Royal Mail - cheaper than courier

But can I trust them?

[Phil_C]

I'm currently using a well known courier for all my consignments (except Ireland and mainland europe). However, I think I could easily half my costs by using Royal Mail where the average price per parcel will be £1.50 instead of close to £5. However, the courier has been very reliable and they collect from my business daily, whereas on my spend, Royal mail would not do that (I suspect), which would mean a daily trip to the Post Office, plus the additional time for printing labels/stamps etc.

My concern (from reading previous posts) is that I must allow for a % of deliveries to go missing - I find this quite shocking really! Average parcel value is about £80.

Does anyone have any experience of using two services side by side or making the switch one way or the other?

[phidentity]

Stick with courier.

If they are reliable it's worth the price.

Royal Mail are in terrible shape at the moment.

One day they lost a days worth of PO Box mail for me, worth around £500+, my reputation and other aspects were effected too. (I run a mail order business).

Complained countless times, nothing.

Our post comes at 2PM Here now...

I wouldn't trust my business with them, but I have to.

Jon

[Lord Majestic]

Special deliveries are fine and you get nice insurance! They will cost more than £1.50 however. If I were you I'd offer choice to customers so those who want things fast and insured go for special delivery or courier even, the rest get cheaper (could be free from their perspective) delivery.

[chodges84]

Yeah, you'd defiantely want special delivery, because normal post won't compensate for more than £28.. You can buy prepaid bags, or just stick the labels on the. Probably a bit more time consuming though.

I use them, and they are ok, but things definately go astray.

[JonR28]

Wow, for once I'm glad I live in the states where $3.85 priority has full tracking and reaches anywhere in the country in under 3 days... and they've never lost a package even when we ship to UK and other places in europe.

[trillianjedi]

Royal Mail are in terrible shape at the moment.

A national UK paper (The Guardian) reported about 6 months ago that Royal Mail had to own up to losing *a lot* (can't remember the figure but it made me spill my coffee) of letters each week. On average 1 letter a week of those is mine.

I only use them when I absolutely have to, and when the contents are of no value and easily replaced (i.e. letters).

Royal Mail Special Delivery and Recorded Delivery are very good services I find though. They've never lost one of those for me.

The only serious "standard" rate competitor to Royal Mail at the moment is Hays DX who now deliver anywhere in mainland UK, at a slightly cheaper rate than Royal Mail. That is currently only for mail that will fit through a letterbox - i.e. no parcels yet. But worth keeping an eye on them.

They have various drop-off points in the UK (in most towns now) in the same way that you'd drop mail into a PO for Royal Mail.

TJ

[BroadLea]

the states where $3.85 priority has full tracking

Well, not exactly...it is Delivery Confirmation that can be obtained on the USPS tracking page; there is no real in-transit tracking as with Express Mail or UPS/FedEx/DHL. And it is free only if you print the Delivery Confirmation barcodes on the label; retail customers at the counter pay $0.45 for D.C.

But I echo the heart of your sentiment: we ship hundreds of packages a month using Priority Mail and only about 1 in 500 ends up undelivered, with another 1 or 2 in 500 receiving some damage. Pretty darn good, considering the price.

Our customers in England routinely get mangled/soaked packages from us, if they get them at all - about 5% end up with some sort of problem.

[Phil_C]

Thanks guys.

I've just noticed on the RM website that they offer a daily collection service for £260 per year - that would certainly take a lot of hassle out of it.

I'm currently thinking that I could send everything out by RM where it's worth less than £100 and weighs less than 1KG (otherwise the price is the same as my courier), then take the risk (and saving) by not insuring it. What sort of % will go missing do you think...?!