Royal Mail OBA

[Drax35]

Royal Mail are giving me a major headache with setting up an account and organising collections/drop off, I'm hoping someone has some advice!

At present, we use the consumer Click & Drop site and take our parcels to be scanned at the sorting office each afternoon. We currently do 120-200 parcels a week, Tracked 24/48, mainly small parcel but 2-3 medium parcels a day. The sorting office are helpful, but have expressed that we should consider moving to an account and collection. Additionally, on days the sorting office does a half day, we are filling up to two local parcel postboxes such that nobody else can fit anything into them!

The "New Business Manager" we've been assigned at Royal Mail seems completely out of her depth. We've been told that business pricing is higher than consumer, they won't match their retail prices for us and the only way we can pay on account is if we accept the higher prices. She also cannot explain how collections can be arranged.

Is this just the standard of people who work at Royal Mail, or does anyone have a Royal Mail contact that might be able to help us out? Their pricing is, in general, competitive but I'm not willing for my loyalty to be rewarded by paying a premium!

 

[LPB 123]

What costs are you being quoted for 24/48 tracked? It should certainly be cheaper with a business account than personal account.

 

[paulears]

I don't use RM much now but when I do a click and collect, there's no price difference for the collection, so can't you use that service and stay as you are and not have to go to them?

 

[LMN118]

It is not, my previous price was £5.09, not including VAT or the 8% surcharge on orders. 2KG small parcel. This was after I renegotiated the price as they had increased it.

At the time consumer click and drop was £4.65 including VAT and no surcharge.

A couple of months ago my price went up to £7.09 per parcel excluding VAT and surcharges as my average was 20g over 2KG.

Currently I believe consumer is £3.65 including VAT, with free collection which was a supposed benefit of the business account.

This happened previously but I argued with them. My "Account Manager" spent a month arguing with me about it, saying I could claim VAT back on business pricing and not on consumer pricing. He argued my business prices were better than consumer and when I provided full costing went silent.

Even if you went, oh you are now on medium parcels, consumer is still cheaper.

 

[LPB 123]

It's stupid that they are offering personal customers cheaper pricing than for a business account as you say.

I guess the only argument for a business account is timed daily collections and better integrations with order management systems etc. For low volume orders it seems it's best to just use the personal account as the prices are better.

 

[Solly]

There is less and less of a price difference between couriers and RM these days but quite a difference on service quality