Sad, sad day
I think I speak for hundreds, if not thousands of small sellers who sell on the Amazon platform when I say, how sad it is that today is the last day that I have been allowed to apply a good old-fashioned stamp to our letter and large letter orders.
Despite information to the contrary on this forum, my VTR rate is still N/A for all letters/LL that have been posted throughout March and confirmed as stamps/franking on the Amazon system.
A few years ago, the month before LL post was increased by 15p for the first time, I bought what I believed would be 7 or 8 years supply of all 4 stamps required for the job, 1st/2nd/L/LL, which was well over 10K.
It has meant that my investment has made a very good compound interest return, or, I have been able to send out LL orders for 98p ongoing, when they cost £1.45 today. I know I can only claim one or the other scenario, no double counting.
Next week my purchase of “a no increase” Amazon RM label will cost me £1.60, so the price I charge Amazon customers will be increased.
My eBay and website customers will continue to receive small items with a stamp. My prices will not be increased to these customers.
Before the Amazon announcement, I thought I was down to about 3 years stock of stamps. Now my eBay and website customers will continue to have the benefit of lower prices for another 6 years. Happy days for them!
By then RM will have increased the price of First class LL post to about £2.00 as they have absolutely no competition at the less than 100g letter and LL post market. This widening shipping cost between Amazon and eBay is in addition the higher price I already charge Amazon customers due to the larger commission Amazon believes it is due to sell the same products.
Obviously, this all helps with the - kept in the dark - Amazon “customers buying experience”.
I know there is the small matter of changing old stamps for new via RM after 31st July 2023 but it is a fairly minor issue. I am sure some will say I would have got better prices using a franking machine etc., but as I said, I am a small seller and Amazon has now made franking machines an expensive redundant piece of contracted equipment. I also benefitted from being able to drop into my local Post Office at 5pm to send everything for that day. It helped earn Magnametals so many “lightning fast shipping” positive feedbacks on eBay and even a few on the difficult to obtain Amazon feedback.
Tomorrow I will have to join the rest of Amazon sellers experiencing buy shipping from Amazon problems.
That’s progress.
0 replies
Seller_NoMNQDGnEW5Bx
This post is also a reminder for everyone that RM prices increase as of Monday just to make the changeover feel even worse.
Seller_bzRkeDMMsE3Is
I have to admit Magnametals, having used stamps or franking for many years and only ever sending recorded over £10.00, I felt the same, that is until 2 days on the trot (today included) I woke to a negative feedback ‘Item not arrived’ with no prior correspondence (both Hampshire bound envelopes). Fortunately, because I have been buying postage from amazon the last 4 weeks, although not recorded, the basic £1.05 large letter( I am still using the post office to send recorded), both feedbacks had already been struck through, without my asking, with the message ‘**Message from Amazon:**The fulfilment issues associated with this order were not due to the seller’. Now had I been using stamps as normal, I would not have had a cat in hell’s chance of having them feedback struck through and my feedback, which averages less than 10 a month, would have been battered. Today I am left thinking maybe every cloud does have a silver lining.
Seller_87mKFKKA3Vwkx
I too was sending out many of my orders with stamps - I’ve now used them all up.
But why is Amazon STILL offering stamps as a shipping option in its drop-down menu/???
Seller_D6nVaqoLK2v59
Indeed very sad.
I am also one of the 1000’s of people that are having to completely rework their postal process.
I sell low cost signs & stickers (£2.12 up to about £7) & the cost of tracked mail is greater than the cost I sell a lot of them for so tracked mail is stupid for such low cost items, I’m always happy to resend or refund if they get lost in the post & have good feedback.
I have a Click & Drop account that i integrate with eBay & did integrate with Amazon initially but the post I chose on C&D (BPL1) was not accepted as N/A for my VTR & my VTR fell to 0% over the next few days so I removed the integration with Amazon & just marked them as we all used to do ‘Royal Mail 1st Class stamps/ franking’ & manually applied them through Click & Drop which was easy & printing the labels for both eBay & Amazon orders was fine.
So now, ‘Buy Shipping through Amazon’…
I did a test last week, selected 4 items just small letters, did the buy shipping in bulk, it was all fairly easy except when I went to print the labels!
I selected the 6’x4’ label size as I print all labels on Click & drop with a 4 labels per A4 sheet & then the horror show started!
It only allowed me to print 1 label at a time, bang in the middle of an A4 sheet, with a packing sheet (that i do not need) just could not work out how to print a simple address label on an A4 sheet for the 4 labels at a time set up.
I looked for tutorials on Amazon & eBay, nothing helped.
I saw that Amazon suggested I use QZ Tray but when looking at this on the forums I saw so many people saying don’t do it! so I didn’t.
I have managed to figure out an extremely crude method in Word by inserting/ copy-pasting the 4 PDF label files into a Word Doc that is set up for the 4 labels per page format & will try that next week.
Its a process that takes 2-3 times longer than just using C&D but Amazon won’t allow any other way to send out low cost items that are not worth tracked mail.
I am also looking at FBA but for a £2.12 sticker I only make about 22p profit sadly due to all the fees.
Sad times indeed,
I have loved selling on Amazon for about 4 or 5 years but I am wondering if it may be coming to an end.
This is my first ever post on these very helpful & informative forums, be gentle with me.
If anyone has any advise or help on printing labels in bulk through Amazon quickly 4 to a an A4 sheet I would be so grateful.
Thank you in advance.
Kind regards,
Colin
Seller_n33KwLeg9XOvi
Out of curiosity - have you exchanged the remaining old Royal Mail stamps for the new barcoded ones?
Ps. You made a good investment
Seller_N0kQDKMgwda6y
As a seller of second hand books, I have actually benefited from the changover, although its slightly more work. £ 2.85 for most books, as opposed to £3.30 and now £3.50
Seller_bhSWqoVh7Pn98
It has positive and negative points.
It is not all bad. If you use Buy Shipping and link to your RM Pro Account, all is tracked (fully tracked, or at the point of delivery at least on CRL), and you pay the price to RM, not to Amz. It means feedback removed if a delivery issue.
Bad points are if you have lots of stamps in stock.
I can understand though why Amz brought this in, as proof you paid, so you will ship the item, and less likely a delivery issue if Amz know shipped and so does the Buyer. Tracking used (or Proof of delivery tracking) means less queries as well, as the Buyer can see delivered with GPS details, etc.
Overall, I think more positives than negatives, other than we have so many stamps to use up!
Seller_wOLcrIPiS6uVw
Just noticed my VTR rate dropped to 0%, was NR for my 2nd class franked!
So frustrating, I will now have to use their buy shipping instead of click and drop and use exactly the same service, just a lot more admin now.
I’m now very concerned about my account, as I have a month’s worth of orders that will now be flagged with a 0% VTR. Even though all the orders have a shipping reference that can be tracked and traced with Royal Mail and see the parcel was delivered within the time.
Do you think I’ll be ok?
Seller_NoMNQDGnEW5Bx
If as above the delivery report showed tracking references presumably they would actually be validated if left as click and drop sent them over, its just that they’ve been changed to franking so have become invalid?
@newfangledthings are they all parcels?
