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£9.10 for a box with 4 tyres in it!!!! Since when???!!! That size always used to be about a fiver. No more "standard parcel" size 🙁
Watch what you sell stuff for!!!
PS if you bought stuff from me yesterday it's now on its way.
It's threads like these that make me happy to work for a (non bike) distribution company with an awesome courier contract. Don't get me wrong I still have to pay, just nowhere near as much as that, for sending anything from bolts to full bikes 🙂
/smug
Tell me about it! I posted a letter yesterday, £1.70 for recorded delivery then they offered me something at £6.70!!! I switched off but FFS its a 20 gram envelope that gets delivered by the same bloke or do they have a separate van with velvet pillows that they gently rest the special post on?????
Agree, the cost of sending a small lightweight parcel recorded is the thick end of £4.
I sent a pair of handlebars today and the box was 'too big', price £11.90!
Not sure if the Post Office are trying to make more money for themselves or for the courier companies.
The lady in my local PO was quite apologetic today.
My box was over the 61cm limit and therefore she had to suggest Parcel Farce.
Have just booked it with Myhermes.com for less than half the price PF wanted to charge.
I think this is just another sound of the death-knell for local POs. Do they really think that people like us who might sell a few bits to keep our hobby going are not going to go somewhere else if we can find it cheaper?
Whoever decided on this business model is a proper idiot.
Look for your nearest shop that does Collect+ or myHermes.
I need to ask my local shop/post office if they are allowed to take a courier contract as well as the PO one. I suspect it might be a conflict of interest. If it's something big and I am going to in all day I use a courier but for smaller items I will use the drop off places.
I needed to post a bit of wind turbine (only a little bit) but it was 1m long in a cardboard tube. Royal Mail wanted £12 for it. Drop off place was £3 signed for.
It has to be said that they've really jumped the shark on this one. I live round the corner from apost office and just down the road from a delivery office/collections counter but I get the feeling i won't be visiting either of them again soon
Three quid to send a 28 gram envelope containing a exposure flare, it has to fit through the guide "easily" - I didn't think it was that hard. Had it fitted would have been about 70p
posted a small envelope with a headset inside last week to France for £3.50 and took 3 days to arrive .
It's Collect+ local drop-off for me from now on!
So, the slots are 5mm, 2.5cm and 8cm (and 46cm). But what about interference? We need to know what the clearances need to be. Vernier calipers at the ready! Maybe there's a market for Teflon coated brown parcel wrapping paper!
I looked at the cost of postage for magazines. I've got a big box of surf mags that need to go. Thought about putting them on the evilBay. Works out at £3.60 for 2nd class for each mag. Even if someone was prepared to pay a fiver including postage it would be an exercise in giving the money to fees and postage.
just sending off my claim for £12.70 for a 6 monthly dental NHS checkup to my health insurance company that I pay £7.80 a month to. And I'm supposed to supply a stamp!?
Def worth packaging stuff with the sizing thresholds in mind - I saved £2.60 re-packaging a £10 ebay item the other day.
Are myhermes etc competitive on smaller items?
Collect + is awesome and the shop by me is closer than the Post Office and doesn't have a queue of coffin dodgers or malingerers at it.
Yup, cheaper using parcelmonkey or simillar for a lot of items now. Which is a shame really in all honesty. I like trying to support the local community and like to use the post office as it's only one of 2 shops in my village. So went in there to post something "£12.30 sir"... WTF thinks me.... It was £7 with a courier company. When the item sale/value is only £30, the extra Fiver makes the difference between profit and loss.
I think it's high time E-bay bought the post office. It would make total sense.
My old boss was always using the phrase "turkeys don't vote for christmas". I don't know either way if that's true but it certainly looks like there's a part of the post office that keen on it's own demise. I'm guessing they're effectively sacking customers, bumping the price up for those without the knowledge/imagination to look elsewhere and saying good riddance to the rest of us. There'll always be some people who'll use them I guess but until they get a grip I doubt it'll be me.
Maybe the mail service was never profitable and had to be subsidized to a large extent and now they're just trying to get back to a profit. Can't see how they can be double the cost of the new players though . . . .
Yup, no more PO for me, collect + booking made today will drop off when out walking dog. PO is a car journey away.
Royal Mail has become hopelessly uncompetitive due to that fact that the regulator forced them to offer ridiculously low mail prices to other operators to deliver items for them. As a result higher prices for everyone else to make up for this loss making business.
Someone just posted something to me from Germany on a priority Signed For Airmail service for less than I could have posted it to someone in the UK using 1st Class recorded post!
That's what you get with these nationalised industries, perhaps it should be privatised ?
😉
I rarely use the P.O. but have to send a package to Sweden today, who else is good to use?
Who are the alternatives apart from the likes of UPS DHL etc?
What's 10 feet long and stinks of piss?
What's 10 feet long and stinks of piss?
A dialysis tube?
Corridor leading to public toilet?
I suspect the answer is "the post office queue on pension day." Which is disgraceful, of course.
Someone suggested myHermes on here a few weeks ago and I've used them twice now - indeed half the price of Royal Mail or ParcelForce.
Yep, found this put a couple of days ago when posting a few items I'd sold. Everything seemed 30-40% than it was previously. Absolutely ridiculous. Other options will be used in future me thinks!
[i]Agree, the cost of sending a small lightweight parcel recorded is the thick end of £4. [/i]
I posted a manual (A5 and about 3/4" thick) yesterday. Recorded 2nd class was £2.50 and recorded first class was £2.70 - so sent it 1st class. Seems reasonable to me.
I've used Pharos parcels. They were one of the first 'multi-carrier' parcel services. I rang them up in the early days and spoke personally to the owner and the chief coder, they seemed rather nice and friendly.
Good thread with useful info!
Just used Collect+ as I needed package to be insured. Ended up costing a third of Royal Mail's pricing. 😯
Fingers crossed all goes smoothly.
Honestly did not realise that RM's pricing would go through the roof but I can no longer support my local Post Office for sending parcels.