Post Office and Simple Delivery

[deanem72]

HI All

Another post about the dreaded SD.

Just come back from my local Post Offices  (yes 2 as I had business in both places), and thought I would just post on here that both have now instructed their staff to refuse eBay parcels if they are labelled incorrectly.

As SD is automated, it guesstimates size and weight based on other items in category, many parcels will now be 'mislabelled'.

In the CC earlier it was mentioned that these parcels have to be taken, yet eBay fail to realise that RM and Post Office are 2 separate companies, further compounded by many Post Offices being contracted out to small shops where a dedicated Post Office has closed (as in the case of my local). 

I asked a question of the clerk at one PO why this was happening and they stated, that due to audits on packages sent, any wrongly labelled packages can result in failure of said audit, multiple failures can lead to financial losses and could also have implications on whether or not the service is continued (as in PO will pull contract from the shop).  They didn't divulge the levels that are set for audit.

As I have already stated  am not keen on the idea of being dictated as to how I send an item, however this information I have gathered now puts a new perspective on things.  Not only are eBay forcing me to do things their way, but they are potentially placing the livelihood of others at risk, people that have nothing to do with eBay or the dilemmas SD is causing

[wintersdawn1]

Ebay has an agreement with the post office, they must accept simple delivery packages with the wrong label on them, as confirmed by marco, in today's weekly chat:

[department28]

Perhaps with a bit of luck, Simple Delivery will implode, and we can all go back to 'normal'! 😄

[deanem72]

wishful thinking

[akemp1]

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@department28 wrote:

Perhaps with a bit of luck, Simple Delivery will implode, and we can all go back to 'normal'! 😄

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We can but dream of a better world.

[akemp1]

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@wintersdawn1 wrote:

Ebay has an agreement with the post office, they must accept simple delivery packages with the wrong label on them, as confirmed by marco, in today's weekly chat:

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But that can't be right as Post Office are working under instruction from Royal Mail and why would Royal Mail bend over backwards to support this initiative when it's clear they will only be used as a last resort when buyers and sellers fall outside Evri coverage which is business they would get anyway?

[barry.110]

I know last year I bought a Royal Mail label through eBay (obviously not Simple Delivery) as a QR code and when I took it to the post office they wouldn’t accept it because I put in it was something like 500 grams but when they weighed it it was about 600. So even though it was still well under the 1kg limit for that price range I had to cancel that label and buy another one to cover the weight.

I can’t see the Post Office changing that stance. What I can see is lots of frustrated sellers arguing with post office counter staff saying “But eBay says you have to take it”.

[pauuk.35za36]

One thing I forgot to ask today is whether we are excluded from claiming compensation from the carrier directly with SD, for example where the buyer files an item not as described claim but the item has been clearly damaged by the courier.

[sml192]

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@wintersdawn1 wrote:

Ebay has an agreement with the post office, they must accept simple delivery packages with the wrong label on them, as confirmed by marco, in today's weekly chat:

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Ebay has an agreement with Royal Mail not the Post Office.  It is up to Royal Mail to communicate that agreement to the Post Office so they are as much to blame here as eBay.

This problem has been caused because eBay will have agreed a bespoke business contract with Royal Mail with different sizing to that used for the normal online/over the counter services offered by Royal Mail.  A Royal Mail business contract would normally involve the mail being collected directly from the business but that obviously can't happen here so a different arrangement is required. 

[bojangled]

@barry.110 see my post no.6 in this thread, PO staff advised not accept incorrectly weighted post, even if correct price paid. 
I completely understand why not, PO counter staff are middlemen, get if from the RM and the public. I only lasted a year!

[sml192]

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@pauuk.35za36 wrote:

One thing I forgot to ask today is whether we are excluded from claiming compensation from the carrier directly with SD, for example where the buyer files an item not as described claim but the item has been clearly damaged by the courier.

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You won't be able to claim directly from the carrier with Simple Delivery. 

[akemp1]

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@sml192 wrote:

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Ebay has an agreement with Royal Mail not the Post Office.  It is up to Royal Mail to communicate that agreement to the Post Office so they are as much to blame here as eBay.

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I just can't see why Royal Mail would agree with ebay to take wrong size/weight parcels into their network to support an ebay project to take as much business as possible away from Royal Mail? So if Royal Mail didn't agree it then they have done nothing wrong in not flowing down such arrangements to Post Office?

[pauuk.35za36]

I think that Ebay will try to pass the cost of any postage errors to us similar to how packlink would, unless we can demonstrate that it was their system at fault. 

[thetrackz]

Which self respecting seller would hand over a parcel with the wrong weight/size!

Because we all trust ebay that it will be delivered ok!!!

[akemp1]

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@thetrackz wrote:

Which self respecting seller would hand over a parcel with the wrong weight/size!

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You'd be having to trust both Post Office and Royal Mail to be bypassing all their size/weight checks at every point in the journey that they have been fine-tuning for the nearly 20 years since pricing in proportion was implemented in 2006 in order that the buyer doesn't get a penalty.

I still don't believe that Royal Mail would have agreed to this - why would they?

[cbclassicbuyer]

But we as sellers have absolutely no control over Ebay SD. A company, even Ebay, can't financially penalise the seller over something that Ebay control. 

[tommystrezures]

I wonder when the grey card comes through the door with you have a fee to pay from Royal Mail for underpaid postage, what the buyer should do? Do they contact eBay in order they pay to have the item released? Or should they just open an INR and ebay foot the bill?..... After all the contract for postage is between ebay and the buyer, the seller has nothing to do with it.

As of last week working in our local post office after I had rejected two ebay parcels as they were incorrectly labelled, these were our or are our instructions. As mentioned above segregation targets are critical between the PO and RM. The only way round it as I see is that parcels are accepted then placed in a separate bag with a red cross on, these were always for PPI or revenue returns etc. In turn anything sent via this is usually on an "automatic" 7-10 delivery as its the lowest of low priorities for RM.

[vinylscot]

Much as I would like not to, I think I take eBay's word on this, to a certain extent.

eBay would not go public about an agreement with RM/PO if there wasn't one in place. Assuming there is an agreement of sorts, it obviously has not been communicated properly through the RM/PO networks.

I mentioned SD to the manager at my own local PO yesterday, just in general, not specifically about the weight issue. She knows there is "something happening soon", but has been given no precise details. (This is a large, busy post office, in a city suburb, used by many eBay sellers)

I would imagine that some aspects of this will be down to teething problems (eBay's fault), and some will be down to RM/PO misinterpreting what has been agreed.

I reckon eBay's agreement will be along the lines of some of the schemes available to smaller businesses, where parcels are not individually weighed at the acceptance stage, and their average weight has to be within certain parameters to meet the terms of the agreement. On a small scale, mail is dropped off in a sack with a manifest, and as long as the agreed average isn't breached over an agreed period of time, everything is OK.  (I understand there will be more to it, but that's the basics)

eBay's agreement is probably similar, but on a much larger scale, with individual parcels being dropped off nationwide. These will be weighed somewhere during the delivery process, and should be delivered smoothly, for as long as the average stays within agreed bounds.

I don't know how they identify fraud in such cases with individual packages, but I'm sure there's a way.

Let me emphasise; I detest Simple Delivery and everything about it. Deplorable though it may be, I think you need to acknowledge that eBay wants it to work. I can't see any circumstances where it will work, and I think we're in for a never-ending round of sticking-plaster solutions to stupid, totally foreseeable problems.

[sizzenergy]

with a bit of luck, Ebay will implode, and we can all go back to the way we were in the 1990s !

[warmyn-81]

I have this evening managed to speak with the manager of my local post office. I mentioned simple delivery and he has informed me that he has now received infomation regarding incorrectly sized and weighed packages. 

What follows is straight from the horses mouth so to speak.

Hi mate … yeh it’s a weird one … we have been told any marketplace sellers that regardless of size weight etc post office can accept them ! However the label will say ‘marketplace seller’ so to make it clear the ones we can accept … had one the other day 3kg package, label said 500g small parcel but also on the label bottom right said ‘marketplace selller’ so we accepted it then RM sort it out with eBay! It’s a change just recently come in about couple weeks ago to help customers avoid delays in getting stuff sent out....

So it appears that as long as your postage label says 'market place seller' the post office will accept them and RM will be dealing with feebay for any discrepancies. 

If this is true then it would appear ebay have sorted an agreement with ebay. Maybe when Marco stated earlier that the PO's must accept. he may well have been correct but not party to all the information, i.e. 'market place seller' on the label.

If ebay could for once actually launch something with all the details required by the service users there would not be so  many worried sellers etc...

Once again I got this info from a post office manager so hopefully this info is correct.

[barry.110]

It would be nice if EBay could launch it with all the details required, however what would be even nicer would be if EBay would have this service for sellers who want to use it but leave us sellers alone who are happy with arranging our own postage as we have been doing quite successfully for years without EBay’s interference.