Royal Mail OBA Charging for Bogus 'Unreadable Barcode / Label Incorrectly Applied' Surcharges

[theglo-68]

Starting from January 2025 we started seeing charges on our each and every invoice from Royalmail C&D.  Raised this with Royalmail finance several times and been informed machine cannot read my barcodes. 

We replaced our printer and started putting labels on large envelopes for our 2nd Class Large Letter and other posts. 

But issue is not fixed. We still see large amount of charges on each and every invoice. 

Please can  someone share their findings to see if there is a better way to fix this issue.

Came here because we've been having the same issues. I think there's something shady going on. Something is definitely wrong!!😥

[bzmotman]

I did have a few but it has, fingers crossed, died off in the last few months. I didn't change anything but did take a bit more care to make labels didn't have creases or such like.

There is another thread that I can't find at the moment on this subject which must therefore have gone quiet. It might be worth trying to find it as I believe some people were having some success challenging the surcharges.

[darth_baggins]

I'm in a running battle with them over this. One bill had 10 of these bogus charges on it. The response is always nonsense cut and paste about checking your printer settings and other such rubbish.

I started scanning each one before putting it in the sack with the RM app and they all scanned perfectly. One of my complaints, they responded to with images of my items. I put my phone to the screen and scanned their low quality images of my 2D barcodes and each one scanned perfectly.

I asked them if my 10 year old phone can scan them perfectly (second hand images too), how come their hi-tech expensive scanners can't? The answer was that because my labels were 'low quality', then a lower quality camera (my phone) would be better at scanning them than their high quality scanners. You really couldn't make this up.

I seem to have at least one a week still. They must be raking in £10s of £1000s on this and it's 100% a scam.

The only thing I can recommend is to challenge every single one and don't let it go. If enough people complain they might actually realise it's their equipment and not ours.

[padanpcparts]

Royal Mail are terrible when it comes to billing. I've started using E-bays labels INSTEAD of paying RM business direct because of how nefarious they are with billing. All of the extra charges for labels not scanning, wrong weights, wrong size, wrong service...as a company they are scammers of the highest order...I guess that should be obvious by now judging by recent scandals. Note: I have a RM plastic template for parcel and letter sizes, given to me by the owner of my Local Post Office so for them to charge me for incorrectly sized items really gets on my nerves.  

One thing to note...Are you using Adobe Acrobat for print outs? If you are, delete it and use something else, Adobe creates unreadable Barcodes when printing manifests. GJ Adobe. 

[into-healthsupplements]

Same.

Every week I get one or two of these unreadable barcode charges on my invoice. Literally one or two, out of hundreds of items.

I use a Zebra thermal printer and thermal labels supplied by Royal Mail.

Either all of the labels should be unreadable or none should be. How can >99% be fine and somehow <1% not be?

It's just made up problems, in a small enough quantity that most people won't notice. It's theft, like every other bogus surcharge that sometimes appears.

And there is literally nothing you can do if you do notice.

On another note, I notice they've put prices up again for business sellers, it's twice a year now, and every increase is always well above the rate of inflation. We're just getting rinsed over and over. Rinsed by Royal Mail, rinsed by eBay promoted listings, rinsed by the government.

[direct.gifts]

I had the unreadable barcode issue and every barcode I scanned with my mobile phone was fine. I was getting 10 or more on some invoices.

Royal Mail told me that my barcodes were grainy and I compared them with other companies barcodes and I could see the quality wasn't as good. My printer required me to decrease the speed to increase the print quality. Not had an issue since.

My printer was using the default settings so I just assumed it was fully optimised for printing shipping labels.

It appears Royal Mail cant cope with lower quality barcodes. This may not be your problem but it was mine. 

They are sneaky though the way they charge for these issues, no notification just a line on the invoice which can easily be missed. They could also be more helpful in resolving but maybe they like the extra revenue it generates