Royal Mail Account - Buy Shipping or Click & Drop?
We’ve just signed up for a Royal Mail Business Account and I’m trying to work out the most economic way to use it. We have it linked to Amazon so we can use ‘Buy Shipping’ to print the labels from our Royal Mail account, but then do we need a separate manifest for Amazon orders compared to ebay/etsy/etc?
Not sure if it’s just easier to use click and drop but then I’ll lose the protections offered by Buy Shipping.
5 replies
Seller_7VbclcPFFRTnc
Yes
For this you go to Orders- order reports - end of day forms
As its a separate manifest, you will not be able to use your ebay/etsy/website orders to average weight or volume discount - which is why we have stuck with click and drop
Amazon buy shipping guarantees you 100% vtr however, they will verify unscanned c&d items anyway
The biggest downside is not being able to bulk print pick slips together with its postage label like you can in c&d. Others open up several tabs and try and match them - not great at Xmas with 1000 orders!
Buying off amazon is also supposed to prevent defects from a-z claims however other sellers have found that with a-zs they have not only still had to refund, they have also got a defect
The one good thing I can see from buy shipping is negative feedback crossed through if its delivery issues
Seller_ae51e0CJoHqCX
We used to use everything click and drop but have switched to Amazon buy shipping and use multi channel marketplaces.
It is true you have to have 2 different systems but running off 2 manifests is not really much of an issue.
You need to decide whether to keep the Amazon integration on click and drop if you are to use buy shipping but I must warn you that international shipping is not available on buy shipping so if you have these then you have to either do them manually through click and drop and then manually mark them off on Amazon or keep the integration and mark all of your UK sales off the click and drop and then mark them as dispatched which can be a bit of a faff.
One of the advantages though of buy shipping other than VTR is that it does have other shipping options such as Hermes and I have used them quite a bit as they are cheaper than Royal Mail for small parcels and I have managed to claim against non deliveries which is not possible with Royal Mail.
Personally I like Buy shipping and it is easier to understand what you are being charged. Also with click and drop, you don’t know what you have posted until you have run the manifest on click and drop but when you buy shipping from Amazon, the orders are immediately marked as dispatched so you know where you stand. This sometimes irritates me though with International still showing as awaiting dispatched when I have already run the through Click and drop and not manifested it
Not a perfect system whichever way you choose, but I do feel that it depends a lot on what percentage of your orders are Amazon against the other other marketplaces.
You will lose average postal weights and could bump up your costs on other marketplaces but the savings I make on buy shipping with Hermes outweighs these benefits for me.
