Postage/Claims - Ongoing issues
Hi,
I have an ongoing issue with Amazon & Royal mail, this is the third time this has happened now.
I send an item via Royal Mail special delivery, parcel gets delayed, customer complains, Amazon refund order in full. Item then gets delivered to the customer who has been refunded, customer of course ignores any correspondence i send, i attempt to claim via Royal Mail but they deny my claim & state they have 8 days to deliver a Special Delivery parcel... despite it being a 24 hour service.
I cannot seem to win. I wouldn't mind so much but these are mobile phones costing up to £1000. It's just totally unacceptable and I'm getting sick to the back teeth of continuously losing large sums of money due to incompetence and flawed systems.
I alternate between Royal Mail & DPD, however DPD have rejected every claim of mine despite them losing numerous parcels. These huge companies are despicable and i can't think of any way around this issue. Has anybody got ANY advice?
Seller_mS10UjVYuuGor
I'm not sure what DPD are like but I use DHL and have a good relationship with my local depot so if needed I could try to recall an item that has been refunded if I noticed it with enough time before delivery. They would charge me for both way shipping of course but still better than losing a high value item.
That's not an option I see anywhere with Royal Mail even with special delivery the sender has no way of recalling the delivery, you only get it back (eventually) if they fail to deliver it.
Seller_d8WfbEccuaGMc
This is useful information, thank you.
Do you mind me asking, is what you pay similar to the RM Special Delivery rate?
I will get in touch with DHL soon and discuss pricing and insurance options. The way i'm doing business currently just isn't sustainable.
Seller_mS10UjVYuuGor
My product is quite different yours, I sell fine wine so the box could be worth £30 or £3000, while someone could probably guess it is a box of wine the value isn't obvious.
I'm well past the 1000 delivery mark with DHL now and not one has been lost without trace and their breakage rate is a fraction of 1%, mostly due to me using high quality packaging rather than the courier being careful I would add.
They collect from me daily (often too early in the day for someone who offers next day delivery but we'll put that aside for a moment) and any box up to about 15kg costs me about £8+VAT to most addresses, highlands and islands are more, sometimes considerably. The delivery cost looks less on the invoice but then they add HGV and congestion zone surcharges so £8 is about right. I guess your packages are probably 1kg or less but they don't offer a lower rate, for me its the same whether I send one bottle or six.
I don't pay for additional insurance for the reason you state, it costs a lot and they make it almost impossible to make a valid claim. If your packages are obviously phones I suspect the temptation to steal them is higher than for my boxes both by customers and couriers. Perhaps you could try using a larger plain outer with a protective filler to disguise the product and see if the disappearance rate drops.
