A Heads-Up for Private Sellers using Royal Mail Click and Drop

[ett1954]

I have just received the following notification from Royal Mail:

Important Update: Changes to eBay Shipping Rules

New shipping rules from eBay are now in place. If your account on eBay is currently set up as a Personal Account, please be aware that:

• You may no longer be able to use Click & Drop to ship your eBay orders.

Your orders may be rejected under eBay’s new Simple Delivery policy.

If you are actually a small business rather than a private seller but have set yourself up with an ebay Personal Account you can continue to use Click & Drop by switching your account to a Business Account.

[ett1954]

@vinylscot  It is now; it eventually came through a few hours ago.  Obviously delayed which could account for the problems I have been having over the last few weeks with errors showing when trying to generate labels on around 30% of the attempts.  They do however work first time when regenerated.  I guess that confirms it is genuine after all.

[gjalp]

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@soundsreasonableuk wrote:

This seems very churlish from Royal Mail/Ebay, however note you can just go into C & D and not log in to use it - very easy.  As for forcing people to use Simple Delivery which is *bleep* as it starts at £2.70 and smaller cheap  Items such as stamps. cards can be sent for 87p or £1.55.

Own goal Royal Mail/Ebay  if this comes to pass.

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This is how I use C&D, I don’t have an account so just access it without. Its rather handy.

[bojangled]

@ett1954 

I received it the same day as you in my gmail inbox. And then checked my C&D account, received there the same day. At first look the wording was very strange, I thought they wanted me to upgrade my C&D account to business, clicked the link to see what was needed, then read it properly. 

Just to add I have similar issues with label generation over the last month, always having to regenerate after purchase.

Jo

[a45heaven]

where did this document appear ? The wording and style look very much like an ebay letter rather than Royal Mail.

Why would Royal Mail send this information out?

[jckl1957]

It has appeared as a message (from Royal mail) when logging into Click and Drop.

[vinylscot]

I've been having the problem with label generation as well, over the last month or so. I see @bojangled has too. It is possibly quite widespread. Luckily, like you, it always works for me when regeneration is tried.

[eastern-lights]

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@vinylscot wrote:

I've been having the problem with label generation as well, over the last month or so. I see @bojangled has too. It is possibly quite widespread. Luckily, like you, it always works for me when regeneration is tried.

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For me that issue started when the 30p collection charge came in. (Which wasn't an Ebay change.)

[ett1954]

That's what I traced it back to; immediately the update which took off the free collection option.

I guess it just shows that Royal Mail, like eBay, must use 'dollar-a-day' overseas programmers.

[jckl1957]

Just a personal update based on what has happened in the last week or so.

I had an international sale and was able to use C&D as normal.  In the same group of sales, I did have one order that was set up with Simple Delivery and that was there on the RM website in my 'orders'.

I didn't buy a label on C&D but did put details in and would have been able to get a C&D label if I had chosen to.

[vinylscot]

Are all your sales now on SD?

Royal Mail's message on 30th May was a little vague. Although it was meant to be in force from 30th May, there was lots of eBay-speak in there (among surprisingly little actual detail).

The message doesn't say you won't be able to use C&D for SD items. It only says "You may no longer be able to use Click & Drop to ship your eBay orders". Without further details, that could mean it's still being introduced, or it could means (as should be the case) that international sales will still go through C&D.

As usual, it's all as clear as mud. I suspect we won't know until eBay stop faffing about with SD, and it has become universally mandatory for ALL private sellers. It may be that RM, like eBay has on many times, simply jumped the gun by announcing this too early.

[jckl1957]

Very few of my items are on Simple Delivery.

A lot are under 100g and under £10 so don't have to use SD.  It has randomly appeared on a few of my listings but I have listed items this week for over £10 with no SD.

I have decided not to stress about it.

If I sell something and it is SD, it's not an issue.

As you say though, there is no clarity and nobody really knows what is happening.

[wellingnorth]

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@ett1954 wrote:

@vinylscot  It is now; it eventually came through a few hours ago.  Obviously delayed which could account for the problems I have been having over the last few weeks with errors showing when trying to generate labels on around 30% of the attempts.  They do however work first time when regenerated.  I guess that confirms it is genuine after all.

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I've had exactly the same for the last few weeks, I contacted royal mail and they said it's a known bug so hopefully should be fixed soon