Royal Mail International Contract - Pricing for P&P

[juderino]

Hello!

I'm a Royal Mail account holder and I'm switching over to using International Contract Service for my overseas mail.

I wanted to ask anyone else who uses this service; how do you calculate what to charge your customers for P&P?

My understanding is that there's a price per packet and then an additional price per kilo in each mailing. Is that right? If so, does it not make it difficult to work out in advance what a packet will cost?

 

[websnail]

I'm using contract rate with my shopping cart but in my case I rewrote the code for the shipping module so that it would calculate the items weight (which is included with each product) and add on the standing, per-item charge.

For static products (such as those on eBay) I worked out the product weight and then did the same calculation.

You could easily create a little Excel spreadsheet calculator that did the same thing and start plugging in your item weights...


One tip though... The Rest of World (ROW) calculation will almost certainly look wrong for low weight items especially if you're comparing to UK/EU rates. It's not... it really is that insanely low compared to what you pay to send things next door. As a result I had to apply a policy of charging the European rate as a minimum if the ROW price was working out lower.

EDIT: Oh and watch out for VAT. You don't charge it for ROW but you should apply it to the EU rates... From memory all the rates for contract International post are ex' VAT

Hope that helps...

 

[juderino]

Thanks for your reply and info.

The shipping module on my cart works in much the same way. It adds up the item weights, adds a tare weight and then currently looks it up against a table of zone weights.

It looks like I'll have to write some additional code to handle the price per kg that RM adds on top of the price per item.


And thanks for the tip about the ROW items being so much cheaper. At least my Australian customers will be happy to see a price decrease but it's just a shame it's not a bit cheaper in the UK

 

[MediaHeart]

Hi ,

Here is an example:

EU Per item (guessing) = £1.50
EU Per Kilo = £5

If the item you want to send is 500g then:

£5 x 0.5 + 1.50 = £4

So Per Kilo x weight in decimal format + item price.

If you are sending enough internationals to get contract prices , you would probably get a better deal with an alternative provider.


Hope this helps

 

[juderino]

Thank you! That confirms the changes I thought I'd have to make on my shipping module.

If you are sending enough internationals to get contract prices , you would probably get a better deal with an alternative provider.

Do you have any suggestions for alternatives? I had looked into this before but didn't find anywhere cheaper than RM for lighter items (my average packet is about 0.5kg) so I'd be really keen to hear if you know of a cheaper company.

 

[MediaHeart]

Thank you! That confirms the changes I thought I'd have to make on my shipping module.



Do you have any suggestions for alternatives? I had looked into this before but didn't find anywhere cheaper than RM for lighter items (my average packet is about 0.5kg) so I'd be really keen to hear if you know of a cheaper company.

There is an independent postal consultancy Called Postal Options that I have used (01354 695599). Ask for a guy called Dan, he's my account manager. They offer a free service to ebay sellers to save up to 30% on postal costs. International is something that I save 45% on last year by contacting them , whilst maintaining a high service level.

It entirely depends upon daily volumes of UK and International. But give them a call and im sure you wont be disappointed.

 

[juderino]

Thanks, I'll look into it