I've just refunded my second UK Ebay buyer this summer/ autumn. The items, vintage toys all rooted out of car boot rummage boxes with care and attention by myself, were lost in the post and never arrived at their UK destinations.
I am getting pretty damn tired of it.
Just how many parcels do the Royal mail lose? Where the hell do they go?
I have learnt my lesson and will now have to charge extra for tracked mail every time.
What's your experience of your postal service as sellers or buyers readers?
Mostly good but I recently bought the new Star Cops book and it arrived in a wet, shredded packet! Thankfully, it was a new book and the publishers kindly replaced it.
ReplyDeleteWhich courier was it Kev?
DeleteRoyal Mail
DeleteI am happy to say that nothing has gone missing for me (buying, havn't graduated to selling yet).
ReplyDeleteA couple of boxes have arrived a bit battered, but the contents were well packaged so still ok.
Items have been delivered by Royal Mail, Hermes, DPD and others I cant recall atm. Most (>90%) of my deliveries are tracked.
Glad you've had good experience TT. Mine's just got worse. A special gift sent Signed For has apparently been delivered to my home and .... signed for ... but it's not here and no-one signed for anything today! Really sick of Royal Mail.
DeleteMixed results with my Ebay purchases. A book that I wanted desperately never arrived (although the seller gave me a full refund) whereas a Matt Mason item I'd been seeking for a long time arrived safely.
ReplyDeleteBiggest impact seems to be delivery times. Small things like comics usually take 8-10 days to get from the UK to Oz, but are now taking up to 8 weeks. And one small item (envelope size) took 9 weeks from the USA. Must be something to do with everyone shopping from home and reduced air flights?
Cheers, Tony
Where do these things go Tony that don't arrive? Surely they have return addresses on. Do the wrong recipients simply keep hold of these things that we should be getting? How frustrating it is!
DeleteSometimes they get knocked off by the posties. Saw a news article the other day where a postman around here was arrested for having pinched lots of parcels during the Covid lockdown...
DeleteCheers, Tony
Sorry to hear about these postal issues, Woodsy. Sounds frustrating. These days the majority of items I sell on ebay are only sent with a tracking number, insurance and a delivery signature at the other end. The down side being the additional cost puts some buyers off. I offer a 'buyer collects' option for some items as well. Smaller inexpensive items tend to go on local facebook selling pages, as 'buyer collects'. A good way to avoid buyer disputes :)
ReplyDeleteI have just switched to posting my sold items with signed for too Tone but I've done it reluctantly and too late for some lost stuff. Ironically the worst case now for me is a book on plastic cars from the 60's that my wife ordered for my birthday and it was delivered signed for yesterday... just not tour house! Someone else signed for it and that someone is completely unknown to us and our neighbours! My wife has hit the local facebook group and our Postie has conformed that no parcel was signed for at our house yesterday. Its been sent somewhere else! Hopefully our Postie will pull some strings and find out where the hell it went and who signed for it! We have their surname, which is recorded on the tracking site of Royal Mail. What a mess!
DeleteI once received, via ebay, a baseball cap that I hadn't ordered. It came from the USA and there was no clue about who sent it or where it was actually meant to be going! It took ages to get to speak to a human being at ebay. They could not help and suggested I throw it away if I didn't want it! In the end, I sent it back to the manufacturer, whose name was on the label, best I could do. I suppose it's amazing the system works at all.
ReplyDeleteIt was my cap Kev!
DeleteHa! Well, it's gone home!
DeleteGood grief, I've had so-o many misadventures with the local belgian post.
ReplyDeleteLast was a box with four fixer-upper Lego cars. Got returned to sender because of a "faulty address" which translates as "postman couldn't be bothered to ask the central reception desk at work", then lost without a trace, tracking notwithstanding. And then some woman from the PO ringing me up back after my enquiries that I as a receiver can't register complaints and everything was due to the cheap service paid for by the seller in Germany. Another time something got returned to sender in France because it had gone to another town (one digit difference in postcode) where they couldn't be bothered to send it on to the right town. Said it was a fault in the address but luckily the seller in France had photographed his copy of the waybill to show it wasn't and perfectly legible too. So that got intercepted and sent to me with apologies. Couple of other items in regular mail never turned up. Thankfully nothing extremely important or valuable but it still rankles.
On the plus side (credit where due) the local mailman misdelivered something, admitted responsibility, but then rang two weeks later to hand over the parcel he had managed to track down and retrieve from the wrong address.
But yes - where do all these lost things go. It's a disgrace that after having survived for many decades, some postal incompetent manages to lose them without trace.
Best -- Paul
Good rant that Paul. I enjoyed it! Glad its not just Blighty! God forbod that something really important like an unseen SpaceX toy or a SWORD Nuke Ferry goes missing! Incidentally I heard on the radio yesterday that Post Offices here are thinking of ditching their Royal Mail responsibilities and focusing on Amazon! Its a modern world!
DeleteDelivery men usually just sign for items themselves and post the through the letterbox, rather than wait for you to get to the door. I sent two items through the post at the same time, one a 2nd class parcel, the other a 1st class large letter. 2nd class item turned up 3 days later, 1st class item took 19 days to arrive, despite RM's aimed delivery being next working day for 1st class - and it being a local address.
ReplyDeleteYeah, Covid has stopped all the signatures Kid hasn't it. My recent parcel was signed CV19 when I tracked it online. I didn't realise Viruses could write!
DeleteGenerally I'd say things are better than they have been in the past as far as turning-up goes, I used to negative-feedback about 1-in-10 items back in 2006/7, while so far this year (when I've bought more than for a long time) I've only had one real problem, still on-going; a parcel from the 'States which landed in Heathrow on the 5th (according to evilBay's tracker) and was last heard of in a sorting office in Thailand on the 14th! I am in touch with Royal Fail's CEO's office, and have had a rant on Faceplant! Timeings are hit and miss, Poland a week, Lithuania or Latvia 9/10 days, but next door Russia takes over two weeks?
ReplyDeleteH
Wow, the CEO Hugh! Mr or Missus Mail themselves! I can just see them sat in a huge pile of letters with thousands of minions opening complaints all around them! I think Covid has screwed a lot of things up including the mail.
DeleteI suspect They loaded a whole cage (100-250) parcels without reading the bar-code! Off it went for a round tour of Asia! Royal fail though then adjusted their teaching system to say it was still coming from the US, even though it had already been here, and this afternoon she tried to blame the Americans for sending it straight to Thailand, even though eBay's tracker shows the whole sordid story! Six days in London, four days in Thailand - which it left four days ago, still no sign of it here!!!
DeleteAll CEO eMails are available on a website, usually all the shareholders/board members so you can really rare-up cat if you want to!
H
https://www.ceoemail.com/index.php?s=R
DeleteH
Ah, parcels doing a grand tour sounds familiar.
DeleteLate 90s I was getting Matt Mason stuff from the US (when parcel mail from there cost only half of what it is today). Had stuff come in late, with stamps and stickers indicating it had gone to Belgrade, Belize and the Bahamas first. I guess somebody in a sorting centre had poor basketball skills, but at least it turned up in Belgium in the end!
Best -- Paul
Where's Pat when you need him ?
ReplyDeleteMish.
Chasing his cat!
DeleteSo far only one of my sales has been lost during the past umpteen years. As a buyer, I have noticed a l-o-n-g lead time for parcels coming out of Europe. 3 months seems to be a norm now. Here Stateside, the USPS has finally made tracking numbers standard on all parcels at no extra charge and you can go to their website to get tracking information.
ReplyDeleteTracking on all parcels for free is amazing Ed! I hope the Post Office are listening!
Delete