Click & drop prepaid items not being accepted by post offices

[Anonymous]

Just to make you aware that the local post offices have started refusing to take click & drop items as they dont get paid for accepting them even though they show a click & drop sign in the post office, YET THEY DO STILL GET THE WAGE FROM ROYAL MAIL FOR OPRERATING THE POST OFFICE.

Royal mail customer services dont even reply to a formal complaint and an update from me, we only have 1 post office in our town and between our evay and amazon accounts we send about 250-300 parcels a week, so it's going to be Hermes as they are opening more collection shops and places, maybe ebay shoul have some say in the to royal mail as they are offering the click and drop service yet the post office wont accept them. 

[corred]

@Anonymous

Just to confirm, I have been in touch with RM who confirm that non crown post offices receive no payment for click and drop and therefore they cannot be forced to accept the items.......

It is actually not in the interests of these offices to accept them as at least when they scan individual prepaid items over the counter they do receive at least a small transaction payment

[Anonymous]

Received and email and its interesting:-

Thank you for your email.

I am very sorry to hear of the issues you are experiencing posting your items.

The Post Office are contracted to accept mail for Royal Mail. It does not matter what the payment method is, they should accept all mail, whether it be stamps, printed online or business mail.

The only time they should refuse mail is if the price paid is not correct (for example if the weight or size is different to what is entered online and consequently the price is wrong), if the stamp has expired (past the post by date stated on the label) or if the Post Office is full and cannot accept any more mail (this is a rare occurrence).

The only time they will not accept the mail if if it’s being sent out on a tracked 24/48 service.

I am very sorry if they have refused to take your mail if none of these reasons applied, they should not be doing this.

I would recommend you log a complaint regarding the Post Offices in question, you can do this using the form here: http://www.postoffice.co.uk/contact-us-complaint

Please accept my apologies again for the inconvenience caused.

If you have any further questions regarding Click and Drop, please email us at business.customer.service@royalmail.com or you can also contact us by phone on 03456 113 425 from 08:00 – 18.00 Monday to Friday.

[corred]

Not what I was told by them on the phone...I was also told that in some circumstances the issue can be down to a lack of storage space for sacks & that some rely on the small regular postman vans to "empty down" the PO's & these do not always have space for the extra sacks especially where they are required to do this at a number of smaller PO's........so they tell you one thing on the phone & another by email so perhaps even their own Customer Services do not know....although the C&D team you got a reply from should.....

The thing in the message you got which confuses me is the part about pricing & labels etc as C&D are not opened by PO staff.....so they would not know if the correct price has been paid, or if the weight is incorrect, or the stamps have expired !!