Challenge Royal Mail over incorrect weight charges

[susapric-68]

So this week I was my turn to get a fine and admin fee for an incorrect weight item I sent. They claimed it should have been 200g postage and not the 100g postage I put it under. The item was a solo eyeshadow size 2cmx2cmx0.7cm and weight in a small padded envelope at 15g. I challenged the £2.20 extra cost as no way could it get to over 100g when it started as 15g and that Royal Mail are committing fraud by trying to claim that, told them to pick a heavier item next time nearer 100g if they want to get away with scamming. Told them this is not an isolated case as a lot of people are getting these fines now for items they know they sent correctly. Looks like another scandal in the making. Just heard back and they have refunded the £2.20.

Challenge them if you know you sent it correctly

[1902elder]

As a matter of interest, did you buy the postage through Packlink? There are frequent complaints about being falsley charged for extra weight when purchased through them.

[susapric-68]

No I have an online business account. Royal mail informs packlink of the incorrect weight and then packlink charge you more but it looks like a royal mail scam

[j_n_tee]

Hi, Totally agree scandle in the making, and someone needs to dig deeper into this practice. Every now and again i get these surcharges, and have to spend 30mins or so pulling together evidence and challeneging them. Thus far all been over turn and rightly so. Most silliest one was like yours was a 15/10gm item in a DL envelope and they had the cheek to say it was a PARCEL! size.

I did have my letters checked once. They all went through the template my end and got a call saying 4 were oversize! Went to depot show it goes through my template then came the excuses that it needs to be a template like theres! and then that it should go through freely without a pull at the other end! Which my pull was the slightest.

Despite me showing that it goes through there were having none of it, i was submitted a complaint and with their own guidance stating a slight pull was allowed! but got told it's old gudiance (which i stated why is it still up on their tech site!, and there tech team even said a slight pull was allowed) I then asked for the guidance the RM staff work towards when putting it through the template and got told, it's an internal doc and can't show me! So my question was how are us customers meant to knwo what guidance to follow. and the answer it had to be the size stated on website! I did give up on this one as i was going in circles. 

But this whole surcharge thing is not right and not being transparent. I imagine alot of sellers have probably got/are getting stung with wrongly applied surcharges. I for one always challenge as i put my items through templates, weigh each item (noting it on packaging) so confident i did nothing wrong. 

So echo what you said re challenging, if you know it's wrong! they shouldn't be getting away with this, onto top of that adding a green surcharge now, Peak surcharge,  Fuel surcharge and the price hikes.

Rant over 🙂 

[qpsupplies]

I've just had a royal mail surcharge, I been having one every month since they started the surcharge stuff, I know my items, I know my weights, I weigth each package once it's already been sealed so that I can input it into click and drop to print of each label. I'm not stupid I know if I have done it wrong or not as I sell these same products constantly so I can easily check their weight if done wrong, my package is 88g but they are saying it's 120g this time round and even though I told them they are wrong and it's not fair and I can proof it by showing them a video of the order and me putting it on the scales, they still not taking my word for it, their scales are caliberated and therefore can't be wrong, yes they may not be wrong, but their employees can easily make mistakes. So far I have had evey surcharged refunded, but this one they are not doing, I send over 100 items with them every week and been with royal mail for over 10 years and this is their treatment, we need to all getogether and report them to Ofgem as it was bad enough with not posting our stuff to customers on time, but now they are trying to fraud us with making out we are weighing our items wrong. This is disgusting and they have lost my trust. How do I know that I'm not going to get far more surchages just handed to me for items I'm sending in correctly labelled and sized, how can you make money from you business if they think they are allowed to do this and not refund no matter how much evidence you can hand to them.

[ett1954]

@qpsupplies  "we need to all getogether and report them to Ofgem"

You won't get far with Ofgem, that is the energy regulator - you need Ofcom, they are responsible for postal services.

[qpsupplies]

Yeah Ofcom I meant lol.

[mwesuk]

I'm starting to get these surcharges for items that were never a problem before.

All are saying that they should be a parcel.

I'm sending items that can't possibly achieve the dimensions they claim. I get photos when I ask for them. No measeurements against the photos and other than thep hoto with our label on the others might not even be my item.

Up to now I haven't been able to get any decisions overturned even when sending photos of how we send the items.

I now have to cellotape some items to a piece of card to try and maintain the shape so it can't be screwed up to appear larger.

There are hundreds of thousands of business accounts with Royal Mail.  One or two a week to bigger businesses at £5.75 each is a lot of revenue

This is going to be bigger than the postmaster scandal in terms of revenue generated.

[qpsupplies]

Glad I'm not the only one that first thought of the Postmaster Scandal with all this, it's practically similar where we sellers are in the wrong because their machines and workforce can not possibly make any mistakes so it has to 100% be us doing it wrong when I know I don't do it wrong, it's impossible as I sell many of the same items time and time again, I don't sell one offs. Plus if they give me a surcharge I can reduplicate that order to double check the weight and size using the same item, same envelope, etc.

[technthread]

I don't know how Royal Mail weigh the parcels at their depot but at the Post Office I have had the issue a few times where they put the parcel on the scales but when it leans up against the plexiglass behind, the weight increases. A few times where they say my weight is over my declared label weight, I have had to tell them they haven't weighed it properly. It drives me nuts to be honest.

If RM have a similar set up I can see how weights could be off. It doesn't explain them making rigid large letters into a small parcel though unless parcels are getting stuck together.

It is probably incompetence or a shoddy process rather than anything sinister.

[tabletop-hobbies]

I've just had 4 surcharges in the last two weeks, after only getting one in the last year.  I've always taken them on the chin before but as I'm having a spate of these relating to me supposedly under declring weight I've dug deeper they're weighing loads of my CRL48 items at 100 grams when they weigh less that 50- things like tubes of glue, individual paints etc.  It all adds up and a few of these in a bag of mail are taking me over the declared weight and I get a surcharge of £50-60.  I've always gone by the adage 'c*** up before conspiracy' so it's likely down to some over zealous/ incompetent noob whacking surcharges on incorrectly, but the challenge of undoing the damage is what really annoys me as I now have to provide the evidence that my mail was correctly presented in order to get a refund.

The breach of trust going on here is considerable, and it doesn't feel great dropping off my mail thinking that I'm likely to get another fine.

Extremely poor show from Royal Mail.

[mwesuk]

Do you have a business account and coll3ction. Or do you take it to the
post office and pay then?

[tabletop-hobbies]

I have and online business account, apply postage through click and drop and take it to my local post office.

[moldosgifts]

Grey sacks?

Challenge every single one of these surcharges,

I had a 15g large letter that they tried to say was 2kg parcel i got that overturned my only one in 15 years of using OBA.

They can be very frustrating i look at every invoice waiting for myt second.

[mwesuk]

I always ask for evidence, they should then provide you with photos of the
item, one showing the label and another you won’t recognise.
I challenge every one but they never get overturned for over sized or over
weight.
Only time is if they can’t provide evidence then they credit me after a
“thorough investigation “
I’ve had 20g letters being weighed at over 750g, that’s for one letter but
no evidence.
Are you filling the forms in?

[mwesuk]

Same here, no evidence so they credit you but basically means they know
they were wrong

[qpsupplies]

There has only been one that I nearly didn't get overturned and they done a good will of gesture for it even though I know it was definitely a mistake at their end. I sell the same items all the time, I know what my items weigh whereas they have many employees all over their network, it is easy for a mistake to happen in their place of work.

Anyway what I now do is I take a photo of the item on the scales with the letter so they can see the weight, I then also take a screenshot of the sales invoice so they can see what the customer has purchased matches the item on the scales.

Doing this I have got everyone overturned, but if they will overturn them for you this way, sod knows, but has worked for me so far.

[mwesuk]

Thanks, I’ll try that next time I have a weight issue.
Most of mine are sizes where they’ve screwed it up and it becomes fatter.
I’ve had several and no matter what they won’t change their decision even
when I’ve shown them it’s impossible for the item to achieve the dimensions
they state.
We now cello tape some itemsto a piece of cardboard so it can’t change
shape. Just more time and cost

[qpsupplies]

We do that aswell with some of the letter items.

[dmcv12]

glad it's not just me, first time it's happened, but recently started using online postage tracked 48 with collection

as a seller I've just posted an item that should have been delivered already, so I checked status and it says
"Sorry, the sender didn't pay enough postage for this item, so there's a surcharge to pay. "

I contacted the buyer and they received a grey slip through the door saying "THE SENDER DID NOT PAY THE FULL POSTAGE" AMOUNT DUE £3.20

I've suggested to the buyer that I'll pay this on their behalf, then I'll challenge Royal Mail, just wondering how did you challenge this? Did you raise a complaint, or is there formal way to challenge? Just had a look, the telephone complaints line closed at 18:30 so I'll have to follow up tomorrow.

confident that I paid correctly, as I measure everything and weigh before purchasing postage (small parcel 2kg limit)