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?

[maiseyvandermousen]

i have worked for royal mail for 4 years and to be honest parcels don't "go missing" they either go to the address on the front or get returned to the seller (if the address is on the back) i have just had this happen to me now and i kind of new it was coming as they bidded quite high, the thing is there are so many dishonest buyers out there who know they can get items for free and ebay are all but encouraging this by giving every claim their money back, they get their item for free so who cares how high they bid. this is exactly what is wrong with ebay, encouraging theft!

[colinsfoto]

Maisey, tell that to the postie who put my Special Delivery Saturday Guaranteed inside the buyer's wheely bin and signed for it himself! But for some fast exchanges of messages between me and the buyer, it would have been off to the tip on the Monday morning.

How do I know that is what happened? Well, the postie actually phoned me to tell me how helpful he had been after I complained to the DO on the buyer's behalf.

My OH has worked for RM for over 20 years and can tell plenty of horror stories like that :_|

[maiseyvandermousen]

my names not maisey!!

[colinsfoto]

I was simply quoting the first part of your eBay id to make it clear who my post was responding to.

[sijoaccessories]

There seem to be a couple of common facts here (after trying to summarise the posts in this forum):

1. Royal Mail service varies 'seasonally', e.g. we had a lot of INRs during (and up to a month later) the olympics/paralympics. Since then (touching wood!) we have 'returned to a negligible amount' of INRs.

2. As far as dishonesty - It seems to depend on how 'attractive' your item is for someone to bother to be fraudulent. For example, when we sold hundreds of wooden bracelets (£1 items) in the summer, I don't think a fraudster wants to waste their time getting an extra one of these, as they are low value. HOWEVER it took us THREE attempts to sell a samsung galaxy III phone as we had to item not paid, and with that lots of scam emails (offer to buy offline, even some PayPal phishing that made it look like someone had bought and paid for it!!). In the middle price range, someone above mentioned lots of cosmetic products getting INR. So there seems to be a price/attraction versus fraud relationship going on.

Problem is, it's more likely the worst case times of point 1 (i.e. xmas, huge national events) that you would have more attractive items listed!! So it seems unavoidable!! We are not really going to remove our valuable items during peak times, that would be crazy! lol

Tough one to crack really.

And then of course, selling low value items (under £10 for example) means we cannot charge signed delivery price. We offer second class standard, but also offer Next Day signed - and very rarely will someone pay the extra, even though the listing text tries to promote the next day delivery.

Simon

[smurf0029]

November the 19th was a bad day for us, 7 of our items that days have gone missing, whilst most months we average about 6 INR across all platforms we had 15 in November and have 2 this month already, I think RM just not geared up for increas in xmas post, the products we sell dont tend to lean toward the dishonest buyer (although I am sure a few are)

The interesting thing is over the 5 years been running business I have only had a handful of 'lost' orders come back to me, so the thoery they either go to customer or back to me seems a little flawed, that includes those sent signed for.

[n_e_fing2011]

Huh?!?! My post has been removed?

[coronita_111]

I have recently started selling on eBay, trying to clear out my wardrobe and get some cash back on the things I impulsively bought but never used. So far every item I sold has got to the hand of the buyer safely except one purchase where the item sold was the most expensive one among all my things for sale, which was sold for £165.

I firstly listed it as buy it now for £200 or best offer and finally sold for £165. The buyer left a positive feedback even before the item was sent, saying that it was a great price. I sent it out two weeks ago by 1st class standard where the actual postage exceeded what I charged the buyer. Since it had been nearly two weeks and I hadn't  heard a thing from the buyer I thought everything was okay. But yesterday I received a message from the buyer saying item hasn't been delivered. Then I realized how stupid I was to not have sent it recorded. Although there is no guarantee that nothing would ever go wrong with recorded parcels, at least I would be able to check out its whereabouts online and determine whether it has really gone lost or not. I guess as a newbie to selling on eBay, this is just one of the inevitable mistakes many people could make.

I picked up a compensation claim form from the post office and it states a parcel is regarded as missing only after 15 working days from the date it was posted, so I replied to the buyer that I will issue a refund if the parcel does not turn up after the 15 working day period is up. Now I am kinda gutted as I will have to issue a refund which is a rather big amount and I am pretty sure the amount of compensation I can claim back from RM is far from being able to cover the costs.

Meanwhile I couldn't help but am a bit skeptical. After all, all my other items haven been delivered safely and the first one 'missing' is something this expensive!

Is there any other solution to solve this? Anyone with experience please help!

[colinsfoto]

Well, recorded isn't tracked, it is just thrown in the bag with standard mail. If you are lucky it get picked out at final sort, but maybe a  third don't get a sig or delivery recorded online anyway.

With hindsight, Special Delivery, which is a tracked secure service,  would have been a better option, but that's water under the bridge.

[coronita_111]

Is there anyway I can determine whether the buyer is being dishonest or not? In the messages he sent to me, he seemed firmly positive that the parcel has gone lost. I said I will refund him when 15 working day period is up and from then I will try to claim some compensation from RM, he seemed very grateful for me agreeing to refund and said that he would be happy to assist in the compensation claiming process. I don't want to perceive my buyers are fraudulent but this is a big amount.

[authenticdesignermenswear]

In short there is no way you can prove your buyer is being dishonest unless they actually admit it, and that is highly unlikely to say the least. I had a similar situation recently and spoke to the Police about it who advised that unless I could give them absolute proof the item had been delivered, they would not do anything. Royal Mail are very very unlikely to be able to offer any help either as they handle so many items that they can not possibly trace a particular item.  As far as compensation from Royal Mail goes, you will not get fully reimbursed as the service you used only offers compensation up to £46.00.  This is the same amount you could have got if you had used recorded delivery. As has previously been mentioned in this thread Recorded delivery is a very hit and miss thing as a lot of the time the items are not signed for anyway. The only way to be (almost) sure of an item being delivered is to use "Special Delivery" which can offer increased compensation values and is kept separate from regular mail. You could also consider using a courier service, I have used one called myhermes who offer a similar service to Royal mail special delivery but at a much cheaper price.

[coronita_111]

So in your recent event what did you do? I know that the chance of getting my money back is little, so am I supposed to just issue the refund and claim some limited compensation from Royal Mail? Will the fact that I sent out the item without tracking set me back from getting compensated?

[colinsfoto]

No.

[oakwood-collectables]

most of them are lying, they know you don't have a leg to stand on if you dont send it with a tracking number. the problem is nobody wants to pay the extra postage to send it tracked.

[oakwood-collectables]

Nobody will buy with the excess cost for special delivery thats the problem

[click4fashions]

Four 'I have not received my item yet' messages today alone!

[sijoaccessories]

Hmmm, I am thinking that busy periods are definately the fault of the Royal Mail, and losses in between are 'for freebies'. But then of course there could also be freebie attempts at busy times too! Who knows!!!! Will we ever??

Anyway, wanted to share a reply I posted for a missing item today, if you could share your feedback on this that would be great. Only time will tell if this is useful! Obviously politeness and professional communication at all times are our priority, so please tell me what you think of this - Any pointers or suggested modifications would be very welcome:

"Hi , your item should only have taken 3 to 5 working days and it was despatched the same day by us, HOWEVER the start of this week is where the most online purchases occur for the christmas period, so delays will ALWAYS happen at this time of the year. The Post Office will not allow me to submit a missing item investigation claim until after TEN working days.

So in short, if we give this until to see if it has arrived by then, hopefully you will see it before this time.

Please let me know if it does arrive in the meantime, otherwise please let me know on the

Many Thanks, ..."

Simon

[lesantiquesuk]

3 items lost in the post this year, none returned to me (my address placed very clear), no refund from RM, no even a "sorry to hear that etc" Who to blame ? Me (the seller) Who to lose money? Me (the seller) :_|

[lesantiquesuk]

Totally agree! And what's the advantage  to send the item recorded if you have to refund it anyway? When RM says "we have customer's signature" and customer says "it's not true" and you have to refund it anyway....You ALWAYS HAVE TO REFUND IT. And customers know that. Easy peasyB-)

[sumnites]

Someone once said to send the buyer the proof of posting and get the buyer to claim for no receipt/money back.  I am of the opinion that doesn't work and against some ebay/paypal small print?