Royal Mail tracked times longer than untracked?
Hi all,
I recently signed up for fully tracked services with Royal Mail, but I am experiencing some initial issues with delivery times. Strangely enough, the untracked Royal Mail service is currently showing a quicker delivery estimate than the fully tracked 48 Hour Service. I believe both of these services should display the same delivery estimate, and if anything, the tracked version should have a better chance of being delivered sooner. However, ideally, they should be delivered on the same date.
This has caused a problem for me since last Monday when I started using Tracked Services with Royal Mail. When attempting to process orders on Linnworks, I received a message stating that I could not process labels for tracked 48 because the service did not meet the delivery promise. Although I could still send orders out via untracked, I need all my orders to go out via Royal Mail 48 Hour Tracked since I have a volume quota for the pricing they offered on my account.
Another issue I encountered was that for all my untracked 48 Hour service orders before opting into Royal Mail tracked, anything over 1KG was being charged a higher rate than anything under 1KG. I purchase all my RM labels via buy shipping when processing Amazon orders, but I thought RM customers were charged based on an average weight for the end-of-day manifest, not on a per-order basis.
Any advise would be greatly appreciated. Has anyone else had a similar experience?
Please see the screenshot below taken a few days ago (pricing redacted)
As you can see - Tracked 48 shows as Thurs 13th of April, Untracked “… 48 (Parcel) (CRL)” shows as Tue, 11 of April.
Thanks
John
6 replies
Seller_7VbclcPFFRTnc
You posted this on Sunday 9th so how does delivery show as Saturday 8th ?!
Seller_pSPfyXwI4SGR9
I am still getting this issue, please advise as to what the issue may be.
Seller_tRuvBEHDedp4q
Unfortunately this is often a known issue if you are also using Shipping Setting Automation (SSA) I have seen the issue myself where I am unable to buy the Tracked service but the Parcel service is ok.
Amazon determine delivery times based on courier, service selected and delivery location. As Amazon are so focused on percentages then lets say just 5 parcels were delayed. As most deliveries will be by Parcel48 (lets say 1000) then 5 late deliveries will give a score of 0.5%. However only 100 Tracked48 parcels may have been sent to that location. 5 late deliveries of these would give a score of 5%. So Amazon determine that 5% of Tracked48 compared to 0.5% of Parcel48 is taking longer and add a day or so to the estimated delivery time for Tracked48.
Try disabling SSA.
If you are not using SSA then try enabling it as often you get the opposite effect (why is anyones guess as Amazon do not let us see the algorithm it uses)
