Late Delivery Defects - Royal Mail Delays

[bricklanebargains]

Our late delivery defect rate recently gone above 3% which puts our top rated seller status and premium badge listings at risk. We have a Royal Mail business account and ship orders daily Monday to Friday. We also use Evri and Yodel for low value items. At first, I thought the increase in defects could be due to Evri/Yodel but it isn`t. Most of the defects are from Royal Mail Tracked 48 parcels which were manifested and shipped either on the same day or the next day. One parcel collected by the RM driver on the 30th was delivered on the 7th, another one on the 5th so on. I already sent appeals to Ebay stating the reason as the delays were out of control but got rejected. I also just spoke with an Irish chap from Ebay CS who said they can`t remove the defects since they have no way of verifying delivery companies` collection dates. 

I wonder if anyone else is experiencing this problem. What`s worse is we shipped everything with Royal Mail this past week at great extra cost to us only in order to decrease the defect rate but now I realize it may have the opposite effect.      

[therenewalworkshopltd]

It depends on weight/size. 

And will also be tailored to the account, as volume will have a marked difference on pricing.

As far as I'm aware, it's not available without an account, but could be wrong.

Standard pricing is easy enough to access, just go look at the business prices on the RM website.

Just as an aside, there are alternatives to RM.  They still however use RM for the last leg, but they can be cheaper, though generally delivery is longer.

[motoringmagpie]

We are finding Royal Mail 48 increasingly unreliable. It is our go to service. Historically not had many issues but in recent months had a number of delayed items or a couple disappear in the tracking system each month. Not sure how  we will manage if RM go ahead with the idea of  delivering 48 hour mail only 2 or 3 times a week.

[banditfrenzy]

The thing that worries me the most is now that the benchmark standards have been "officially" lowered . . . RM are now going to further reduce their service & continue to fail to meet their targets . . . !

[typo_lee]

Therefore impacting eBay sellers stats. So how will eBay offset this negative royal

Mail service as it will destroy sellers and affect their selling standards. We send everything 2nd class and have noticed a significant increase in late delivery stats presumably as Royal Mail are only delivering on certain days which obviously must create backlogs 

[therenewalworkshopltd]

I'm sorry, but I fail to see an issue here.

Second class has always been 2-3 days.

It's changing to 3 days!

If you are actually being affected by this sort of thing, then you extend your handling time.

Yes, there are issues with mail.  However, as I posted elsewhere, 2nd class is being delivered on time in 92.2% of cases, which means there are only late deliveries of less than 8%.

The change that is being made is to have delivery time of 3 days, which can be no later than 2 further days.

So most of the time the maximum period will be 5 working days.

[banditfrenzy]

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@therenewalworkshopltd wrote:

Yes, there are issues with mail.  However, as I posted elsewhere, 2nd class is being delivered on time in 92.2% of cases, which means there are only late deliveries of less than 8%.

The change that is being made is to have delivery time of 3 days, which can be no later than 2 further days.

So most of the time the maximum period will be 5 working days.

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I find it strange then that a quick analysis of my own  dispatched items indicates late deliveries at a much higher rate. I'm finding that 3-5 days is now common & I'm working towards living with 5-10 days being the new normal.

[therenewalworkshopltd]

Well if you don't believe me, then go look at Ofcom!

There are bound to be some swings and roundabouts on an individual basis, but the overall figures will be correct.  The more you send, the more likely you are going to be hitting those actual rates.

How many letters are you actually sending daily?  If it's only one or two, then it's going to swing a lot.

[typo_lee]

Totally agree. We are seeing a huge uptick in late deliveries compared to this time last year. Same dispatch time, same 2nd class postal service etc etc. I couldn't give a damn what the Ofcom stats say I believe in what I see in front of my eyes in my ebay dashboard! Yes I could extend my handling time but by how much? Its just pure and simple guess work plus it means less sales and as its such a bad economic time why should we purposely damage our business for shoddy delivery by royal mail.

[therenewalworkshopltd]

If you are only sending by second class (ie untracked) letter mail, then the only stat that is making a difference, is what the customers are reporting.
Ebay cannot log untracked mail.

How can you blame eBay for that?

You are the person who is responsible for getting your orders delivered on time.  Nobody else.

So you are the one who has to do something about it.  It is pointless blaming RM or Ebay.

You have made the decision to use both of those services and nobody else.

[banditfrenzy]

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@typo_lee wrote:

Totally agree. We are seeing a huge uptick in late deliveries compared to this time last year. Same dispatch time, same 2nd class postal service etc etc. I couldn't give a damn what the Ofcom stats say I believe in what I see in front of my eyes in my ebay dashboard! Yes I could extend my handling time but by how much? Its just pure and simple guess work plus it means less sales and as its such a bad economic time why should we purposely damage our business for shoddy delivery by royal mail.

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I went the route of extending handling time & primary delivery method is set to other courier 3-5 days. This has almost stopped my INR's but I estimate my "real world" ebay sales are down 35%-40%.

99% of what I send is 2nd class letter & large letter & I'm sending 150-200 items per week. I tried an RM business account for access to RM48 but gave up due to being assigned to a totally incompetent account handler . . . I enjoy a very high rate of repeat business (off ebay sales) & most of these regulars accept that we now have a 3rd rate postal system & have resigned themselve's to be patient or pay a premium to bump up to tracked. 

I'm lucky that I can work from home in a beautiful semi-rural village. The villagers all know that we have "enjoyed" standard post being delivered only 2-3 days per week for at least 12mths 'cos the postie foot soldier parks his van in the local pub car park Tue, Wed & Fri when he's walking the round but drives to each address on the days when it's just for parcels . . .

[hugothecockapoo]

This started 3 weeks ago in Teesside and Cleveland. Post lady informed me do not bother buying first class as ALL letters are at the back of the queue.

I hope eBay will adjust delivery dates or will they keep up the lie to buyers with false estimates of delivery. Grr

[typo_lee]

Firstly I am not blaming ebay for anything I am more inclined to blame royal mails shoddy postal service. I have ebay customers telling me they are 'used' to royal mails late deliveries etc. I know ebay cannot log untracked mail.

Yes you are right, we the seller are responsible for getting the item to the buyer on time. We the seller are responsible for choosing the service we use to get the items to the customer. The whole point of the comments above from various buyers is that there NEVER WAS an issue with royal mail 2nd class post a couple of years ago. Sellers like myself cannot afford to pay out for tracked post when that in itself costs more than the item we are selling. No one will buy off us. Royal mails 2nd class service used to be bob on. No late defects. No INRs. There has been a change at royal mail and no one knows what is going on. How can you change your handling time to whatever when royal mail are delivering so randomly? We are paying for a service that states delivery in 2-3 days and yet they are clearly not being delivered within that time frame. All our post is letters so who else do we use?

[therenewalworkshopltd]

You have been blaming both Ebay and RM.  See the other thread where you have a deferral put on your payments.

As to how to respond to it, it's simple, you extend your handling time.

I send a fair few letters myself on a different account, and though I have the occasional one with late delivery or going amiss, it's not that pronounced a problem. 

I don't believe for a minute that the vast majority of your mail has issues.  Some, yes.  But the facts don't bear that out, unless you have been extremely unlucky.

So if you don't do that, you have put up with it or change the way you are delivering to customers.

There are cheaper ways of doing it, by companies using RM only for the last leg of delivery.

Or the other way to look at it, is if the only service you can use is RM, how are your competitors beating you,  if there are no other ways of doing things?  

And just for the record, this thread was about tracked services.  Not standard letters.

[typo_lee]

I never said competitors are beating us? They send 2nd class. They very well may have the same issues. I don't know. I noticed their est delivery times are extended just like ours. 

Funnily enough I've just had a customer ebay message me saying they waited a few extra days for their delivery from as their post is terrible. I rest my case. 

[therenewalworkshopltd]

Ok, you win, there is nothing you can do now.

[bricklanebargains]

I spoke with 3 different RM collection drivers since my original post and they all said pretty much the same thing. Apparently RM distribution centre in Medway where most of the mail collected from Kent goes to is seriously understaffed which leads to parcels remain unprocessed for days. Employees are leaving due to low pay/working conditions and not replaced by new ones.

As for the advice to post in time, change couriers, etc. Thanks but I`ve doing this a long time and didn`t get to 99.9% feedback over tens of thousands of items sold by being lazy.     

[elecompuk]

My late deliveries went from doubled up to 4.5% almost overnight. I lost the top seller rating because of it and even though every package goes out on time it won’t go down and I’m in month 2 of this. I don’t expect EBay to fix it until they get overwhelmed with complaints. In the meantime I’ve stopped using EBay delivery service and bought a load of stamps wholesale at a small discount. It takes slightly longer but I’ve quickly developed a system which improves daily. I’m hoping that by removing the late delivery strikes from Royal Mails hands will solve this. Assuming Royal Mail is perfect and their word is law is the stupidest thing I’ve heard.