Save on Postage?

[Toon]

Hi

I currently spend around £35-40 each month with Royal Mail sending my orders out. I simply package them up and go to the Post Office to send them. Is there a cheaper and/or easier alternative to doing this?

[SillyJokes]

yes it's called packet ppst (if you are talking about parcels) ask your Royal Mail sales advisor about it. Saves 10-15% and you have an account so it helps cashflow.

Quite easy to set up and do. Need to be doing 15 parcels + a day.

[nuttytart]

Toon we have just negotiated a contract with ANC - and they are a lot cheaper than parcelforce/royal mail.

They are a franchise organisation with depots all over uk.

HTH

[Toon]

Thanks. Just emailed them to see what they say. How many orders are you expecting to send out if you dont mind me asking?

[nuttytart]

60 per month initially - only just launched website :lol:

[Toon]

So how are they charging you? Have you negotiated to phone them when you have a pick up or do they come to you every day?

[nuttytart]

Hi

Ask me that tomorrow - the sales rep is coming round to finalise everything so i will let you know :D

[nuttytart]

Toon

Had rep round today, basically their minimum monthly requirment is 50 parcels, although they give you 3 months to get up to that.

On the basis of this amount, we have to call them when we have parcels for them to collect. Once you started sending say 100 per month, they will arrange for the driver to call daily without you calling them.

We've negotiated a rate per consignment based on 50 per month, this obviously goes down when you are sending more parcels.

Can pay them monthly even though they invoice you weekly.

Anyway, a hell of a lot easier that traipsing down to the PO every other day :lol:

[Toon]

Thanks NuttyTart. I have emailed them and am now awaiting a reply.

[Anonymous]

I would never use a courier firm again after the debacle of using Citylink.If they could not get a signature for a delivery they would take the parcel back to the depot and try automatically again the next day.if that failed they would leave an outcard for the customer to collect the parcel from their depot.The problem we found is that City link tended to have a limited amount of depots and they could be up to 20 miles away from a customers address.This coupled with the fact that most delivries would be made in the daytime when most people work made it very difficult for customers to retrieve their parcels.That is providing the customer can actually get through on the phone to the depot

My advice if you want an efficient delivery service would be stick with the Royal Mail.if a customer is not availble to take delivery then it is probably in their local post office waiting for them.

As your business grows then get the Packet Post option from Royal Mail.It works very well for us.

[Thais]

[quote="Dozycatfleas"]I would never use a courier firm again after the debacle of using Citylink.If they could not get a signature for a delivery they would take the parcel back to the depot and try automatically again the next day.if that failed they would leave an outcard for the customer to collect the parcel from their depot.The problem we found is that City link tended to have a limited amount of depots and they could be up to 20 miles away from a customers address.This coupled with the fact that most delivries would be made in the daytime when most people work made it very difficult for customers to retrieve their parcels.That is providing the customer can actually get through on the phone to the depot

quote]

I agree with you totally about Citylink - they're the pits!! :evil:
They have an online tracking service - when you don't receive your parcel & look it up, you find they say they've been to your address twice & left notes telling you...but in fact they never come near you! And never leave you a note to say they've been, of course! You then have to get in your car & drive miles to pick up your parcel. This has happened to me 3 times, and I wrote a stinking letter to the branch manager....never got a reply! :evil:

I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one this has happened to! Avoid them at all costs! :evil:

[Alpha]

Just to add bit of annoyance at City Link.
I purchased a printer from e buyer and it was delivered while I was out at a client in Evesham all day and didnt get back until 6 pm. There was no warning that it would be delivered from the supplier or city link.
The card says that they will attempt to re deliver next day unless they received a call re arranging it. Strangely enough they do not answer the telephone after 6 pm so I tried from 8 am onwards the next day and finallly got someone to answer the telephone (in between many engaged tones) at 10:30.
The person on the other end of the telephone was totally unhelpful with an attitude of tough its being delivered today.
After some remonstrating about the fact that I was not going to be in and they didnt really give much chance to re arrange all I got from him was that I would have to arrange to collect from the depot(20 miles away) so I finally resorted to blowing up and telling them not to bother keeping it as I would contact e buyer and tell them I as cancelling the order and the reason why.
The person on the other end of the telephone was not in the least concerned.

Strangely enough and much to my surprise it was delivered again two days later.

Given my experience of them I wouldnt advise anyone to use City Link if they want to keep customers.

[SillyJokes]

Couriers are not necessarily better than Royal Mail by any stretch.

We use Target and get charged £3 if they have to redeliver should the customer be out on the first attempt.

I usually email the customer when an attempt has been made and many say they did not receive a card.

If custoemrs could provide a delivery address where someone was in to accept delivery everyone's life would be a darn site easier.

Nutty Tart, you will get another problem with your gift delivery. People who are not expecting a delivery simply won't bother to go and collect when they don't know what the item is. If they don't get carded they won't ever know a delivery was attempted because they are not expecting it and the goods will eventually come back to you and if not spoilt you will have to pay to reattempt the parcel.

[Thais]

Alan, re: Citylink

I had a similar experience the third time - I had told Citylink to send the item back & they said they would charge me £6.40 for this!! :shock: I refused to pay it, told them to take me to court & told the supplier I was going to cancel my CC payment with them.

Citylink delivered at 9.00am the next day! (And you're right - the peeps you speak to on the phone don't give a toss :evil: )

Sillyjokes said:
"If custoemrs could provide a delivery address where someone was in to accept delivery everyone's life would be a darn site easier."

I stayed indoors ALL DAY waiting for my Citylink delivery which never appeared! The same night, I checked the online tracking & it said delivery had been attempted & customer ticketed!! LIARS!

[nuttytart]

Nutty Tart, you will get another problem with your gift delivery. People who are not expecting a delivery simply won't bother to go and collect when they don't know what the item is. If they don't get carded they won't ever know a delivery was attempted because they are not expecting it and the goods will eventually come back to you and if not spoilt you will have to pay to reattempt the parcel.

We've used Parcelforce (on the whole ok, few delayed deliveries) but they are too expensive for us at the moment, Royal Mail who seem ok so far but no tracking facility, and have heard good reports about ANC so we are just going to suck it and see. Some horror stories above, but then Royal Mail have had their fair share of slatings recently, guess we will just have to see how it goes.

[SillyJokes]

Are your parcels over 2kg? If not try Royal Mail Special Delivery.

You don't have to set up a contract and its a good service, although not as good as it used to be.

Post people know the area well and usually deliver even to the most obscure addresses that couriers often struggle with ie farm cottages and islands in the Thames (don't ask)

[nuttytart]

Are your parcels over 2kg? If not try Royal Mail Special Delivery.

Mixture really, most about 3kg. What sort of charge do royal mail make for special delivery (and can you track it?).

usually deliver even to the most obscure addresses that couriers often struggle with ie farm cottages and islands in the Thames (don't ask)

Of course I've just got to ask :wink:

[SillyJokes]

under 2kg it's about £7m, over 2kg it's about £18.90


I'm not telling about the thames thing except there was a draw bridge and the courier couldn't find it nad I had to send a load of stuff to the middle of some woods instead

[Toon]

under 2kg it's about £7m,

£7m for a parcel? That's a lot of money:-)

[kerryn]

Sounds interesting as we use good old PO so that they can lose stuff or Interlink for the larger stuff.

I send between 5 -30 parcels a day and use interlink about 3-5 times a week, Im pretty lucky that the village PO will take the bag of parcels and weigh and stamp them up then next morning I pop in and pay - they even do the POP for me.

My main problem is that much of my stuff is very light and is cheaper to send by PO - down side is the black hole some of it disappears into (Ive been told its in portsmouth but not sure if someone was pulling my leg)

My bulkier stuff is Interlink who have been great so far but I wish I could ge the price down and send more by courier - many of my customers are mums at home so generally they are around during the day.

Might give ANC a buzz

My bad experience was parcels2go - they managed to lose my parcel being sent to scotland - when they finally tracked it down agreed to resend to liverpool (where my MIL was heading for chrismas) - when it turned up it was the wrong parcel (not mine) but the right village and the right surname - just wrong family (begining to sound like a sit com)- when the right parcel turned up on christmas eve it was damaged

And I once had to collect a parcel from securicor and watched in horror as parcel after parcel was thrown from a van into the loading bay floor - mad mental note never to use them.

Kerry

[SillyJokes]

Kerryn, if you are doing about 5,000 parcels a year - which you are - you can do packet post which is up to 15% cheaper and they will pick up from your place. Ask your Royal Mail rep about this.

You don't stick on stamps, you use a hand stamp and a scales to calculate the average weight of your days' parcels and pay that way. It works out cheaper, faster and easier.

We still use Royal Mail for most of our dispatches which are light and valued at less than £30. Yes, they loose a few, but they also deliver many next day or within three working days for a very low cost. Couriers cannot match them for low weight, low value goods and customers don't like to pay a lot for delivery of low cost items.

[coxadmin]

Am I the only person not to have had problems with CityLink?

I've had nothing but excellent service from them.

My husband is a driver for another national delivery firm, so I get to hear of the challenges the drivers face.

From what I've heard, I think it depends very much on the driver - whether they care about their job enough. My mother-in-law has told me of a time in the lead up to Christmas when my husband did everything he coudl to get a parcel to a customer in time for Christmas.

Recently he was temporarily assigned to another area for a couple of weeks and some of his customers were desperate to have him back on his usual route.

It's the same with any experience - we tend to tell more people about the bad than we do the good.

coxadmin
www.coxadmin.co.uk

[Thais]

Coxadmin
I expect you are right, but I'm afraid I never had anything but bad experiences with Citylink. :( When I order things now, I always ask the company if it uses Citylink and if they say yes, I cancel the order!!

You must be one of the lucky ones.

[Ozzy]

CityLink operate a franchise arrangement with each depot, so where one person may get a great service at one branch another branch isn't governed by the same management and service may not be so great.
A friend currently uses CityLink and has been happy with them. However, as a cost saving he is moving from them to RoyalMail.

I have used Royal Mail for the past couple of years and been happy with the service. Yes a few parcels have been lost (including recorded delivery ones!) but the cost savings overall outweigh the cost of resending the odd lost package.