Large Seller Postage Weight Oddities
Hi everyone.
I tend to buy a lot of books online and recently the good prices have been with one particular large seller, so I have bought a lot of books from them,
I’m a small seller on Amazon and I post books via ‘Buy Postage’ from Amazon. Despite having serious doubts about that, it’s worked out great for me.
I have a scale, I weigh the book and I enter the parcel dimensions and then I stick on the label and drop it off.
Now I understand there are other systems for big sellers. But here is my question. How come the weight entered by the big seller is always grossly below the actual weight of the parcel and how come Royal Mail allow that to happen? I got a book just now that weights just over 1kg. The weight on the label is only 249g. I had a parcel this morning with 3 books, which weighs 2108g and entered is only 747g.
Is this a racket? I’m being charged £2.80 for postage for each book!
Any thoughts?
Best wishes
Alan
0 replies
Seller_BS5lg2keRs2QO
There are services that allow you to average weight across your items. I expect someone with an RM account can confirm more detail.
Seller_esvgLzKXw2YAl
The bigger sellers will send by average weight as Demel has said.
And obviously, the larger quantity you send, the better the prices.
That’s all there really is to it.
Even a basic business account, will give you better prices than you can buy over the counter.
It just depends on the volume that your sending.
Seller_IotgWgSZV4UrT
I’m not saying this seller is doing the same, but a few years ago one of the biggest sellers on eBay was caught cheating on RM weights.
Seller_uP9LqiYV3yKFy
All labels produced with 2d barcode have to show the correct weight, service and whether its a parcel or LL
Prices do differ between a 250g parcel and a 1kg parcel
So yes they are saving money by scamming royal mail
If royal mail catch them out then will issue a £5-£7 surcharge per item wrong
Just a question if they do catch them out, or somebody calls royal mail and reports them
Seller_H4YTzTWjjCyaA
I have OBA and use RM24 and RM48 and i have to input an average weight…click and drop automatically shows that average weight…so i send out 100 items with weights between 50g and 1kg and they all show the average weight not actual.
Seller_VHHjXRfBGam7u
RM don’t require exact weights to be declared on the tracked TPSN TPNN services as they weigh and measure them all
We put 0.9kg on all of ours.
Over a period of time they will, weigh, measure and look at locations shipped to (NI, Highlands and Islands etc) and adjust contract rates depending on these factors
Seller_yKwWOi0MX8lp8
RM PPI has been widely misused by a lot of business customers for the last 25 years with under declared weights etc etc.
RM Revenue Protection have been trying to crack down on it as RM is losing £1m a day, yet it still goes on every day & it’s far too easy.
Seller_DTufFoxJuMU0M
I got a phone call, telling off and a stern warning for putting the average weight on CRL24 items on Click and Drop.
It has to be the actual weight of the individual item, and then C&D will work out the average when you manifest and charge you the average. But each individual label has to be correct.
Seller_DTufFoxJuMU0M
Its more than likely that mega sellers are run by staff, who in my opinion don’t give a damn past their paycheck at the end of the month.
It could be that they are getting surcharges from Royal Mail, but because they are that big and are relying on staff to care, they aren’t noticing.
Or they could of course have some sort of deal with Royal Mail - we will never know
