How much sure I pay in postage charges?

davidtube · Jun 14, 2008

Hi. I'm trying to work out how much businesses pay for postage. I looked at ParcelForce, UPS and some other websites but the prices seem high. With the royal mail anything over 100grams is a parcel so you'd pay £4.20 to post a DVD (or am I wrong?). I'm sure postal DVD rental companies aren't paying that much.
Do businesses who use these services a lot get a discount? And is there a much of a difference in prices between delivery services or are they pretty similar?

mmjosh1010 · Jun 14, 2008

Hi.

Everything over 100grams with Royal mail isn't necessarily a parcel, it is dependant on size now as well don't forget. I would imagine they would only charge you £4.20 if you were sending is via their special delivery service! To find out how much Royal Mail will charge use their 'Price Finder' tool. Simply go onto their website and you'll find it under the postal prices menu (I'd post a link but I'm not allowed yet

)

This is what I use. Also if you have large volumes of mail/parcels to send you could consider getting a franking machine which gives you discount off Royal Mail postal prices, it is not a lot but it all adds up if you post a lot!

If you are a business then you can get a contract account with one of the couriers such as Parcelforce or UPS, they do all tend to be around the same price, depending on how much business you will give them in a week. A company I used to work with used Business Post for their next day service and they were charged £4.95 + VAT for a next day delivery service, this went up to a massive size (not sure exactly) and a maximum of 10KG, anything over that they charged extra.

Hope this helps.

deniser · Jun 14, 2008

We use Royal Mail for most things and our average parcel cost for clothing items including the extra 60p for recorded delivery is £2.12.

The only time Royal Mail is not cost effective is for European parcels over 2 kg with tracking and a signature when we use www.parcel2go.co.uk instead.

We did use Business Post at £4.75 for up to 5kg until they put the minimum up to 1000 parcels a month.

We checked out all the other options and nothing compared to Royal Mail which also includes for that price:
1. unlimited free redeliveries
2. the option to collect from the sorting office or have redelivered to a work address
3. free insurance up to £32
4. same prices for islands, BFPO, northern ireland and channel islands.
which the courier companies did not.

davidtube · Jun 14, 2008

Thanks guys. Saved me a lot of time comparing and trying to work it all out.

gibby · Jun 15, 2008

I suppose it depends on what you are sending

when we started we used royal mail for our shoe deliveries but the islands & highlands were quite expensive.
The 2 big problems we had with royal mail was that they lost many packages, especially if they were smaller ones.
Also the amount of time it took to book them in through the PO was crazy plus the prices quoted online were always different to what we paid at the counter.

We have tried a few couriers and got quotes as low as £4.60.
Business post have been sniffing around for a few weeks and undercut parcelforce.
Interlink were also good @ £5 a parcel.

at the moment price isnt the most important thing as we need a good service.

We found its best to get a quote & wait for them to chase you up to see what they will bring it down to.

G

borobabe · Jun 15, 2008

I use www.interparcel.com for my bigger parcels and royal mail for smaller ones.

Silk · Jun 18, 2008

If you are sending over 100 items a week then your best bet would be PPI (Printed Postage Impressions) combined with an Online Business Account with Royal Mail. For light weight items, up to say 2kg, Royal Mail can't be beaten. A 2kg parcel sent First Class Packet Post costs us a maximum of £3.81, usually far cheaper (£2.36 or even £1.52).

Stay away from Franking Machines as any saving you make on postage are more than swallowed up with machine costs and admin fee's unless you are sending a very large volume of mail. That's why Neopost and Pitney Bowes make so much money.

PPI also creates a very professional look to your postage with your own licence number plus your customers do not know how much you are paying to send their item unlike stamps.

Combine it with Business Collection and you have a very good combination.

As you mentioned DVD's I did a quick check for you. A single disk DVD including Mail Lite envelope comes in at just under 100gms and would cost us 44p to post. A double disk DVD (or Large Letter up to 250 grams) would cost 66p.

KidsBeeHappy · Jun 18, 2008

Try a member on here courir, partic if your looking at high volumes of small packets (that what a dvd would be, not a parcel, but a small packet per the Royal Mail).

A mail solution rather than a parcel solution will be right for you (if all your items as DVD etc then foget parcels - interparcel, dhl, etc), and i know that Micheal will be able to help you with different mailing methods. There are ways to get this cheaper than the post office.

JamesSmyth · Jun 18, 2008

Thanks for the link to 'Parcel2go' deniser.
Have you or anyone used them for a while? Found them to be reliable?

As others suggest I'd recommend Royal Mail packet post along with an arranged collection every day for smaller parcels (up to 3kg) - this works well.

For larger items I book them on 'interparcel' but 'parcel2go' appears to undercut their prices so would be interested to switch over and would be great to hear what peoples experiences with 'Parcel2go' Interparcel have, for me, been great and on the odd occasion when there has been a delay/ cancellation of pick-up (due to driver falling into a pot-hole!) they have phoned to let me know.

Cheers

Silk · Jun 18, 2008

Try a member on here courir, partic if your looking at high volumes of small packets (that what a dvd would be, not a parcel, but a small packet per the Royal Mail).

A DVD is classed as a Large Letter. I'm sorry Boxy but you are not going to be able to beat Royal Mails prices on this format regardless of who the company is. Even Amazon use Royal Mail for DVD's as it is extrememly cost effective and if they could get a comparable service for a penny or two cheaper you can be sure they would.

LianneF · Jun 18, 2008

Silk said:
If you are sending over 100 items a week then your best bet would be PPI (Printed Postage Impressions) combined with an Online Business Account with Royal Mail. For light weight items, up to say 2kg, Royal Mail cant be beaten. A 2kg parcel sent First Class Packet Post costs us a maximum of £3.81, usually far cheaper (£2.36 or even £1.52).

Stay away from Franking Machines as any saving you make on postage are more than swallowed up with machine costs and admin fees unless you are sending a very large volume of mail. Thats why Neopost and Pitney Bowes make so much money.

PPI also creates a very professional look to your postage with your own licence number plus your customers do not know how much you are paying to send their item unlike stamps.

Combine it with Business Collection and you have a very good combination.

As you mentioned DVDs I did a quick check for you. A single disk DVD including Mail Lite envelope comes in at just under 100gms and would cost us 44p to post. A double disk DVD (or Large Letter up to 250 grams) would cost 66p.

Hi Silk
Been looking into PPI after seeing your message, do you weigh all your parcels to work out an average weight for the day as that seems a right pain to me, can you drop them off at your local post office rather than paying for collection and what about if you want to send something recorded do you need to pay full price or just add 72p also in your opinion do less parcels get lost this way rather than stamps?
Regards
Lianne

deniser · Jun 18, 2008

JamesSmyth said:
Thanks for the link to 'Parcel2go' deniser.
Have you or anyone used them for a while? Found them to be reliable?

Cheers

I have been using Parcel2go for several years although not a huge amount as it is really only cost effective for me in certain cases. I think it is part of DHL.

They do offer a discount to Ebay sellers.

They have never not turned up nor failed to deliver a parcel but as I said I haven't been sending lots daily so can't really say.

One thing I would say is that you don't always get the headline price. They have an annoying habit of adding things on like fuel surcharges or putting restrictions in the small print. And the price does fluctuate according to the competition. But all in all it seems like a very good service.

I do find them extra cheap for European deliveries of large boxes.

With Royal Mail I do find that we have a much higher lost parcel rate with ordinary items than with recorded ones so we send almost everything recorded (except drop ship items which the dropshippers won't send recorded). That way the customer can't try it on by saying they haven't received it (which I do suspect in some cases)

gibby · Jun 18, 2008

I heard Amazon stopped using the royal mail some time back.
there was a lot of stories about it in the press. Something to do with a cheaper deal with a rival.

the last few times Ive ordered cds/dvds & bigger stuff from Amazon they have been delivered by a local delivery person, part of a network of some sort.

G

Silk · Jun 18, 2008

I'm still getting Amazon stuff through Royal Mail (had a book this week) but it is true that some items (larger than CDs/DVDs paperbacks are delivered by self employed locals in cars.

PPI is easy, you just keep a note of how many of each items you are sending as you put them in the mail sacks (say 60 Large Letter and 50 Packet Posts for example). You then just weigh the sack (most people use a digital scales as used for course fishing) then you just divide the total weight (less the sack weight) by the number of items in the sack. It takes seconds.
With Packets you can 'adjust' the total by including a couple of large letters if you need to bring the average weight below the threshold if, for example, the average weight is 255 grams adding a couple of light weight Large Letters should bring the average down to say 245 grams thus saving you quite a bit per item.

Royal Mail will provide you with all the stationary free of charge as well as mail sacks. You seal the sacks yourself and can drop them down to your local post office or take them to a sorting office. The problem with taking them to a post office is that the postmaster gets nothing in return so a lot aren't too happy with that arrangement.
Also if you are sending recorded and special deliveries you need to have your books signed off. This is why business Collection is such a good service. However a daily pickup has gone up substantially this year (£450 I think). However if you are spending over £15,000 per year with Royal Mail you'll get it free of charge.

JamesSmyth · Jun 19, 2008

Thanks deniser.

I'll give Parcel2go a shot with a few items and see how they go. I think all these sites (interparcel/ parcel2go etc) are independant as they have a wide range of couriers to choose from. Interparcel say they can offer cheap rates due to the number of people booking though them.

I send all small packages by RM signed for - had the same problem with too many things going missing (or at least customers claiming that they had!) before,

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How much sure I pay in postage charges?

davidtube

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borobabe

Silk

KidsBeeHappy

JamesSmyth

Silk

LianneF

deniser

gibby

Silk

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