Problem of 'lost' customer mail

[Leesalad]

I sell sports clothing online and ship most of my orders using Royal Mail business standard 1st class. I dispatch between 30-50 orders a day and have found that 1%-2% of all orders are never delivered to customers, presumably 'lost' in the Royal Mail postal system. On average customers 15 parcels a month go missing. I automatically send out a replacement to customers and put in claim for the loss to Royal Mail.

I would be really interested to know if other online retailers have experienced a similar problem and if so what they have done to try and reduce the loss rate. I suppose the obvious answer is send orders by recorded mail / 'signed for' but the significantly higher costs tends to put customers off purchasing the item in the first place! Your thoughts would be much appreciated.

 

[kulture]

My loss rate is considerably less. In fact it approaches 0. I suspect that your loss rate is down to what you sell, and thus your customers. As such do the maths, recorded delivery is about £0.75 more to post. It will probably considerably reduce your "lost" parcels, and if the cost of replacement exceeds the extra cost of post, then go for it.

 

[dx3webs]

I sell sports clothing online and ship most of my orders using Royal Mail business standard 1st class. I dispatch between 30-50 orders a day and have found that 1%-2% of all orders are never delivered to customers, presumably 'lost' in the Royal Mail postal system. On average customers 15 parcels a month go missing. I automatically send out a replacement to customers and put in claim for the loss to Royal Mail.

I would be really interested to know if other online retailers have experienced a similar problem and if so what they have done to try and reduce the loss rate. I suppose the obvious answer is send orders by recorded mail / 'signed for' but the significantly higher costs tends to put customers off purchasing the item in the first place! Your thoughts would be much appreciated.

Yeh.. highly suspicious.. give recorded a try for a month and see what happens

 

[marketingquotes]

My dad put his watch into the jewelers (a rolex) and they sent a consignment to Switzerland to get fixed.

The box 'was lost' - a box of rolex watches lost in the system.

Hmmm

 

[danny156]

I have always put INR rates down to purely what you sell

We don't tend to suffer to highly from INRs and are below 0.5% but we do get a lot of disliked / not wanted items - but we are in clothing and apparel

So depends what you sell but do try recorded - we very rarely get one of these go missing

 

[deniser]

We always use recorded unless the value is under £15. Our loss rate is about 1 in 1000.

As has already been mentioned above, you need to sit down and do the maths taking into account:

1. extra cost of using recorded delivery
2. to what extent the extra cost will be absorbed by your customers ie. can you add it or does it eat into your postage profits
3. the extent to which RM does actually compensate you for the lost parcels ie. does their £46 limit cover the value or not?
4. whether you have the time to complete the claim forms
5. how much time is spent in sorting out lost parcels and customer complaints.

For us the benefits of not having to do 10 times as much of number 5 far outweighs any financial benefit of not sending recorded. Our average postal cost is £3.20 including recorded and we charge our customers a flat rate of £3.50 which they seem happy with so it's not costing us anything and customers do like to receive a tracking number.

If we didn't offer a tracking number (which enables them to contact their sorting office to ask if they have it) I do think customers would expect to pay less for postage.

With your volumes would you not be far better off with the RM tracked service?