Royal Mail surcharging tracked 48 services now
This is just a head up to check your Royal Mail invoices as they now seem to be surcharging Tracked 48 parcels at £7.50 a for being oversized (except same as large letters they are not).
HOWEVER they are not supplying surcharge supplements for them so you have no idea why you were surcharged or why and its impossible to find out (I’ve just spend 2 hours on the phone and spoken to 7 different dept). i am currently waiting for a manager to call back (I’m not holding my breathe)
They simply add it to the price of the delivery on the invoice.
I have hundreds on invoices going back to august that i had no idea about (i haven’t checked any further back)
you can’t put a request into finance as you need the sales order ref number which is on the surcharge supplement that they have not provided!
I will keep going to get this money back but i just thought id give you all a heads up to check your invoices! i only noticed because i wondered how my invoices were staying the same amount when I’ve hardly used them recently because of the strikes.
40 replies
Seller_7VbclcPFFRTnc
Are you registered on the e-invoicing portal as it will tell you the tracking number and dimensions
Seller_tRuvBEHDedp4q
Im sure I read somewhere that Parcel 48 had a limit of 1Kg weight? So I assume Tracked48 is the same.
So if you are sending items Tracked 48 weighing more than this there may well be a surcharge.
I have shipping rules setup so that if weight goes above 1Kg it send via 24 not 48
Seller_7VbclcPFFRTnc
this is the only £7.50 surcharge i could find on Tracked
For customers accessing the network through our Regional Distribution Centres (generally those sending in excess of 300,000 items per year), items over 31.5 litres will be subject to a surcharge of £7.50 per item The 3 longest dimensions (length, width and height) of an item will be measured and then multiplied together to calculate its volume (please note, the measurements will include any packaging).
And this in standard
Incorrect Format – declared as Parcel but seen as Larger than Parcel £7.50 If an item is declared as a Parcel but we identify the dimensions and/or weight as being outside the max allowed for this format (as stated in the Terms & Conditions), we will charge a correction fee per item
Seller_i9WBx8WKcOuuC
Yep we have had these for a while via the invoice portal, annoying but fair enough I suppose. We did get informed of the charges before they started to do it.
Seller_7tBsivXlKCq1B
I ditched Royal Mail OBA as they were doing stuff like this all of the time. When they increased tracked to ridiculous prices I left. I now send large letters without surcharge I also have the facility to use RM, Evri, Amazon, DHL and Yodel from same software. I get better pricing than ever now, but Royal Mail still let us down with late delivery and non scanned items. Amazon Shipping is a very good tracked service offering 1 and 2 day options for large letters up to large parcels. It seems the way forward for us.
Seller_b5LDA3tnfaBEG
I have just had a little check on our RM invoices we only have small amounts of surcharges, but have sent parcels on 48 tracked mostly we send the odd parcel thats at 1.5kg we do separate these out from the average weight items we send at 500g. At a guess this is fuel surcharge not that it says it. example below this was for 4 parcels at average 500g
18 items: @ £3.37 each
Signature POD: 12 @ £0.30 each
Notification: 18 @ £0.00 each
Total Cost Pre Surcharge £64.26, Surcharge of £5.14
Should I be also raise a concern on all these small amounts or carry on my day?
Seller_FZLmkAPnHuV4L
We book our Tracked24 and Tracked48 through the retail site.
We recently asked for an account quote for these services and they are more expensive then retail!
They apologised but said that’s the best we can do.
Will still to Yodel for the lower value/non fragile items and Royal Mail for fragile and valuable.
Seller_ae51e0CJoHqCX
I’ve had a few and there is only one way to stop this nonsense from happening and that is to review your tracked parcel services.
Sadly this is the only service that Royal Mail are interested in peddling but the shear arrogance and liberties they are having with customer accounts has led me to basically use them purely for items that fall well under the tolerances.
I only post CRL at under 750g now. I scrapped my tracked 24s and 48s as they are way more expensive than all of their competitors.
I haven’t looked back since. With other couriers providing you do decent volumes , you end up with a proper account manager that is willing to work with you to keep your business and actually appreciate it.
To be fair I have a 1kg postable with my private courier and this is cost effective for anything that is larger than a large letter with Royal Mail under 500g. I also get the benefit that everything sent with the courier is next day tracked, insured etc.
A few anomalies such as Scottish Highlands, Northern Ireland Jersey etc which i do use Royal Mail for but to be fair once these surcharges started kicking in for me, I did question the fact I was using a slightly more expensive service, to deliver a sub standard service that will try and rip me off every now and then.
Trying to make claims or appeal the charges become so laboursome that even when you do get the refunds from Royal Mail, the time dedicated to this has created more costs and stress and leaves you with three choices.
- Just swallow it and carry on
- Fight to get the money refunded back and suck up the costs in doing this
- Stop using them or reduce your services and you are less exposed to the risk.
If Royal Mail get there way with not being bound by the regulated mail, I simply wouldn’t have a use for them.
Seller_7I19cO8IipzQL
Just a heads up for anyone that might have been getting the £7.50 oversize surcharges in August and September. We’ve just got issued a credit note for approximately £1500 for incorrect oversize surcharges. I phoned our RM account manager to discuss and she said the measuring machines were incorrectly calibrated resulting in incorrect charges in September and October.
We were aware that we had started getting these charges but it coincided with us significantly increasing our volume with RM and sending some larger parcels than usual. So we assumed that’s what the issue was and started sending the bigger parcels with another carrier.
