Royal Mail losses - percentage?

[phoenixalpha]

For those that sell through their shops/eBay/etsy... whatever their poison of choice and use Royal Mail for postage - do you have an average of items lost/not received by customers and if so would you care to post a rough average of what you think you lose/not received by customers? I post items daily and my losses/items not received are around 2% and I think that is particularly high. I do know that in certain areas of the country when I post out an item its a lot higher than normal - maybe 5% or so (and no I'm not talking about the Highlands or Cornwall) but areas that I would think would be well served by the Royal Mail and have no discernable mail difficulties.

[mrs maggot]

we have lost the most in lancashire - but yes i think our figures are about the same, bloody annoying more than anything, they are the little pin badges i sell on ebay etsy, and TBh i ask the customer for an alternative address, or just refund them - as its not worth continually re-posting. How have you got on claiming back from the post office ??

[phoenixalpha]

Its not worth the hassle to claim back from RM in my opinion. I know its in their own interests to make sure that you cant claim back but its almost like they take delight in making it difficult as hell with no compensation.

I seem to lose a lot in the Manchester/Bolton/Bradford areas which is concerning - I don't know if its bad postal services or just maybe the customers themselves.

Its just a total PITA cause everytime I go to the post office to post it's I'm thinking... how many are going to go missing from this delivery.

[pisquee]

We've seen our loses reduce to zero since getting the Royal Mail business account, not sure if this is co-incidence and other's experience also reflects this though.
we did hear that RM treats business mail (franked and PPI accounts) more importantly than consumer stamped mail, maybe this is or in't true?

[GoonerGary]

West London and Uxbridge UB codes for me.

Keep an eye on this if you are having problems with certain postcodes.

http://www.royalmail.com/help-and-suppo ... ce-updates

[Scotty@BMS]

We've seen our loses reduce to zero since getting the Royal Mail business account, not sure if this is co-incidence and other's experience also reflects this though.
we did hear that RM treats business mail (franked and PPI accounts) more importantly than consumer stamped mail, maybe this is or in't true?

Franked mail, if deposited in a letter box, goes into a separate chamber (and mailbag) to stamped post. So I think you're very much onto something Tim.

[pisquee]

Ours are already in a RM sacks and we take them directly to the local sorting/delivery office, where they are loaded straight onto the RM vans to go to the regional hub, so the letter box or post office and collection van stage is eliminated

[phoenixalpha]

We hand ours to our local Post Office where they are loaded into RM bags right in front of us. All are prestamped with Smartstamp. We used to use prebought stamps a few years ago but that was losing around 5-10% which was pretty horrid and we stopped and moved to smartstamp - which may not be any better

[viccar]

Im running at 1.2% over this trading year so far, seems to have worsened since they went private, but i think some of the 1.2% are not really lost, they are business addresses or hall of residence type addresses, i have had 1 returned back to me as undelivered.

I rarely claim of RM because if you are a business they will only pay you the cost price, not the selling price and you have to send receipts, invoices ect in

[JMugs]

I am on an OBA account and do it the same way as Pisquee, and hadn't really thought about it, but as with Pisquee my "lost parcels" is essentially zilch, the very occasional international delivery is all.
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