did (this lady did so herself ).

Sarah