French postal charges.

[ianp]

This may be old ground for some, but I am amazed at the extortionate charges some French eBay sellers try to impose on foreign buyers. I am interested in an old O gauge clockwork autorail. The seller wants to charge £19 (yes, nineteen pounds) for p&p. That is literally twice the amount another French seller is charging for p&p to the UK for a similar item. What gives?

[Andy Hayter]

Two thoughts

 

Is the sale through Ebay's Global Shipping Plan?  They just fleeced me about the same for delivering 3 sets of 3D printed  00 chimney pots from the UK to France.

 

La Poste encourage people to use one of their standard sized boxes (goes down the sorting lines easily) and often give the impression that there is no option.   These are sold at a very nice premium for nice La Poste that is.

 

Guessing at the weight however, this looks like standard package postage:

 

Poids jusqu’à…Tarifs Colissimo Vers zone OM 1 (overseas postage rates) from La Poste's website

500 g  12,65 

1 kg    20,00 

2 kg   27,25

 

 

[John M Upton]

Pretty much all postage larger than a standard letter into/out of the UK is now extortionate, mainly thanks to things like ebay's global shipping program and in general international postal charges being hiked up to cover the costs of all those cheap Chinese imports who manage to get local postal services to deliver it without contributing anything to the actual cost of the service.

 

Try getting stuff from the US!!  Postage is often more than the item now.

 

This is the reason (other than the infamous B word) that a huge amount of overseas model rail sales and trading has all but ceased with many sellers simply deciding that the extra hassle, cost and red tape means it simply isn't worth it.

Edited March 12 by John M Upton

[ianp]

8 hours ago, Andy Hayter said:

Two thoughts

 

Is the sale through Ebay's Global Shipping Plan?  They just fleeced me about the same for delivering 3 sets of 3D printed  00 chimney pots from the UK to France.

 

La Poste encourage people to use one of their standard sized boxes (goes down the sorting lines easily) and often give the impression that there is no option.   These are sold at a very nice premium for nice La Poste that is.

 

Guessing at the weight however, this looks like standard package postage:

 

Poids jusqu’à…Tarifs Colissimo Vers zone OM 1 (overseas postage rates) from La Poste's website

500 g  12,65 

1 kg    20,00 

2 kg   27,25

 

 

You may be right. But when I asked the seller to offer a cheaper postal service he didn't really engage. Oh well, it seems unlikely to sell at its quoted price.

[Sjcm]

I'd say it's almost certainly GSP. I stopped offering to sell overseas just before Brexit temporarily on a wait and see basis, but some hardy souls embraced the challenge and went through all the rules. Unfortunately the horror stories coming back from European customs just being deliberately obstructive made that permanent. - France was particularly bad. I don't know what it was like with goods coming in, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was some tit for tat. It's highly likely it's settled down now, but the damage had been done and GSP stepped in. The advantage is customs won't mess around with ebay and if they do it's their responsibility. The downside is no-one overseas will pay the postage😂. A shame really because I didn't mind doing it even with the extra risk.

Edited March 12 by Sjcm

[Andy Hayter]

29 minutes ago, ianp said:

You may be right. But when I asked the seller to offer a cheaper postal service he didn't really engage. Oh well, it seems unlikely to sell at its quoted price.

 

 

France is a much bigger country than the UK and consequently an alternative to La Poste may well be many kilometres away, whereas even small villages tend to have a post office counter.  My own village of 300 souls has a poste office but I have a round trip of 22km to deliver to a UPS drop off point.  So that is €3,50 or so petrol cost to counteract any savings in the actual postage cost.

[ianp]

6 minutes ago, Andy Hayter said:

 

 

France is a much bigger country than the UK and consequently an alternative to La Poste may well be many kilometres away, whereas even small villages tend to have a post office counter.  My own village of 300 souls has a poste office but I have a round trip of 22km to deliver to a UPS drop off point.  So that is €3,50 or so petrol cost to counteract any savings in the actual postage cost.

Good point.

[Crosland]

To send a moderately heavy small parcel from the UK is well into the teens of £s when you add tracking and, maybe, insurance. The £19 may be high, but it's not a total rip-off, depending on the size and weight of the parcel.

[Michael Hodgson]

2 hours ago, John M Upton said:

 

Try getting stuff from the US!!  Postage is often more than the item now.

 

It always was.  The US isn't in the EU, and prior to Brexit at least the postal system recognised that travel within Europe was a lot simpler than across the Atlantic so postal charges within the EU were a lot cheaper.  But although we've dug a tunnel to Europe we have told those on the continent that we are an offshore island once again.

 

1 hour ago, Andy Hayter said:

 

 

France is a much bigger country than the UK and consequently an alternative to La Poste may well be many kilometres away, whereas even small villages tend to have a post office counter. 

 

British villages used to have post office counters too.  But we locked up the little old ladies who ran them on Trumped-up fraud charges and closed the main post office in the towns.  No wonder we don't need TPOs and more than one delivery a day.

[Andy Hayter]

Yes I was going to make the point that large swathes of France are like the remoter parts of Northern England or much of Scotland.   We are very lucky that local postal facilities remain in what would be totally uneconomic places in the UK.  This is thanks to local subventions to keep such establishments going and is one reason why our taxes are a bit higher here.  I have no objection.