Post Office - Recorded Signed For

[Steven Barkess]

Hi

Been reading other threads re delivery but cannot find much re Post office.

I am selling vinyl recrods and at present go to post office, buy stamps and recorded signed for sticker and away it goes.

I am looking at Royal Mail's Smart Stamp, print own labels and all that, but one thing I dont like is that it says the postage price on the print outs.

I charge P&P but given that the price is displayed, I dont think it is a good thing to put on less stamps than the P&P is (ie $2 P&P, but only put $1.50 worth of stamps on cos the box is $0.50). With Smart Stamp, I understood that I could print stamps saying 1st or 2nd class but no mention of price. A competitor does this without price so there is a way, but how i dont know.

So, bottom line... How do I send parcels throgh Royal Mail with out specifying the amount of postage on the box, all i want to say is 1st or 2nd class. THat way, i can factor in P&P price including the box and not just the stamps into the P&P, and therefore not have to factor in the packing costs into the product costs.

Thanks all, as someone else said, this postage thing seems very complicated.

Steven

[fleetwood]

Hi Steven

I think what you are referring to is PPI (postage paid impressions). These say 1st or 2nd class only plus a licence number. You stamp your packages with this impression, and a billed based on the average weight of a parcel, calculated over time. To use these you have to have a Royal Mail contract. The minimum spend to obtain a contract is an absurd £5000 pa!

We currently use a mix of Parcel Force (under contract), and Royal Mail for small parcels under 1kg and of low value. We have just started using Smart Stamp as we are not yet at the £5000 contract level for Royal Mail, and as you point out, it does print the stamp value on the label, and yes, this is a pain the whatsit.
Its still in its early stages, and needs a lot of refinement, plus you also have the problem that a lot of post office staff don't even know how it works yet, or recognise the printed labels as valid postage.

Sending weighty low value items to retail customers is awkward, as non-business customers aren't used to paying realistic delivery charges. Most couriers are in the £5-£10 per parcel region, so Royal Mail are the only alternative I can see for mailing cheaper (sub £5 postage) packages.

To be fair, we get very few problems or complaints, but when we do hit a problem they are terrible at sorting it out. There's the classic Catch-22 situation where you can't make a claim or enquiry for loss until x number of days has past, yet, if y number of days has past, its too late to make a claim!

The bottom line is, B2C is far more difficult in many ways than B2B, and I don't think there's a perfect mail solution out there. We've used Royal Mail and Parcelforce for over 20 years, so they can't be that bad I suppose!

Hope thats of some help.

Martin

[pinbrook]

P&P stands for postage and packing.

you could make a bigger deal in your terms about the packing, but not many people read terms correctly.

or you could move the 50p packing cost on to the product.

We've recently added £2 to all our product prices and now advertise free postage. we get a lot of feedback to say that people have ordered because of free delivery.

most people compare costs between websites and like the fact that we say there are no extra charges applied in the checkout.

[thomas]

for what is worth

We have had a similar discussion for our site and came to the following conclusion that postage and packing was not just about the stamp value, but the cost of bubble wrap, boxes and bags etc and the time involved in packaging and going to the post office.

We also ask a few of our friends who in general said when they received a package they where inclined to rip it open without a thought for the postage price, and only read the documents enclosed if there was a problem with the goods i.e.: something missing.

www.wazoola.co.uk

[Mike Hughes]

And the smart stamp system isn't much different to what you're using already (i.e. sticking stamps on it).

If you want to re-inforce the 'first class' bit, just use the extra space on the label to say 'another first class delivery from bloggs website' or something similar.

Mike