Competition for Royal Mail. Door to door & cheaper!!!

[waynemanor1953]

Received an email this morning and looking good at £3.99 a package

http://www.myparceldelivery.com/?utm...ParcelDelivery

Had to come after the recent price increase.

[kreativebargains]

There are a few like this, www.parcelmonkey.co.uk , www.parcel2go.com booked a parcel in with Hermes earlier. through parcel2go, Post office, £8.80 and I take it to the Post Office, I am paying £4.99 and they collect. Delivery is slightly slower, but at almost £4 cheaper there's no point using the Post Office. I have said on other posts, they have seriously shot themselves in the foot with these increases, and with luck the competition will reduce prices or increase service and delivery for the other couriers.

[dave1066]

Don't like waiting for parcels to be picked up, so prefer to take to Post Office.

Have used http://www.collectplus.co.uk as there are loads shops that you can drop your packages at (easy to buy/print label and post)

[MPS16]

Its horses for coarses.

Royal Mail Packets 0-750 grams at £2.20 is hard to beat.

[Armstrongs]

Don't like waiting for parcels to be picked up, so prefer to take to Post Office.

Have used http://www.collectplus.co.uk as there are loads shops that you can drop your packages at (easy to buy/print label and post)

We are giving collect+ a tryout too.......

So far so good!
Our local pick up store is open 6am - 6pm, plus, Sundays & bank holidays........
and at £3.99 for a 1-2kg parcel.....with tracking.....it's a no brainer!

Delivery times seem to be on par with Royal Mail second class or standard parcels.

Yvonne x

[kevster1]

yes have used collect+ in the past too
have had no issues to date they are good

[KAYS6912]

We are giving collect+ a tryout too.......

So far so good!
Our local pick up store is open 6am - 6pm, plus, Sundays & bank holidays........
and at £3.99 for a 1-2kg parcel.....with tracking.....it's a no brainer!

Delivery times seem to be on par with Royal Mail second class or standard parcels.

Yvonne x

I've had a few problems with Collect+. One was a "missing parcel" which, after a bit of detective work appeared to be a driver who either couldn't read or was just too bliddy lazy! I got full compensation for that one. The most recent was a parcel going from here to Edinburgh which took 6 working days (although on the tracking it said they'd "attempted" delivery on 5th day and left a card. Buyer didn't get any card - go figure. Not only that, the parcel was in the Nisa store for almost 30 hours before it was collected. I know for a fact that the Yodel vans are in the area every single day except Sunday.

I said after the first brouhaha that hell would freeze over before I used them again but decided to do so because of the price hikes. First one was fine, then the Edinburgh one shot it out of the water. Again, I was compensated with a small discount - just to keep my trap shut I think but I'd rather have good service, so won't be using Collect+ again unless its returning catalogue items. I'd rather pay an extra £1 for peace of mind.

I use P2G a lot and had already booked two collections with Hermes for Friday morning. I got a BN sale on here on Thursday so decided to try for another collection. I was halfway through entering all the details when I got an error message stating that collection date was no longer available. The air was blue cos I had to go right back to the beginning and start again - and because I hadn't noted the dimensions of the parcel, had to do all that again too! I went onto P2G's facebook page and mentioned what had happened and after a bit of toing and froing, ended up with a 100% discount for one of the premier services. Just shows, it pays to complain especially when the complaints are 100% legitimate.

[rokins_toys]

To be honest, these other operators are still not as cheap as Royal Mail on most weights that are most commonly used. I am not going to expect a customer to pay £3.99 plus the cost of packaging materials to send a single carded action figure! Yes, other operators are probably decent on price when it comes to much heavier items, especially over 1000g, but I do not have many items weighing over 1000g including packaging materials. Even when I have a buyer purchasing multiple items, the weight is still usually under 1000g including packaging materials.

I still believe strongly that Royal Mail should have kept the small packets "up to 250g" for items that fall under this including packaging materials because it is now ridiculously overpriced for such lighter items now. I used to be able to send a single loose action figure for £2.00 (stamp + packaging materials) and now I have to charge over £2.60 for specific loose action figures depending on their size and accessories, and that is using second class services! A lot of loose action figures I can get away with sending them as "large letter" and can send them first class still.

Royal Mail have really screwed up this time. They are making postage costs unnecessarily expensive in some weights and their limitations are ridiculous, especially by classing that a "large letter" can be a max depth of 5mm, I have never in my life seen a letterbox THAT small!! They could easily change the max depth of a large letter to 1.5cm (15mm).

Royal Mail's price changes in 2011 effectively killed off my international sales, including Europe, the price changes this year have sealed the coffin and buried any chance of international sales for me now as sending just a single carded action figure to Europe or USA/Canada is just far too expensive because the weight I have to use has gone up way over £1.00. So Royal Mail have finished off my international sales for good because what I now have to charge for shipping to Europe and ROW, I would not pay myself if I was buying so I know potential customers will not pay it, especially when in a lot fo cases, the shipping costs are now almost the same price as the item I am selling or the shipping is higher than the item I am selling when it comes to single carded action figures in particular.

It wouldn't be so bad if I was sending a minimum of 5,000 parcels per year as then I'd qualify for the cheaper business tariff for parcels/packets, even though a lot of small business do not send this many parcels per year so they have to use the public tariff, whcih is why Royal Mail should get their heads out of their arses and help smaller businesses by reducing this limit to 500 parcels per year to help smaller business and help the economy!

[hush77hush]

Hi all just thought i would give you guys a heads up about these so called shipping companies.
i work for one of the biggest loggistics companys in the world and most of these companies have been at one time our customers.
how most of them work is thay have accounts with all the big delivery companies and pay for x amount of shipments per year to go through the bigger companies network gain a large discounts.
They are very good if all you are looking for is a cheep price to ship the odd parcel but when things go wrong thats when the problems start.
the way they make most of there bookings with the larger companies is via email or web shipping links and most of the time they miss off loads of infomation the customer has provided to them you may say so what but when a driver gets a collection with no house number and tel number or it just say the customer name and pick up address london no phone number or anything else it does make it hard for a driver to collect.
when challenged on this they don't care they have had there money from the customer.
and that is one of the main bug bears for the bigger compaines they don't charge cancelation fee to these companies and when they pass on duff info for collections or just don't tell the customer they are coming the only people that get paid is these compaines so the bigger company has to stump the cost of the fuel the time and wages of the person making the collection also most of them don't refund they will only offer a credit for another shippment but me personally if some one sfuffs up i would then like to take my buisness else where and in this case I would end up out of pocket so i would be tied to these compaines till the shipment was completed.
Then there is the delivery these compaines give you a track number for dhl,ups,fedex tnt etc but legally if anything goes wrong with the shippment the you are not the direct customer to these bigger companies and they done not and sometime can not help you and will pass you back to the company you paid your monies to who in many case's will just pass you back to the actual shipper so you will be yo yo ing between the two compaines.
Just think about it this way before you use these companies that are mainly advertised online anyone can set up as one of them you just need a phone line email address and free web page and a shipping account and you could set up from your own back bed room and sit back and watch the money roll in and all you have to do is fire off a few emails who cares what happens after that they have already got there money.
drop off points are a good idea collection most days or the next day but again make sure you they are what they say they are some of these drop off point can be as dodgy as the middle men alreay mentioned.
If you are starting to ship alot of items I would sugest going directlly to the bigger companies and asking about there accounts you will be suprised what they can offer joe public and in the end you may work up better rates then what these middle men can offer any way.

[ragmansbugle]

" I still believe strongly that Royal Mail should have kept the small packets "up to 250g" for items that fall under this including packaging materials because it is now ridiculously overpriced for such lighter items now ".

It looks like Royal Mail have the monopoly here 'cos all the alternative services seem to be cheaper for the heavier parcels but dearer than RM on the lighter items