Royal Mail Surcharges For Overdeclared Large Letters
Hi.
We received our Royal Mail invoice today and it shows a significant surcharge for nearly 300 large letters. I checked the surcharge supplement and it looks like we have been hit with a fee for letters that had their weight overdeclared and underdeclared. Have a look below:
I can understand that RM might not like the fact that we declare a 20g item as 100g, but we’ve been doing this for years and the recent announcement about accurate weights was postponed to March 2022. If you scroll down, the list features a 30g item declared as 34g or even a 34g item declared as 34g. Then two 290g letters that were weighed as 290g, but were hit with a surcharge nontheless.
Here’s another screenshot - a 35g item was weighed as nearly 500g, along with plenty of other 150g items that were listed as 400g. Then a bunch of items that have a minor weight difference. Seems like even 3g discrepancy is too much for Royal Mail.
We calculate our weights automatically - our order processing system has an accurate weight of every item, but it 's a bit inaccurate with the packaging weight, as we tend to average it. Either way, this is our first surcharge for this many items. We’ve been hit for a total of 50 pounds of charges before, but these were related to RM weighing 20g items as nearly >700g. We tried appealing it, but RM closed the investigation and deemed that they were correct in their judgement. Has anyone had any success in dealing with that?
I was under impression that weights could be overdeclared and the surcharges only applied to underdeclared letters, that is until March 2022. Has anyone received similar charges for overdeclared weights?
Seller_bdSdLjti4IugQ
Your problem here is that some of your weights are out by huge margins… had they only been slightly out they might have let you off and under the new system they say if they flag the bag then every item in the bag will be slapped with a charge, which they’ve done for you. You can’t automatically calculate weights accurately you need to weigh just item one by one for it to be accurate. Also things in terms of packaging change often. For example, last week all our items weighed 5grams more because we received a new shipment of envelopes which weighed 55grams each instead of 50grams. If we bagged 100 items up and just assured they weighed the same as before we would have been off by half a kg and when most of our bags average at about 98g / 99g per item Royal Mail would likely see that as us trying to save £45ish per bag, which over a year is about £15,000… Just try and be accurate and use a scale… It’s not ideal… I worked out we’ve lost about 2 days in terms of hours per month just weighing everything and doing the calculations each day… it’s a pain but it’s the correct process and what would happen if you went to a post office. A few years ago when we use to buy our postage via PayPal on EBAY we took a sack into a post office and handed the mail over to go in their bag. The women demanded we put every single item on the scale and re-weigh them one at a time as she said they get a penalty for any items placed in their mail bags that are undeclared.
204 replies
Seller_7VbclcPFFRTnc
No, they changed it to 1st October
What seems to be the issue with fines is the average weight
When you add together the TOTAL weight you declared and divide it by the number of items sent and then add up the TOTAL weight of the actual items you sent and divide it by the total number of items, does it put them into different weight bands ?
ie do your declared figures average them at 240g but the actual average was 252g ?
Seller_bdSdLjti4IugQ
When we switched to RM 48 we started putting every item on the scales and weighing it so it’s gram for gram correct. Then we copy and paste all the orders from click and drop into a spreadsheet and using a =sum(the column numbers here) to show us the total weight. We then divide this by number of items to make sure the bag is under 100g per item and then weigh the bag itself to make sure it matches.
Seller_bdSdLjti4IugQ
I will add I just weighed something… as we always do… then put the label on and it went up by 1gram for the label… We always weigh without a label on, just like a post office does… I hope they’re allowing the 1gram for the label as it’s impossible to weigh the item with a label on as you have to weigh then generate the label unless they then want 1g added on for the label! If that’s the case then our bag could be undeclared by 100 grams per 100 items
Seller_bdSdLjti4IugQ
Your problem here is that some of your weights are out by huge margins… had they only been slightly out they might have let you off and under the new system they say if they flag the bag then every item in the bag will be slapped with a charge, which they’ve done for you. You can’t automatically calculate weights accurately you need to weigh just item one by one for it to be accurate. Also things in terms of packaging change often. For example, last week all our items weighed 5grams more because we received a new shipment of envelopes which weighed 55grams each instead of 50grams. If we bagged 100 items up and just assured they weighed the same as before we would have been off by half a kg and when most of our bags average at about 98g / 99g per item Royal Mail would likely see that as us trying to save £45ish per bag, which over a year is about £15,000… Just try and be accurate and use a scale… It’s not ideal… I worked out we’ve lost about 2 days in terms of hours per month just weighing everything and doing the calculations each day… it’s a pain but it’s the correct process and what would happen if you went to a post office. A few years ago when we use to buy our postage via PayPal on EBAY we took a sack into a post office and handed the mail over to go in their bag. The women demanded we put every single item on the scale and re-weigh them one at a time as she said they get a penalty for any items placed in their mail bags that are undeclared.
Seller_iT7zAqkV2PQG7
I can’t believe that RM check every single item in every single bag of mail every single day. I wonder if you have attracted their attention in some way and now they are being extremely zealous.
I know that in the old days of RM Revenue Protection, they didn’t check every bag but carried out spot checks (usually for Small Parcels disguised as Large Letters), if you were caught, god help you because your account would be flagged.
There was a time when all PPI mail bags had to have a red cross label to signal to RM RP that the sack might need checking.
Seller_nRhZxElkqUPAM
I think what we are seeing is RM spending loads of money on these machines and expecting them to find masses of fraud… but in reality all they can find is a few grams here and there per tonne. What do you expect from a company thats run like a council.
Seller_S5UDplsQyjWJI
What code did you put these through on
Seller_p8Yho6EhClPUf
When we got the 4th underweight problem I contacted the manager and started to have a rant. For 4 years we had nothing and in one month 4 and W T F was going on. I said we now over calculated …if an item was between a large letter or a parcel ie 25mm exactly we put it down as a parcel so so there was no chance of a problem.
His reply
“I should first explain that Mrs Kxxxn is new to her role and I apologise if the information given was wrong. I will sit with her and re-visit her training.”
As an aside just under that he put
“I have re-checked your mail and have found we have 20 items more on line 30 and a weight difference on line 80. However, in light of what has happen with the miss-information I am prepared, on this occasion, to allow the mail to be processed and have passed the mail onto my colleagues to process.” …What piece of s…Bare face lied to me and passed it on so I couldnt check it with him.
The time before that 195 pieces of mail were held up over a weekend because we had declared something as a parcel where they said it was a large letter. With policies that change on how the checker see them ie you cant pull it through the gap, and another saying it can be pulled with fingertips this "wrong size is going to cause problems.
Seller_KbS8F1HhbOckz
I got surcharged last month for a 15g LL that they claimed was a 750g parcel! Their machines are not infallible. To be fair, the surcharge was reversed just a few days ago.
