Royal Mail have stopped free collections from home.

[vintagechinashop]

I haven’t been doing my postage today for items sold over the weekend and notice that Royal Mail have very sneakily introduced a charge of 30p per parcel for a home collection. Has anyone else noticed this. I must have had my head under a rock for a while because I’m sure I never saw this publicised 

oh well my buyers will have to take some of this now because my nearest drop off is 10 mile away so the cost of fuel and postage will probably still make the 30p viable. Especially with the rate of sales at the moment 

[therenewalworkshopltd]

When you ask about an account, you work on what your predicted volume is, not what it actually is.

If nothing else, even if you don't hit that volume, you have the account for a minimum of a year in which time, you should be able to improve things.

As to the free collections, then fine, your postie picks up yours, that does not necessarily mean that is the works over the entire country and it also doesn't mean that a special trip isn't made.  It also does not equate to the same thing, for those who live in rural areas.

The fact of the matter is, that a little common sense applied, can see that the cost is more than 30p on average, to collect a parcel.  Never mind that it is a personal service and not a business service which you should not actually be using!
If you get a collection as a business, you PAY for the privilege.   Which will cost you £1100 per year!  Or a one off collection, will be charged at £17.92.  And your complaining about a 30p charge?

https://www.royalmail.com/business/parcels/collections

But again, you don't have to pay that, you can use the various drop offs as I already mentioned and get a receipt!

[darth_baggins]

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@therenewalworkshopltd wrote:

However, if you are sending more than 20 parcels a week, you should be using a business account anyway and you will get your free collections along with free labels etc.

You only get free collections if you spend more than £20k a year, otherwise it's £1100 a year + VAT for a weekday collection.

[therenewalworkshopltd]

Nope, sorry but your wrong.

The 20k per year only applies if your talking about standard services.

If you are using RM tracked, then it's 20 parcels per week.

Ask anyone who holds an account and they will be able to tell you this.

[darth_baggins]

Maybe I missed the context but you didn't mention you were talking about RM Tracked.

[therenewalworkshopltd]

That would beg the question, why would you bother using a business account, for standard 1st & 2nd class services?  The prices are the same and are zero vat if vat registered.

So the only real advantage to using it, is just that its in one place.

Aside from which, I wasn't specifically talking about tracked services, just the fact that if you want free collections, you qualify for only 20 parcels per week.

And if your sending parcels, why on earth would you be sending 1st/2nd class, when it will be cheaper to use the tracked service with an account?

[comrie-antique-books]

I assume Ebay or companies like parcel2go will not charge the extra 30p as it's done through there business accounts? Moreover they send more than 20,000 parcels so get the free postage option. I've always used click & drop and never brought postage on Ebay, so I doubt it's going to go smoothly.

Does anybody know whether Ebay postage printouts still use the standard Royal Mail S19 160 x 105mm format? I assume they would, as I've got a couple of 1,000 of them.

After 4 years of selling on Ebay prices have remained the same, while postage and fees have continued to go up. I wonder how much longer small sellers will be able to continue selling online for. Although it's only 30p that still £100 more in fees per year adding to the £2000 I already spend with the Royal Mail.  

[blackpoodleretro]

Just made the same unwelcome discovery as you. My circumstances are similar to yours as I live in a rural location and sell vintage and antique ceramics and glass for whcih RM provide a more reliable service than Evri. Plus I am disabled and work from home so lugging parcels to and from the car is not very practicable. It isn't really an issue with the higher values where I can easily pass on the cost but I also sell a lot of very cheap items that I don't make a profit on and just want to see rehomed. With the buyer protection fee, not being able to recoup packaging costs with postage due to Simple Delivery and now this makes the cheaper items completely unsustainable. I really didn't mind selling an old bit of vintage kitsch for 99p and making virtually nothing on it other than the satisfaction it would be loved and may be survive for future generations to enjoy, however, I am just going to have to consign such items to the charity shop as I can't afford to effectively pay people to take them off my hands. I appreciate RM is a business not a charity but having just got back from holiday I have 17 items to post which is a total of £5.10.  You would think they would at least provide a reduced rate for multiple items collected at the same time. 

[technthread]

I read somewhere that if you book one collection, the postie will take more on a ‘best endeavour basis’. I don’t have time to find that on RM’s site today, but it sounds about right to me. 

[therenewalworkshopltd]

If you book a single one, then they likely will pick up another.

But if it's something that is done on a regular basis to avoid paying the fees, then it's very likely that they will stop the service for you, or insist that you pay for it.

Is there a limit to the number of parcels I can have collected?

 
Yes, there is a limit to the number of items you can have collected with Parcel Collect. The maximum permitted items is 25, however, we recommend if you are sending more than 20 parcels a week, please speak with us about a Business account.

What does ‘best endeavours’ mean?

 
Our posties will do their best to collect all your extra items, but this cannot be guaranteed as they may not have the capacity to do so.

Are the collections free?

 
No, there is a 30p charge per item booked for collection.

See:  https://www.royalmail.com/collection

[classy-collectables]

I recently bought my RM Tracked 48 postage through ebay after 8.30pm and was surprised to see their collection day was not next day but the day after that. However, once you have the collection confirmation email from RM you can go into the RM web-site to amend it with their confirmation number and that's what I did. It was easy to amend and change the day to the next day and it remained free.

I've bought postage directly from RM online after 10pm in the past and my collections have always been selectable for next day, so if buying my RM postage through ebay gets me a free collection and amending the ebay collection day with RM works then that's what I will do.

[blackpoodleretro]

How recent is recent because I just tried that and it didn’t work.

Sent from my iPhone

[crg_music]

I mean anyone would think there was no competition in the small-medium parcel area with the way Royal Mail up the prices and take away something so many got used to all within the space of a month. Evri, Yodel and Inpost must be rubbing their hands.

I will be curious to see what sort of affect this will have on profits. I mean yes it costs more than 30p to collect from some addresses but it doesnt for most. Assuming the parcels are labeled up my postman has scanned them and walked away roughly 5 seconds after handing me my days post.  If you are walking to the post office to pay £3.45 you might as well go to an inpost locker and pay £2.69. Its a day or 2 slower but good service.

I would have no issues with them charging the 30p for the bring my label service but as a blanket price its too much imo and in 2025 is a regressive step that will 100% cost them more than it saves.

[blackpoodleretro]

Very well put. I couldn’t agree more.

Sent from my iPhone

[therenewalworkshopltd]

You know that your not being very fair to RM with this.

Firstly, your comparing services that are different.  ie. A RM collection, compared to an Inpost drop off!

What you should be comparing, is a collect versus a drop off.

So a RM Tracked 48 costs £3.45 + 30p if you book it via their website.

For comparison a 1kg parcel send via Evri with a drop off will cost £2.62

But if you get it collected it will cost an extra £3.16 making it a total of £5.78 (via their website)

All of the couriers are similar in this regard, so I really don't understand all of the complaints, for having to pay an extra 30p!

And just for comparison, a quote via Parcelmonkey for a 1kg standard parcel.

Cheapest drop off is £4.91 (locker to door) with Inpost.

Cheapest collection is £6.48 with Evri.

So, your comments about the competition and them ruining it, are actually quite out of touch.

Yes, I'm sure that there are cheaper out there, but that is not the point of what I've just done.

[crg_music]

I'm sure Royal Mail are big boys(or otherwise) and can listen to some constructive criticism. I'm certainly not anti but my postman even said yesterday they are concerned about job losses because of the reduction in collections and Royal Mail lockers.

My argument though was that people will just not pay the 30p and instead drop off the parcels and this is where competition will become a thing. If its nearly a quid cheaper to drop a parcel off with Yodel which is closer than the post office or even post box I might just do that especially on less breakable items where if it was free to collect and I was having other parcels sent at the same time its convenient to do all at the same time even if slightly more expensive on 1 parcel.

I feel an awful lot of people took advantage of the Royal Mail collections because it was there and had been there for so long that people had assumed it was permanent and made it part of their system. 

I personally dont think 30p to get your post collected is bad especially for tracked parcels where a scan is needed and with the labels printed but on £1.55 large letters its a 20% increase so that is likely affecting sub £10 items so people just wont pay 30p. It was less than a quid I think in 2019 for the equivalent large letter. There isn't really another option for under 250g so expect to see a load more in the letterboxes + moany post office staff.

Inpost if you book direct is £2.69 locker to door through the app for up to 15kg and the parcel is under 8cm high, goes up a bit for larger boxes so that even blows most medium parcels out of the way also where cost is concerned.

Either way its still free through Ebay for tracked hopefully permanently and ebay will take that as a win which we get to use. The system isn't perfect but works pretty well.