Simple delivery and Royal Mail's Bring my Label collection service.

[poshboutique2]

So simple delivery does not offer Royal Mail's bring my label service.  When buying a parcel collection Royal Mail give the option of bringing you the label as well so there is no need to print anything. Simple delivery has taken away the Royal Mail bring my label option.

eBay probably don't even realise that RM offer this service which used by many people.

[the-garden-room]

Not much help if the Post Office is 3 miles away, a disadvantage for rural customers.

[podlingsmum2007]

That is why I said 'if you can get there'

[cjm241]

I am having exactly the same problem. I am a private seller who arranges several Royal Mail collections from home per month, using the bring my label option as I don't have a printer. Now this option isn't offered because as you say it's an option you choose at the point of buying the postage. Now, the buyer has bought the postage, all you can do is arrange a collection but you have to have a printer, or you have to take it to a drop-off point which defeats the convenience of a collection option. I am very disillusioned with ebay now, and I know they wouldn't miss me if I stopped selling on here, but surely I can't be the only one feeling like this? We already have to wait ages for payment now too. It's all gone Pete Tong. I was wondering if a way round this collection option would be to offer free postage (factor it into the listing price) and then the seller would have to buy the postage and could potentially then use the bring my label option for a collection? Has anyone tried that?

[deadwaxsecrets]

Royal Mails collection service is OK if you're sat at home all day by the door, usually give a 5 hour window but they never arrive early & more often than not it's past the time they originally quoted. As for the 'Bring My Label' service I found that 50% of the time they'd forget the label & having to rely on them doing it back in the depot or, in the van (wherever they'd left the labels) & hoping they'd put the right label on the right package if sending multiple items.

[podlingsmum2007]

I believe that the label still has to be bought from ebay.

[cjm241]

I have used this service on days I've worked from home, or my partner is going into work later. There have been times where they have to put the label on after,  but I write the delivery address on the parcel anyway out of habit. I try to never have more than two parcels collected at the same time as it often confused them 😉

[the-garden-room]

Must be down to the individual postie as ours has been great. I just leave
the parcels in a waterproof box outside with the surname and postcode on so
he doesn’t need to knock. This has been a major life changer and I don’t
say that lightly. The service is fantastic.

Most other services have just got worse and customer service is non
existent in large organisations including Ebay. Hope they get it resolved
soon but I am not optimistic.

[kingfisher0_3]

"Simple delivery" my *** I have sold on ebay for years 

i have always arranged my postage direct through royal Mail and in recent years had them bring the label

this has worked perfectly up till now

ebay forced me to use their service so i did but my account email with ebay is different than my royal mail account email 

so now i cannot have label printed our local po will not take preprinted label so i have to travel 3 miles to post

I have tried adding collection to my royal mail account which it lets me do but basically states that bring my label is not available as was bought via ebay and then doubles up the collection with the ebay collection twice 

what a load of b

come on ebay sort this out

[dls-online]

I've just read through all of the posts within this thread, as it was exactly what I feared might happen. Like all those who've contributed to this thread, I rely on the convenience of Royal Mail bringing my pre-printed label when they come to collect the parcel. So losing this ability would be a major blow for me.

My proposed solution, which I plan to trial, is as follows:

(1) When listing an item on ebay, offer free P&P (whilst also attempting to minimise the item weight displayed).

(2) When the item is sold and ebay send through their auto-generated postage label, I simply ignore the label they send me.

(3) Instead, I purchase my own 48hr tracked label directly from Royal Mail online, with collection requested and a label being provided.

(4) Call ebay's customer service number and have the tracking number updated to reflect the one I purchased directly from Royal Mail, rather than the one auto generated by ebay.

(5) My understanding is that after a couple of weeks the unused postage will be refunded.

Soooooo, firstly I appreciate this option isn't suitable for everyone. It's basically my proposed workaround which I'm comfortable with. It's not ideal, but if it works, I can live with it.

With this plan in mind, I called ebay CS the other day and talked this proposal through with them. The ebay CS agent (who was great and very understanding) said as far as he is aware, this should work. He even put me on hold whilst he checked with a colleague, and came back confirming that they also confirmed that ebay can update tracking over a call and any unused postage labels will be refunded to the seller. These were the two main areas I was concerned about.

Obviously, until I've tried and tested this workaround out, I'll not know for sure if it'll work. I'm hoping it will. As for why in stage (1) I'll try listing the item with the lowest weight possible...this is in case a refund for the unused postage isn't refunded, so as to lower the financial hit. Secondly, whilst I wait for the unused postage to be processed (around 2 weeks apparently)  I'm trying to minimise how much I'm out of pocket during that wait (again, not ideal for everyone but I'm fine with that).

The worst case scenario as far as I can see is ebay don't update the tracking for the actual postage used, and end up refunding the buyer for the item, as the postage in that scenario would show the item was never dispatched. This is why I'm planning to do a single trial run and will live with the loss of one item if it all goes pear shaped like that.

Another thing that might happen is ebay take an "Admin fee" when refunding the unused postage label. I wouldn't put it past them to do this. The FAQ on Simple Delivery elude to such a thing being possible in their T&Cs. Depending on how much such a fee is, I might be comfortable with taking this hit on each sale too. The lesser of two evils and all that jazz.

I must reiterate, this whole potential workaround isn't suitable for everyone. For me, I'm comfortable with the risks in a trial run and the anticipated delays in receiving the funding (if it does work). Anyway, I just thought I'd share my plan and will update on here if it's successful.

[kingfisher0_3]

Thanks for the info

[superchallenge]

---

@the-garden-room wrote:
Must be down to the individual postie as ours has been great. I just leave
the parcels in a waterproof box outside with the surname and postcode on so
he doesn’t need to knock. This has been a major life changer and I don’t
say that lightly. The service is fantastic.

---

Yep, I couldn't agree more. Mine collects from me six days a week and there's never been a problem. Last week, I had to nip out in the morning and missed him. He came back and collected the parcels a couple of hours later on his way back to the depot at the end of his round. What a champ!

Some of them are absolute diamonds.

[mickyp1964]

Yeah most are great but this isn't about how good your Postie is. It's about no label's being able to be produced, so no chance of asking our Postie heroes to collect! No label, no tracking, no delivery notification, no payment from ebay!! The whole things a non starter with no label!! THAT'S the issue here. Mick

[sml192]

Yes, your proposed workaround should work in theory, however, if too many people exploit this workaround then it is likely that eBay will take steps to prevent it.  You also, obviously, need to bear in mind that by purchasing your own label you won't benefit from any of the protections offered by Simple Delivery, so you will be responsible for items lost or damaged in transit and won't be automatically protected against late deliveries, negative feedback relating to delivery, etc. 

[superchallenge]

I...I absolutely never said that it wasn't.

Sorry for somehow offending by replying to a post.

[mickyp1964]

No offence taken!? Just bringing it back to the crux of the issue, which is the lack of being able to arrange labels with collections now! I also have a great bunch of Postie's that I now don't see so much as I am lucky enough to be able to get to our PO quite easily in the car. I know a lot that can't do that.