My experience with RM , Improvement suggestion

[dsoares]

Hi, I’m selling some items through ebay and most of my items are sold to UK (I’m shipping from abroadl). I would like to share my 5 years’ experience with posting items with royal mail, this large period of time allows me to make some conclusions on the shipping service and practices that are consistent and not a matter of bad luck, this happens on a regular basis.

First, about 60% of the successful deliveries have no tracking information uploaded to the system. For someone selling on ebay not having the tracking information uploaded is very bad because I never know when a complaint is legit or not. And this becomes a paradise for scammers who will have the “right” to fill a dispute and ebay will side with him because there is no online proof of delivery.

Secondly, I started shipping with insurance to protect me from losing money on high value parcels. The insurance has a requirement; it only works with “personal delivery” option.

Personal delivery means that the only person who can receive the item is the one with the name in the envelope, and needs to show id. There is an extra paper form attached to the envelope to collect the signature and state the number of the id document shown. This form is then returned to sender for delivery confirmation (this has legal value).

Do you believe that in around 15 deliveries I have always received the form in blank? No signature, no id. This must have been treated as regular mail, unbelievable and unacceptable! After the first blank forms returned I even start adding a note on the envelope: “Personal delivery only! Signature and id number required”

Had no improvement effect…

Remember these are no bad luck or one shot situations. I'm talking about consistent, standard performance.

[P13]

Hi, I’m selling some items through ebay and most of my items are sold to UK (I’m shipping from abroadl). I would like to share my 5 years’ experience with posting items with royal mail, this large period of time allows me to make some conclusions on the shipping service and practices that are consistent and not a matter of bad luck, this happens on a regular basis.

First, about 60% of the successful deliveries have no tracking information uploaded to the system. For someone selling on ebay not having the tracking information uploaded is very bad because I never know when a complaint is legit or not. And this becomes a paradise for scammers who will have the “right” to fill a dispute and ebay will side with him because there is no online proof of delivery.

Secondly, I started shipping with insurance to protect me from losing money on high value parcels. The insurance has a requirement; it only works with “personal delivery” option.

Personal delivery means that the only person who can receive the item is the one with the name in the envelope, and needs to show id. There is an extra paper form attached to the envelope to collect the signature and state the number of the id document shown. This form is then returned to sender for delivery confirmation (this has legal value).

Do you believe that in around 15 deliveries I have always received the form in blank? No signature, no id. This must have been treated as regular mail, unbelievable and unacceptable! After the first blank forms returned I even start adding a note on the envelope: “Personal delivery only! Signature and id number required”

Had no improvement effect…

Remember these are no bad luck or one shot situations. I'm talking about consistent, standard performance.

Royal Mail do not deliver to individuals we deliver to the address on the envelope

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Personal delivery means that the only person who can receive the item is the one with the name in the envelope, and needs to show id. There is an extra paper form attached to the envelope to collect the signature and state the number of the id document shown. This form is then returned to sender for delivery confirmation (this has legal value).

(this has legal value) - only in your country of residence unfortunately. We operate under various UK Postal Acts which are also law and Royal Mail do not offer a "Personal Delivery" service so their is no requirement for it to be done.

[POSTMAN]

I would guess from your IP that you are from Portugal,for some reason we get a lot of hits from over there and i get a lot of query emails.

I think it's obvious that postal operators around the world are not in tune with each other and the service each operator supplies.
As already stated we do not do a personal delivery service like what you have paid for,and the saying over here is you've been 'had' by the extra cost.
You have paid extra for something that does not exist over here.In fairness now you know so you should be able to save yourself some money.

The tracking info would sometimes not be updated as a lot of our posties would be unaware that a signature is required,or some lazy ones (they are all over the world) would not be bothered to get the stuff signed for because it's a 'foreign' one and it 'doesn't matter'.It's wrong,but it's life.

The form you mention that you receive back,some of us are aware of them,but a lot aren't but as they are printed in a 'foreign' language that kinda makes them pointless on our side.

I 'personally' would not on a regular basis send a lot of stuff to other countries unless i used a courier like dare i say DHL/UPS ect,they all work for the same company and are fully aware with how their system works,the tracking is very much in sync as well.