Did a search but didn;t find this – Sending packets by Royal Mail is about to become more complicated, especially if you need insurance. Remember that it’s *YOUR* responsibility as sender to make sure you have adequate insurance – even if your ebay / forum buyer “doesn’t pay for insurance”, if it doesn’t reach them, it’s you who has to refund them

http://www.royalmail.com/parcels-made-easy

Always been the case that the sender is responsible for the item arriving, and insuring against or claiming for any loss if it doesn’t. Sellers giving buyers the choice of postage which doesn’t adequately cover the item’s value are idiots.

What has changed is that RM are dropping the amount of compensation on standard services – used to be linked to the price of a stamp, now a flat (and lower) rate.

Sellers giving buyers the choice of postage which doesn’t adequately cover the item’s value are idiots sensible

Insurance of any kind is never value for money as the insurer always needs to make a profit.

When you sell something Pay for the cheaper postage option and put the money you save each time aside to cover the loss of parcels if this occurs. You will find that the pot is never empty and can be used for buying shiny new bits at the end of every year.

The reason this works is peoples idea of risk is usually hyper inflated – (I’ve had 1 parcel disappear in 130 ebay transactions.) This is also the reason insurance companies earn squillions. Insurance is basically gambling – but with much worse odds than you get at the casino.

I use this policy for everything I can’t afford to replace – even my expensive bikes. The money I have saved on expensive bike insurance over 10 years is massive – I have used this money to pay for high security ground anchors/ chains etc. but the excess will easy pay for a new bike.

Sending packets by Royal Mail is about to become more complicated, especially if you need insurance.

Eh? How? The only difference I can see is that you need to take the physical size as well as the weight into consideration now.

Remember that it’s *YOUR* responsibility as sender to make sure you have adequate insurance – even if your ebay / forum buyer “doesn’t pay for insurance”, if it doesn’t reach them, it’s you who has to refund them

That’s always been the case. But then I never send anything of value less than Special Delivery, and I certainly wouldn’t trust Royal Snail with anything over £100 in value.

ndthornton +1

I could have written those words myself (and probably have on other threads!)

Had a look over the new regs, and apart from the info from Royal Mail being useless, as all the important stuff, like the sizing specs was down within the doc, not a the forefront like it should be.

Not a lot of change if you are only sending smallish packages, large ones will be a lot more though. They are still carrying on with 1st and 2nd class which is a shame, as it’s still feels as though they are stuck in the 1800’s not the 21st century.

When you sell something Pay for the cheaper postage option and put the money you save each time aside to cover the loss of parcels if this occurs. You will find that the pot is never empty and can be used for buying shiny new bits at the end of every year.

Maybe if your a trader and can afford to offset the cost of lost items against profits this works. For those people selling off the odd item then offsetting doesn’t work.

Isn’t the advice only insure what you legally have to and what you couldn’t replace.

And when I say replace if I can afford to replace an expensive bike only with a cheap one then the expensive one doesn’t get insured. The house on the other hand does get insured. I’ve never inured anything but houses and cars.
The slight problem with the postal service is that the risk of someone claiming something hasn’t arrived is different to the risk of it actually not arriving.

the risk of someone claiming something hasn’t arrived is different to the risk of it actually not arriving.

They’re both the same risk – combined its still pretty small

Actually I agree with the OP.

Things will cost more to post using recorded delivery.
Bigger parcels will have to go Parcel Force as Standard Parcels will be no more and if they will be charging a lot more then I will be using Parcel Monkey and others when the changes kick in.