Royal Mail overcharge

[treasured_attic]

I sent a small parcel (15x15x15cm) and Royal Mail sent a card through the buyers door telling them that I didn't pay enough postage. I paid £3.45 postage online (Royal Mail app), printed the label and even dropped it off at post office.

They charged the buyer £6.50!!

Can I claim that back from Royal Mail? 

I paid the correct amount (tracked 48) 

[ictiooclothing]

This is interesting as I've never paid a surcharge for dropping it off. It's always £3.29 for me

[simplyessential_uk]

I have had this happen, wrote an email with images of a duplicate item fitting through the slot and on scales, i got a book of flipping stamps back.

Had 2 this week with cards through my door seller underpaid post, not knowing what they were I paid £1.50 each and they were my items returned to me that had not been collected, which baffled me if i hadnt paid would they of bounced back to me eventually 🤔. Anyway they were 2 LL which exceeded 100g... 1 was 104g and other 105g honestly RM what a joke, Our Post office doesnt even have digital scales so 5grams wouldnt even show up on their old fashioned ones.  Both were paid online and dropped off at PO.  

Did you hand over to PO for a receipt? The weight should be on that as proof 

Ps the 16p is a surcharge if you buy direct on RM click & collect but if you buy on Ebay theres no difference in price for drop off or collection.  I mean that in itself is a laugh, 16p to drop it off as if its an inconvenience for a post office to take a parcel

[selective_distribution]

If I may give a tip to the resellers here as reguards package sizing. Get friendly with your local post office counter operative. If they know that you are a reseller and you go to the Post Office several times a week to use their services, have a chat with them, and ask them if they would give you, (or can you buy), one of the white pre measured `small parcel` boxes for small parcels that they usually have sitting on the counter. Since I was given mine it has been an absolute godsend when sizing parcels.

[the-nutwood-collection]

It's always £3.29 for me.

Lucky you.  My payment card is littered with 16p charges.

[4_bathrooms]

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@the-nutwood-collection wrote:

I doubt that there was any problem with the size/weight.  RM are on a revenue-gathering exercise.  They do it every now and again.

I sent 50g of fibre, LL, recently.  I've sent out hundreds of these as LL.  Buyer was charged £3.50 because, according to RM, it was a parcel.  It wasn't a parcel.  It was A4 and nowhere near 2.5cm in depth.

I've had maybe ten or more packages where I've had to refund the surcharge, and none of them were oversized.

It's an easy way for RM to raise revenue.  The buyer pays, the seller refunds the buyer.

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I'm actually wondering if this is Royal Mail's Revenue Protection (Racket) Department's new way of raising income. There have been plenty of historic threads on here and stories elsewhere about account customers being spuriously surcharged on the odd item or two even though the items were regularly selling stock items with known weights and dimensions. A few such sellers realised small parcel wasn't the bargain it first appeared when odd surcharges were randomly applied so headed Evri & Yodel's way.

Account customers must have looked like easy pickings at first as business customers had no real alternative for small parcels. That was, until couriers started offering realistic alternatives like Evri's "Postable" sevice. Thinking about it targeting non-account retail customers is genius - the sender can't realistically make a claim as the surcharge is charged to the recipient. In most cases the recipient is either compensated by the sender or doesn't pay and the item is returned so the recipient doesn't claim and the sender still doesn't have a transaction they can dispute for the surcharge amount.

As I understand it though a proof of postage receipt from a Post Office counter is evidence the item was sent via the correct service. If I was the OP I would start Royal Mail's complaint process with pictures of the proof of postage, the fee to pay card and proof of the refund issued to the buyer to obtain compensation for the surcharge amount. Maybe following such a complaint through to the ultimate end results in a sender being put on an internal "do not rip off" list at Royal Mail; who knows.  

[vinteck]

This has just happened to me. 2nd class 48.

lable provided by ebay and printed by me.

Posted at local PO on Thursday 15 Feb and I have receipt. 
Now ebay tracking is Fri 16 Feb " 6.55 am "Rejected from machine at outward MC "

then 9.06 am 

"Rejected from machine at outward MC ".

Two weeks previously I had one First Class 24 hour tracked "  Lable bought on line and printed by me. Accepted at my local PO. Recieved at London Central Mail Centre" 2:32 am. Saturday 27th Jan The recipient was notified by RM to expect parcel sometime that day.

 But aparently stuck at the Central Mail Center.

Contacting RM customer service  is just a very frustrating waste of time. They say they have no way to communicate with the Central Mail Centre to trace the parcel!

They suggest after 10 days I lodge a claim.

They have become useless as a service!