Using Royal Mail OBA for SFP. Royal Mail services not showing on Buy Shipping
I use Royal Mail 2nd& 1st large letters and small parcels for our posters. We have recently rolled out SFP on our products and we are manually fulfilling everything at the moment. When doing shipping settings with automation we select Royal Mail as priority, have recently had OBA account approved and now have it linked and it says ACTIVE. Why when I buy shipping do i still see only Evri Options and on Royal Mail it says we have not registered for this service? Can Somebody help us Please?
Also if we use our linked C&D account to buy labels, does that still go towards the Buy Shipping Usage Rate on SFP?
Many thanks
Seller_nya8jSLC0mM1x
Hahaha that is amazing. Thank you for all your help. Really appreciated. I’ve been going round in circles with this idea and the postage for weeks!
31 replies
Seller_DTufFoxJuMU0M
do you have tracked 24 set up on your OBA?
No for SFP you have to buy most of your postage (95% I think?) on Amazon directly
Seller_8Wsckn3UoR095
What’s the delivery date on these? Fri & Mon are bank holidays where RM are not working so Amazon are saying your other courier choices won’t make it on time for the delivery date. T24 is a 1-2 day service
Yeah but it goes against it… You may have your SFP eligibility suspended if you choose to do that but it is your call.
SFP Prime - Royal Mail - Sell on Amazon / General Selling on Amazon Questions - Amazon Seller Forums
Seller_nya8jSLC0mM1x
Right, so I would need to subscribe to 24/48 Tracked is what you’re saying and then it will show up for SFP orders?
Seller_8Wsckn3UoR095
Yes, providing your RM account is linked up properly. Be aware (it may not be applicable to you, depends who your account manager is), it takes quite some time for RM to set up a new service on your account.
Tracked with age verification took multiple weeks to set up… Our AC isn’t the best but I believe she had to send the request to another department & blah, blah…
Seller_nya8jSLC0mM1x
Thank you so much for your help mate. I think what I’ll do is either move up to fully tracked or stop using SFP. Quite a bummer cause of the prices to post with Fully Tracked RM. haha
Seller_BuFUoYgBbgcyp
It’s not as simple as that. You need to speak to your RM business manager who will then provide you with a quote based on the amount of posting you do. You need to ask for Tracked 24/48 (LBT). It will take a few days to become active.
Seller_8Wsckn3UoR095
Depends what you’re posting. LBT, letter box tracked is only up to 2.5cm.
Seller_8Wsckn3UoR095
Well, you need Tracked to do SFP if RM is your choice of courier. There are very few couriers which SFP accepts. So for now, I would suggest you stop SFP & speak to RM to set up Tracked on your account.
With SFP you need to take into account the tracked price and price it accordingly, depends how attractive your OBA Tracked price is… ours is abysmal but I don’t want to work Saturdays so SFP is not for us… We do FBA though.
Seller_BuFUoYgBbgcyp
Sorry, I meant LBT as well as parcel. We have both and it was two separate quotes for the services and LBT took longer to set up for some reason.
Seller_7VbclcPFFRTnc
They do state somewhere in their bumpf that SFP is ideally for fast moving products over about £12 due to the fact you have to offer free next day delivery
don’t forget you are required to ship and have collections 6 days a week
Seller_nya8jSLC0mM1x
Yeah that’s what I’m going to do. Stop SFP, start buying labels on Buy Shipping through OBA because I got a notification for Buy Shipping Usage Rate This morning.
And then see if I can price it up or not according to the tracker 24 pricing.
Thing is, we only started SFP to increase sales and keep up with competitors. But we want to keep our prices low as we believe that’s our USP, but might be better to just not use SFP for MF in the long run and use FBA for high selling products as it’s small and light and is same price as RM 24 Untracked
Seller_nya8jSLC0mM1x
That makes more sense, thank you. Will ask to add that on and see how the pricing works out
Seller_8Wsckn3UoR095
I know you said further down that you do use FBA but have you tried upping your price for these lines on FBA, you may still get the buy box. On items with plenty of competitors, we make slightly less money on FBA to MFN but we get a hefty amount more on FBA in sales & if you take into account time it takes to pack (even if it’s seconds, I still have to be paid so it’s an expense), packaging & all that… then we’ve made more money per unit and sold a hell of a lot more. & I don’t have to have them in our warehouse & office 
When setting up Tracked, they’ll ask you to make an estimate of how many you’ll send and what weight - the higher your estimate but lower your weight, the better the pricing is. But, it is reviewed bi-annually at minimum so over inflating massively is not a good shout & they’ll up your prices based on your weights and quantity that you’ve put through… could be massively.
