Sending to France - La Poste

[lewey]

Does anyone else have much experience of sending items to France via the post service?

We have just expanded our marketing to French consumers, and getting more orders from there, but suddenly are having a spate of problems of lost and broken packages.

They are plastic jars of honey, and over the past 5 years have sent out thousands and thousands through the post, never once had any turn up broken. And enough of these have been sent to other countries, including France. However since last month getting an increase in orders from France, we suddenly have 4 cases of broken items, plus quite a few deliveries that are taking a lot longer to arrive than they should.

I don't know if maybe La Poste have maybe changed something recently, eg started using much bigger (and therefore heavier) bags / containers, or what. But having never had this problem before, am suddenly faced with it.

Wondering if anyone else puts many items into the La Poste system, and how they find their French deliveries going?

Any feedback (that it is fine for you or not) would be appreciated.

Thanks.

[deniser]

I haven't had any problems but the post is slow. But our items are not breakable.

[SteveGibson]

Does anyone else have much experience of sending items to France via the post service?

No experience of sending things to France, but I used to live in Paris and books ordered from Amazon (.co.uk or .com) would go missing quite regularly...

Steve

[sysops]

We ship all over Europe using the postal service, and have been doing so for several years. Over the past 3 months, we've had a dramatic increase in lost and delayed parcels, particularly to Italy.

This has been so severe that we've had to increase our delivery charges and send all Euro parcels ISF.

[Burden]

Ive not had any problems in this area thankfully (due to non breakable items) but they do go missing a bit in France.

[dagr]

I haven't had problems with things getting broken (although I haven't sent a lot), but over the last two years we seem to be getting more and more of other people's mail delivered to our address by mistake.

[deniser]

This has been so severe that we've had to increase our delivery charges and send all Euro parcels ISF.

I have always sent them ISF. Those ones never go missing and are supposed to be delivered more quickly.

I charge £7 fixed which covers my goods to Europe on average although mine are not as heavy as honey.

[sysops]

I have always sent them ISF. Those ones never go missing and are supposed to be delivered more quickly.


Indeed - we've always used ISF for orders over £50, but for lower value orders we've used standard international. This allowed us to offer flat-rate to Europe of £5. This has now been increased to £8.

It's unfortunate, but only represents around 4% of our sales, so not a huge problem.

[Christiane]

Same here I use ISF, it cost £3.50 on top of postage but never goes missing. I charge the customer a flat fee.
My items can be breakable but I always use more bubble wrap for international orders and never get any breakages, so don't know about that.

[Burden]

whats ISF --- :$

[sysops]

whats ISF --- :$

International Signed For

[SillyJokes]

When I send a parcel to France I cross my fingers. To my mind their postal system is quite irratic. I know from my sister living there that their 'addresses' often are only refering to a group of homes and rely on the postie knowing everyone in their patch for instance. This works well if the postie knows (and likes) you.........

Luckily we don't get many orders from that country and those are usually ex-pats.

I keep thinking I won't bother sending stuff to Malta any more because I don't know what they do with their parcels but I could probably get it there quicker myself if I waited for my annual holiday. Recently a Halloween parcel arrived there on Oct 30th. It was ordered and sent on September 29th!!!

[lewey]

Thanks for all the responses.

We can't really do much about the speed of La Poste - sending via mail is really our only option due to order sizes and value.

However are now urgently trying to improve the packaging we use, at least for orders sent to France.

[TonyHill]

No experience of sending things to France, but I used to live in Paris and books ordered from Amazon (.co.uk or .com) would go missing quite regularly...

Steve

Gotta agree with Steve here, I'm one of those often perceived as lucky to split my time between UK and Paris and the difference in postal services is striking. La Poste.. things go missing or take twice as long to arrive and trying to get service at the counters is like trying to get blood from a stone. All I can suggest is to go all out and perhaps over-do the packaging just to ensure safety