<POSTAGE RANT>
This comes up over and over. So here's the "low down" (again!).
OK, I "get it" postage prices are "high" in my store. What I charge is actually the "at cost" value of posting items. This is set by the courier such as Royal Mail, NOT myself!
In fact, I hardly take into account buying £200+ in packing tape, boxes, jiffy bags, bubble wrap etc into the postage price and generally the postage cost I charge barely covers the actual postage cost overall. So no, I can't "negotiate" on postage prices. If you want to do that, go to royalmail.com
There is then the guys who say, "This can go in a jiffy for like £2". OK, I "get it", it probably can. BUT...
If I do send in a jiffy bag and it gets crushed, who is going to get the blame? YOU decided to have it sent that way, so YOU take FULL responsibility if it arrives damaged (sorry!)
Also, Similar with tracking. Adds £4 easily to the price. Can I send it "not tracked", Sure! If the item doesn't turn up, there is no way to track it, YOU wanted it sent that way, so if it gets lost then it's YOUR responsibility to sort it out (sorry!)
It gets annoying when people don't pay for tracking then keep emailing me abuse each day saying "where the hell is my package?" Well, how the hell do I know ?!, you didn't pay for tracking so quit complaining to me about it.
So now anyone reading this is going to run a mile at my poor business ethics.. well.. actually not :) If that's what you "got" from this post, then you haven't understood my point.
All the items in my store go packaged in a way I deem fit to survive the postal system. If you have any "custom requirements" to packing, sure, let me know, I will try my best to accommodate your wishes.
My items are sent tracked, as I (as I am sure you do) want to know where your package is ?! Sometimes due to airport delays (weather, terrorists etc) things get delayed. Packages can take 2weeks to 4 months to arrive. I would rather you know the status of your package!
After each item is posted, you are sent an email with the tracking code. This can take up to a week as I cannot go to the post office every single day of the week. So check your emails for the tracking code!!
..and for the love of god, whitelist my domain in your spam filters!! The amount of emails I get saying "where's my package" when I go to the trouble of sending out tracking emails is unbelievable!
:)
</RANT>
I'm so sorry to read that you have to fight idiots like this. I know this from Jookie's experience, it can be incredibly demotivating because you're dealing with, well, idiots.
ReplyDeleteThank you for surviving this in the name of the rest of us who are OK with any price you set because it's well worth it.
Surely if you spending decent money on rare parts for what would be by now a serious love (yes your Atari) you would pay the extra £2/3 for tracking/insurance. Personally I would pay the extra because I want it yesterday :p
ReplyDeleteRoyal Mail are a tad heavy handed I have found many times, as you said I found the bigger cost to be the actual decent boxes, tapes, wraps, trying to find ways to cut those costs all the time here.
I've sent a PLCC IC in a jiffy bag and it arrived crushed somehow. One package was to TerribleFire guy, he mentioned it actually. Tracked is a must. I could send out 2 packages to the same address the same day and one would go missing for 4 months.
ReplyDeleteMost get stuff from China cheap. I mean 99p item, free postage, including the item! China sellers get subsidies from the government and they pay the bulk of the postage costs for them. Us in the UK don't get that.
China sellers may pay 10p to post a item to UK. UK to China is probably more like £5. But people seem to think, if China can offer free postage, or dirt cheap postage, why can't I ? People never seem to look at the big picture. OR even question how can China post a item for 99p to the UK when you only have to look at the price calculators on any courier site and see its impossible.
Yeah, it's a problem I'm familiar with as a customer of various small time bands and record labels (and other artistic endeavours) from around the world, but mainly EU and the US. I hate how much it adds to the cost to get things sent here, especially with any kind of tracking, and then there's often custom duties to be paid too (which almost always then adds a Royal Mail handling fee). It can easily double the price of an item, or worse...
ReplyDeleteBut, I can't really blame the sender for that. They're as much held to ransom by the couriers, postal services, shipping companies as anyone else. I may gripe to them that I'd have loved to buy more or go for a higher tier thing but the postage ate up too much of my budget, but always make plain I don't hold them responsible. I mean... I see too often just how much it sends even to send a not particularly large parcel of christmas gifts to family halfway across the country, let alone internationally. It's just an expensive business in this day and age where the bedrock of the postal system has been stripped out first by telephone and fax, then by email and the internet in general.
I suppose it must be bulk ebay sellers, including those in china, who have warped perceptions somewhat. They plough through so much stock on a daily basis, and are then able to both batch up their dispatches and negotiate high-volume discount rates with long-distance carriers and other services, that they make everyone else look expensive as a result (like, you can get small things sent to you individually halfway round the world for under a pound, or sometimes even free... ie, absorbed into the still not particularly high price of the item itself)... especially anyone essentially making bespoke goods and sending them out one at a time...