Royal Mail.......lost items!!!!!

[dancestationdirect]

Hi, has anyone noticed an increase in UK Royal Mail packages going "missing" recently. In the last 2 days I have had 3 different buyers claiming item has not arrived. One looks genuine as it is Recorded Delivery which has not arrived. The other 2 are fairly low value First Class items and of course I have no way of knowing if  this is genuine or not.

Prior to this (I have "lost" a few international parcels) but only 1 UK parcel last year went astray and never turned up.

Anyone else having problems with this?

[mill_and_foundry_co]

Posted elsewhere but Royal Mail have provided the following email address:

Business.customer.service@royalmail.com

where sellers can send reports of INRs without claiming compensation. A spreadsheet with the name, address, service used and date posted with a covering email to state you are reporting non-delivered parcels to be logged by the security team would be great.

This will help highlight problems within RM's network and whilst it doesn't directly tackle the issue on eBay it's a good start to the right people having a comprehensive list of INR addresses.

Having spoken to a guy who used to work closely with the security team he commented that 4 missing parcels in four months to the same address (a recent customer of mine) is typically too many and whilst they couldn't say my parcel was delivered, the postman was interviewed, the delivery office will be checking the mail to that address and my claim is logged on RM's database.

If you'd like to start making a difference, 1 email every 3 months with all your INRs should only take a few moments and might help improve this situation.

[power-save]

When claims could be made royal mail had the same system in place supposedly tracking problem areas and fixing as they go. They've been doing that for the last 6 years and nothing changes. It never will.

The sad fact is a certain percentage of items will always go missing. Someone I know who worked 30 years for RM told me with letters or large letters 9 times out of ten the sorting machinery will shred them to bits or they are not emptied properly from the sacks and one or two will sit there for days maybe before being found or end up in the wrong part of the country.

I've had sacks delivered here with other peoples mail still in the bottom stamped days before.

Also given the number of royal mail sacks with football size holes in them aswell it's not hard to wonder how many packages fall out or end up in a puddle with the address smudged and unreadable while being transported.

The truth is RM don't care I've even been told by RM customer services "well things are stolen sometimes, it just happens not a lot we can do" They stopped compensation payouts so they can finally turn a profit. They have never disclosed the number of claims they pay out and always blame the falling number of letters as the problem despite the phenomanal growth of internet retail. When they finally annouce a decent profit and I'm sure they will next time around after stopping the claims it will become attractive to buyers and it will be sold and we will all end up paying a lot more for postage.

[mill_and_foundry_co]

They've been doing that for the last 6 years and nothing changes. It never will.

Postal workers helping themselves to post will be fired for starters, my postman said a few have been marched out the door over the years at the local DO.

If RM don't have the figures they can't pick up problem delivery offices.

[gulbinio]

I have sent 213 parcels in May (all signed for delivery)

35 are "still in process"- probably delivered without signature

1 peron claimed for INR so far- 34 potential claims -it is terrifying.

[northamptonparrotcentre]

It is a problem; business sellers on Ebay know some buyers do claim items are lost when they have received them. Anything over £10.00 we generally send Royal Mail recorded; items under we generally don't. You must remember it is a small percentage of individuals that are dishonest.We used to think it was always Royal Mail but we always include a compliment slip with our address on it and to date we have never had anything returned by Royal Mail!

[karmik-koala]

Unfortunately I believe the majority of INR claims are fraudulent, and my reasoning is that on the Lost Mail form, there is a tickbox for 'Ebay' - which to me speaks volumes.

I would also argue that Ebay is complicit in this - some of the after sales e-mails from Ebay practically encourage claims - ie 'not arrived - remember if you paid by Paypal you are covered' type stuff.

Having said that, I rarely get INR claims, I use Paypal postage for anything under about £18 untracked and these get through. When my spider-sense starts tingling, I will often send Recorded Delivery for anything over £20.

I do not claim from Royal Mail for lost parcels if I suspect a false claim, because I don't see why RM should foot the bill funding fraud.

[bingobrewtea]

I woudl say the exact opposite, true fraud INR are probably quite low, with the true issue being parcels/packets not properly packed or labells which fall off and no return address being put on them by the sellers.

Quite a few posters have pointed out that 50-75% of parcels arriving have no return address on them.

I put it at about half my parcels, others higher and if those are the ones getting through, think what might have stopped the others, some royal mail error along with ilegible addresses, non perm ink pens used gets wet address magically dissapears, it does go on.

If you are a good seller labelling properly, putting return address, using recorded when appropriate, how can you judge other sellers who do not do the same as you as mostly fraudulant INR?

You cant simples. This topic has been done to death and will probably go on being so due to current topiic but its easier to blame the customer isnt it and I say again true fraud is probably quite low compared to seller error :^O

[bingobrewtea]

and lets not go into how many sellers perhaps do not send the item out when not got the perfect price or rather than cancel and risk neg they just wait for buyer to claim INR and then they can suspect fraud and then theres intentional fraud from some disriputable sellers who you just got their back up which has left you a target, but to be fair I can after emperiencing still say they are probably in the minority]:)

But I woudl only be guessing there like you.

It is sickening how many sellers auto jump to my buyer is a tea leaf and when looked at closely reading the thread, they have no  foundation to suspect so, the old conspiracy theories......they are all out to get me, haha

It goes on I am sure, but not to extent sellers allege, show your proof.

[sijoaccessories]

Sounds a nightmare - Horrified at discovering this thread and seeing how common this issue is. We have items lost, and not enough time in the day to fill out the lost item forms from Royal Mail - we just send out a replacement and hope for the best!!

Now one of our more expensive items has just gone (still under £10, but it is the sort of item that would NEVER sell if we charged for recorded delivery!!)

What a nightmare. Will there EVER be a solution??

As for setting up a shop (i.e. in a town) as there are the same costs involved in the rent (mentioned earlier in the thread), I am sure there are not going to be the same amount of customers coming into a shop as there are on eBay.

All a bit Catch 22.

I wonder if Amazon gets this problem as frequently? Anyone know if this is the case or not??

Simon

[ukfaceit]

Hi

We sell on Ebay and 2 other outlets. All items are packaged the same day regardless of which site the sale was from, from the same stock of envelopes, the same labels are used etc and are posted at the same time at the same post office.

When we last did a check, our items sold from Ebay go "missing" at a rate of 8 to 1 compared to our other outlet sales. Although this is based on quite a small sample, so is statistically inaccurate, I'm sure you can see my point.

Overall I think its too easy to make an INR claim on Ebay and a small number of dishonest buyers are "probably" taking advantage of this and consequently spoiling it for the honest buyers whose items genuinely haven't arrived which causes mistrust between sellers and buyers, which is good for nobody.

[15minsoffame]

I wonder if Amazon gets this problem as frequently? Anyone know if this is the case or not??

Simon, we sell on Amazon and do you know how many INRs we have had since April?   NONE, ZERO, DIDDLY SQUAT.

We also sell from our own website and again, ZERO number of people complaining about not getting their items.

Yes, here on eBay, we are averaging 4-6 a month!

Now you tell me that isnt a coincidence?

We pack all items pretty much the same way and we print off our own lables and postage so I doubt very much its a case of labels falling off or wrong postage etc being put on!

It seems that INRs are more prevailent on eBay than ANYWHERE else and its frustrating.

Also, we put return address labels on all items and yet NONE have ever been returned to us.  Again, coincidence?

As for buying, Ive been using eBay for over 10 years and I buy a hell of a lot of things and todate I have NEVER had any problems with items arriving.  I buy from abroad also and Im yet to experience any issues.

Perhaps the gods look down on my and look after me but c`mon, INRs on eBay have gotten worse (in my opinion).

[sijoaccessories]

Wow, thanks for that reply - now made me very wary, but also as we approach Top Rated Seller (in the next week or two hopefully) this also puts a question mark on whether we should jump ship to Amazon, etc, or continue to 'put up with it', at an ever increasing cost to our business.

Would be great if eBay had ears! That seems to be the most frequent complaint I am seeing across various forums.

[15minsoffame]

on whether we should jump ship to Amazon, etc, or continue to 'put up with it', at an ever increasing cost to our business.

Whilst we are getting pretty fed up with how eBay is going we, reluctantly, are sticking with it until we are pretty much sure that Amazon and the other platforms are stable in regards to how much we make per month. Since April we have noticed a huge drop in sales on eBay whilst on the other platforms sales are increasing.

So with INRs, fees, DSRs, sales dropping etc - we are close to shutting down our eBay account BUT not just yet.  It wont be long though.

[danielsportssupplies]

Hi Everyone,

We have had 4 INR  claims this week alone ,all our mail is dropped off  in  sealed sacks, l I have got to the stage where I ask the buyer to open a case up in the resolution center after pointing out that all our mail  is checked by the prevention team and we are obliged to pass any INR details to the Rm investigations team and guess what not one of the 4  has opened a case up which if they was genuine they would.

I have had 1 opened case in the last 3 months and in the feed back I put INR resent thank you for your patience and understanding thus to warn other sellers if this happens again.

Cherie

[drinkwareemporium]

We too are having issues , in our third month of opening a new shop and already had two damaged items and five lost items , with one item turning up 10 weeks later that we sent abroad. It seems completely out of order to me , when we first rang the royal mail they told us to stop sending things by Standard Parcel as its ' not a very good service ' !! So we send now all by recorded first class , this does however mean some items will cost more.

We have also take the policy of refunding once rm have refunded which will stop any problems with dodgy claimers as they cant have their money back till we have been refunded.

[harduppensioner]

Hi - many buyers won't wait that long, they'll just open a dispute, escalate it and force repayment that way, which will damage your account.

[colinsfoto]

.. when we first rang the royal mail they told us to stop sending things by Standard Parcel as its ' not a very good service ' !! So we send now all by recorded first class , this does however mean some items will cost more.

Recorded might stop the odd false INR but it is no less likely to get lost than standard parcels. It is not actually tracked and gets thrown in the same bag as standard 1st class.

No one knows where it is in the system until it is (hopefully) picked out at final sort.

It is probably the most overated and least cost effective way of sending non scammer attractive items. SD is a completely different story, but it costs a lot more for that secure service.

[bigmamajules]

I seem to be getting two or three 'Re: I haven't received my item yet' doom and gloom emails every week! And yet, I never seem to receive the items back, even though they have a 'sender' sticker on the front and the invoice details in the package.

It really annoys me as, although I realise items do get lost in the post - but this many??

Like an earlier poster, I tend to leave feedback along the lines of 'Many thanks for your speedy payment. So sorry your item was lost in the post' Just gives the heads up to subsequent sellers

[colinsfoto]

Like an earlier poster, I tend to leave feedback along the lines of 'Many thanks for your speedy payment. So sorry your item was lost in the post' Just gives the heads up to subsequent sellers

It is certainly tempting, but the last time I left a buyer feedback like that, it got removed by eBay and I got a slap.

[foxyfi43]

Hardup said it right - buyers won't wait for their refund because they are learning that even the threat of starting a dispute with the risk to your account means they get their money back fast.

I opened a post about whether it is eBay or Freebay as I believe that eBay are complicit in making the process easy and with their buyer protection messages they must make it so appealling to those that want to defraud their seller - and it is rife now!

Ebay may praise honesty in their blurb about how eBay should be yet they have a system that actually encourages the opposite.

Yes the PO could do better and I am sure there are problems with the mail but why now and why does it seem to be increasing as the months go on - could it really be that there are some buyers who want something for nothing after realising there was a way to do it?