Sending Ebay Parcels with Royal Mail

[Crosland]

7 hours ago, Daddyman said:

Well, RM collected today, but I had to book a new collection and will have to spend 30+ mins on the phone to get the original £3.99 back. 

Why did you need to book a new one if it was collected?

 

If the collection fails you can simply reschedule it at no extra cost (I've done this). It's only "no extra cost" whilst collection is free. If/when they start charging for collections you will lose the collection fee for failed collections.

 

If you longer want to post the item you can request a refund online. It takes a few days (again, done this).

 

I recommend creating an account on the RM website and logging when sending. The system remembers who you are (to populate the sender address) and you can easily see your previous transactions.

 

[Daddyman]

12 hours ago, Crosland said:

Why did you need to book a new one if it was collected?

 

If the collection fails you can simply reschedule it at no extra cost (I've done this). It's only "no extra cost" whilst collection is free. If/when they start charging for collections you will lose the collection fee for failed collections.

 

If you longer want to post the item you can request a refund online. It takes a few days (again, done this).

 

I recommend creating an account on the RM website and logging when sending. The system remembers who you are (to populate the sender address) and you can easily see your previous transactions.

 

The problem is they had logged it as "collected", and sent me an email, when in fact they hadn't collected it. I've requested the refund online, but suspect their system will be very confused as they're still convinced that they have it - tracking shows it en route!   

[hayfield]

16 hours ago, andyman7 said:

I used to hate having to send parcels in December. Huge queues in the Post Office whilst people who only sent stuff once a year spent 10 minutes discussing postal options whilst my items were ready to go; people filling in customs forms at the counter whilst I'd done mine at home etc. 

The ability to just have my parcels collected or to be able to drop them at the sorting office is a godsend.
I can see the Post Office meets a need - but I am glad I have options to be able to steer clear of it (especially in December)

 

 

I went to the Post office on Monday at our local CooP, my wife had been in the shop earlier and stated I would be in there for hours as there was a large queue. Well there was a large queue and only 2 serving probably 6 others in front of me, thankfully there was no one with lots of parcels or banking large sums. In and out within 10 mins, I have waited very much longer with fewer people in front of me, luck of the draw

[hayfield]

19 hours ago, Chas Levin said:

It's certainly worth selling stuff on Ebay - it's a huge marketplace, in the UK alone, let alone overseas customers - but it does take some work, doesn't it?

i've done it for many years (20, in fact) and overall have made a profit, but I also value the de-cluttering. If I were judging it solely on profit vs. hours, I'd not be such a fan...

 

Chas

 

You are spot on, you can save time listing by being both organized and reusing previous selling templates or saved templates. Also don't be greedy both with prices or numbers of items being sold as packing takes up time. Best of all recycling unwanted items both helps others out and generates funds. Little and often may be better all round

[andyman7]

29 minutes ago, hayfield said:

 

 

I went to the Post office on Monday at our local CooP, my wife had been in the shop earlier and stated I would be in there for hours as there was a large queue. Well there was a large queue and only 2 serving probably 6 others in front of me, thankfully there was no one with lots of parcels or banking large sums. In and out within 10 mins, I have waited very much longer with fewer people in front of me, luck of the draw

I live in London so it's much more a case of 'which' Post Office rather then 'the' Post Office - I became rather adept at working out which ones would likely be a better bet than others although as you say a certain amount of 'luck of the draw' applies. However, there are certain branches round here that would give Bedlam a run for the money seemingly any time of the week, On the occasions where something had to be sent and due to work or whatever I had to use those branches, I generally needed therapy and smelling salts to recover

[maico]

You can also use RM tracked 48 with the postman collects option for free Amazon returns. Easy to miss because you need to scroll down to find it past all the Evri drop off nonsense. You need a printer.

[Daddyman]

For anyone else not getting ebay promotions, this page is useful: https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/team-blog/2020/09/tricks-to-boost-ebay-s--sell-for-p1-max--promos/#inbox 

I tried the first tip, going to "selling" and scrolling down to "promotions" and there was an 80% promotion hiding in there - clearly ebay didn't want me to know about it... 

 

Meanwhile, with two out of the four RM pick-ups I've now arranged, I've had a message saying my parcel has been collected when it hasn't. You then get into a doom loop where they then claim "we've got it" (the imaginary parcel), but tracking shows it sitting in the D.O.  

 

[RFS]

2 hours ago, Daddyman said:

Meanwhile, with two out of the four RM pick-ups I've now arranged, I've had a message saying my parcel has been collected when it hasn't. You then get into a doom loop where they then claim "we've got it" (the imaginary parcel), but tracking shows it sitting in the D.O.  

 

 

Although I've not had this problem, I've had a couple of occasions where the parcel has been collected. an email recived confirming this and then in the evening a message saying they were sorry they were unable to collect. I'm assuming therefore there's some manual action taking place, since the tracking correctly says we've got it. And it was delivered as expected. 

 

Perhaps in your case someone has seen the collection is outstanding, assumed it was an error and therefore manually updated it. 

[Daddyman]

3 hours ago, RFS said:

 

Although I've not had this problem, I've had a couple of occasions where the parcel has been collected. an email recived confirming this and then in the evening a message saying they were sorry they were unable to collect. I'm assuming therefore there's some manual action taking place, since the tracking correctly says we've got it. And it was delivered as expected. 

 

Perhaps in your case someone has seen the collection is outstanding, assumed it was an error and therefore manually updated it. 

I agree that there's something manual going on. Someone is clearly pressing a button saying "collected". I know that when they do come to me, they tend to come at 10am-ish - I actually often see the van in nearby streets, including yesterday when they didn't show up.

Yesterday the fake "collected" email came at 2pm-ish, still within the window they'd offered. But when the email came I knew what was going to happen, and made the 15-mile round trip to the PO. While I was out my neighbour texted to say the normal postman, who doesn't do the collections, had arrived to collect it! The time was a bout 20 mins outside the agreed window, and 50 mins after the "collected" email.

Last time I got the fake "collected" email I waited in case they came; this time I didn't wait and ... sod's law! 

  

Edited December 15, 2023 by Daddyman

[stewartingram]

Our local posies on our delivery round are excellent, no critiscm of them. But sometimes when they do a (sigmed?_ delivery (and they usually hand it over personally) I get an immediate motification, other times I don't get it until the end of the day (not even the end of their round). No matter to me, but I've always assumed it is a human action, dealt with when they update their pad on to the main system.