International Shipping - Problems with Royal Mail
Hi everyone,
We send roughly 30-40 items a day internationally to Europe. We send this using the Royal Mail standard on account large letter or standard on account parcel. My issue is that every day we get roughly 4-5 customers who say they have not received their order and also receive roughly 1-2 orders everyday from Royal Mail saying that they tried to deliver an item but they couldn’t.
So all in all, the service is really eating away at my profits and because its not a tracked service, i cant really tell if the buyer is telling the truth or not.
Are there any alternatives which are more reliable than royal mail’s international shipping? Because at this rate i don’t see the point of sending out orders internationally when we have such a high level of customers not receiving their order.
so any thoughts? ideas? personal experiences? or alternatives to Royal Mail international which is more reliable?
4 replies
Seller_lplZIMdO5UBa7
Its not actually Royal Mail who are delivering the goods, they merely ensure they are handed to the national carrier for any given country.
Seller_j4qOx3FnSoENm
Claire1 is correct, once they leave the UK they are then passed onto whatever partner RM has in that country (for example if France then it gets handed over to La Poste).
Only things you can do are either/and/or
A) use a tracked international service
B) See if there is a pattern on which customers per country are claiming non delivery
C) If it’s a particular country then stop shipping there
D) Stop selling internationally on Amazon
Seller_y7wlA8Npjq1Or
I sell allot to the USA and only send tracked with signature. If they really want the item they will pay if they ask for cheaper postage I refuse. Never had international INR or Item return.
Seller_xsrgXB9SyT6WI
Firstly - what RM product (code) is that? I would have thought with that level of spend you would be able to use the Zone Sort Priority (IE1 for parcels/IG1 for LL). It’s a good price, and quoted times are 5-7 days.
So one problem could be the mismatch between RM’s delivery speed and your Amazon delivery estimates.
However, you don’t say where the customers with problems are based? My guessing is it’s Italy/Spain…or similar problem countries. Also worth bearing in mind, even though RM state 5-7 days for a lot of countries, I find some are no where near - e.g for me Croatia and Australia miss by a long shot.
