An Post. Need help to lower postage costs?

ByronB

Does anyone know of any way to lower postage costs if you are sending items within ROI or to the UK/England. For example, if you are sending a toy in a packet and it weighs 250g it will cost €3 postage + €1 packet to ROI and to UK €4 postage + €1 packet.

It there any way to avail of discounts to make it a little cheaper, e.g. a way of getting packets in bulk or making a deal with a postage service if posting a lot of things?

Thank you.

Victor

You can get discounts from An Post, but not much unless you are posting thousands. They may require them to be pre-sorted.

There are many options with packaging. Importantly, is there any way to reduce the package into the next size/weight category.

rubadub

Not sure what you are up to here, but if you were sending say a present abroad it is often cheaper to just order online and get it delivered direct, many will have gift wrap options. The high post costs here really make it prohibitive to sell small items competitively.

If you are an ebay seller you can look at drop shipping options from the likes of dealextreme. This is where you sell the product on ebay, then you buy it on DX and they send it in a blank package to your buyer. So you never touch it and avail of the very low Chinese postage costs. You are of course taking a risk of it being delayed though.

My workplace sends maybe 20 small packages to the UK daily, I never heard of any discount. I think you might get a minor discount on franking machines

Capt'n Midnight

It cost me 95c for a stamp to post an item to the UK,
For €1.17 deal extreme would pay for postage, envelope, and the gizmo and I wouldn't have to go to the post office and queue.

UK post used to be cheaper
http://www.royalmail.com/prices2012
250g large letter is £1.20 in the UK


https://www.anpost.ie/anpost/postalrates/standard+post.htm
250g large letter is €1.50 (but €3.30 to the UK)
Note maximum dept of an inch
https://www.anpost.ie/AnPost/What+Are+You+Sending+Details.htm#largeenvelope
Maximum: Length 400mm; Width 300mm; Depth 25mm


if possible reclassify stuff as printed material they used to do a special rate for printed material but all I can see now is https://www.anpost.ie/AnPost/PostalRates/Publication+Services.htm

ByronB

Thanks for replies, it's because my younger bro has an ebay account that he is using to get rid of all the toys lying around the house!!

But postage prices for toys on ebay for example "from" England "to" ROI is much cheaper for the same weight toy that we can post vice versa with An Post?

ByronB

rubadub wrote: »

Not sure what you are up to here, but if you were sending say a present abroad it is often cheaper to just order online and get it delivered direct, many will have gift wrap options. The high post costs here really make it prohibitive to sell small items competitively.

If you are an ebay seller you can look at drop shipping options from the likes of dealextreme. This is where you sell the product on ebay, then you buy it on DX and they send it in a blank package to your buyer. So you never touch it and avail of the very low Chinese postage costs. You are of course taking a risk of it being delayed though.

My workplace sends maybe 20 small packages to the UK daily, I never heard of any discount. I think you might get a minor discount on franking machines

Thanks that's a very good idea, but no it's not to do that unfortunately but rather to sell what we have already.

ByronB

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

It cost me 95c for a stamp to post an item to the UK,
For €1.17 deal extreme would pay for postage, envelope, and the gizmo and I wouldn't have to go to the post office and queue.

UK post used to be cheaper
http://www.royalmail.com/prices2012
250g large letter is £1.20 in the UK


https://www.anpost.ie/anpost/postalrates/standard+post.htm
250g large letter is €1.50 (but €3.30 to the UK)
Note maximum dept of an inch
https://www.anpost.ie/AnPost/What+Are+You+Sending+Details.htm#largeenvelope
Maximum: Length 400mm; Width 300mm; Depth 25mm


if possible reclassify stuff as printed material they used to do a special rate for printed material but all I can see now is https://www.anpost.ie/AnPost/PostalRates/Publication+Services.htm

That definitely deserves an exclamation mark for a problem, i do however have 2 options, melt the toys down and flatten them or cut them up.

allthedoyles

If you are selling on eBay , no need for you to worry about postage cost ..........This will be paid for by the buyer .

Your posts , suggest that everything you are selling cost less than a fiver to post .- Buyers will pay this if they want the item .

However you will have no confirmation items are been delivered at this price .

ByronB

allthedoyles wrote: »

If you are selling on eBay , no need for you to worry about postage cost ..........This will be paid for by the buyer .

Your posts , suggest that everything you are selling cost less than a fiver to post .- Buyers will pay this if they want the item .

However you will have no confirmation items are been delivered at this price .

Yeah An Post said they only allow tracking with parcels, and as i am sending packets i can not do this without registered mail which is double the cost.

Royle Mail probably allow tracking on packages? No good to us in ROI but they probably do, i think they might be slightly better than An Post in some ways unfortunately.

andreas_220D

rubadub wrote: »

My workplace sends maybe 20 small packages to the UK daily, I never heard of any discount

Same here, 20-30 packages to destinations in the EU, no discount

rubadub wrote: »

I think you might get a minor discount on franking machines

Nope, no discount.

allthedoyles

andreas_220D wrote: »

Same here, 20-30 packages to destinations in the EU, no discount

Nope, no discount.

The only discount that I know of with a franking machine , is a standard letter within the Republic is 54c

rubadub

allthedoyles wrote: »

If you are selling on eBay , no need for you to worry about postage cost ..........This will be paid for by the buyer .

But most people want to know what the overall cost of an item is. When the postage ends up being the bulk of the cost of course the seller has to worry! It will WON'T be paid for by the buyer if it is really high.

When I search on ebay I sort by lowest price including postage (not available on ebay.ie). I couldn't care less how the seller decides to tot up his overall selling price (i.e. if he used artificially high postage, or "free" postage), all I am interested in is how much it costs in total. So most Irish sellers would appear last on my list, out of ~100 ebay purchases I don't think I ever bought from an Irish seller.

I simply do not believe it is viable to sell small items like this on ebay if sending them out from Ireland. I would stick to adverts.ie

I see things on dealextreme selling for $0.57, thats 45cent including P&P!

Capt'n Midnight

rubadub wrote: »

When I search on ebay I sort by lowest price including postage (not available on ebay.ie). I couldn't care less how the seller decides to tot up his overall selling price (i.e. if he used artificially high postage, or "free" postage), all I am interested in is how much it costs in total. So most Irish sellers would appear last on my list, out of ~100 ebay purchases I don't think I ever bought from an Irish seller.

I simply do not believe it is viable to sell small items like this on ebay if sending them out from Ireland. I would stick to adverts.ie

ebay also needs to improve filters. If I want stuff in Ireland / UK that doesn't NOT include stuff posted from Hong Kong :mad::mad::mad::mad:

Could Irish sellers include a link to an post prices so buyer could see what they cost ?
I know it doesn't solve the problem of postage included but it gives buyers an :eek: moment if they check.


Too true. The rates An Post charge for sending stuff is unreal. If I changed to online billing most of my post would disappear. On the other hand An Post are delivering lots of Catalogs like Family Album so weight isn't really an issue.

How much would extra traffic would An Post generate if they offered Hong Kong rates for Ireland / UK ?
They really need to capitalise on their big asset, physical delivery.


And let's be brutally honest here, An Post deliver stuff posted abroad at those rates so we know they can do it.
NB. Amazon in the UK is rolling out 5,000 collection points in newsagents to cut postal charges. The writing is on the wall.

Capt'n Midnight

ByronB

Solution: Move to north of Ireland, set up ebay, sell things using Royal Mail, move back.

Sorry i'm out of options, really

ByronB

Hi guys, i came back because i was wondering does anyone know how this works.

On ebay or other websites you can sell things or put the up for bidding at low prices, maybe a euro or so. Now most of the stuff i see on auctions for around 50 cent or so might be novelty earrings, pens, bracelets, phone covers, etc. and for €1 - €2 you might see necklaces, small toy cars, various simple second-hand items etc. Most of the time (even excluding China which is usually free on these) the postage is very cheap, but i just checked what i would be paying An Post if i wanted to sell stuff like this.

Calculator for small packets http://postage.anpost.ie/transit.asp

The lowest weight you can select is 0.05kg which is only 50 grams so for selling worldwide, picking at random lets say New York, if i sell something like earrings or any of the above according to An Post it will cost €2.70 minimum. It will cost €2.70 for anywhere in the EU as well, and €2.70 for anywhere in the UK.

If someone from Ireland buys, it's €2.30.

Is there a way around this? Thank you.

allthedoyles

The only way I could see around this , is to take the earrings out of the box and dispatch in an envelope .

ByronB

allthedoyles wrote: »

The only way I could see around this , is to take the earrings out of the box and dispatch in an envelope .

Yes but unfortunately this wouldn't work with 99% of items that are less than 50g because they are bulky. Pity they have to be so expensive.

andreas_220D

ByronB wrote: »

The lowest weight you can select is 0.05kg which is only 50 grams so for selling worldwide, picking at random lets say New York, if i sell something like earrings or any of the above according to An Post it will cost €2.70 minimum. It will cost €2.70 for anywhere in the EU as well, and €2.70 for anywhere in the UK

You can post earrings and most bracelets as a large envelope which would be € 1.50 as long as it's not more than 50 g in total. An A6 sized bubbled envelope weighs ~ 12 g (this includes the envelope, stamp, airmail sticker, ASD sticker, address and sender label and a standard A4 letter). So you have ~ 38 g left for the goods. If it's more than 50g in total but not more than 100g it's € 1.65.

ByronB

andreas_220D wrote: »

You can post earrings and most bracelets as a large envelope which would be € 1.50 as long as it's not more than 50 g in total. An A6 sized bubbled envelope weighs ~ 12 g (this includes the envelope, stamp, airmail sticker, ASD sticker, address and sender label and a standard A4 letter). So you have ~ 38 g left for the goods. If it's more than 50g in total but not more than 100g it's € 1.65.

I thought the ones with bubble wrap are considered packets? And packets are expensive, i think when they say large envelope they mean A4 standard paper and no bubble wrap.

andreas_220D

ByronB wrote: »

I thought the ones with bubble wrap are considered packets? And packets are expensive, i think when they say large envelope they mean A4 standard paper and no bubble wrap.

See http://www.anpost.ie/AnPost/What+Are+You+Sending+Details.htm#largeenvelope, it says "such as an A4 sheet of standard paper" but that's just an example and applies to the content only, not the envelope itself.

The only limitation are the dimensions, no matter whether you use a bubbled envelope, a media box, or a standard manilla envelope.

ByronB

andreas_220D wrote: »

See http://www.anpost.ie/AnPost/What+Are+You+Sending+Details.htm#largeenvelope, it says "such as an A4 sheet of standard paper" but that's just an example and applies to the content only, not the envelope itself.

The only limitation are the dimensions, no matter whether you use a bubbled envelope, a media box, or a standard manilla envelope.

Unfortunately after ringing an post this isn't true, they said if you use bubble wrap it is a packet and you have to pay the full amount. If you post a bracelet for example in a large envelope they said it will go through rollers and be sent back to you in bits so even if postage costs over 3 euro (for the packet as well) its the only option with them.

andreas_220D

ByronB wrote: »

Unfortunately after ringing an post this isn't true, they said if you use bubble wrap it is a packet and you have to pay the full amount. If you post a bracelet for example in a large envelope they said it will go through rollers and be sent back to you in bits so even if postage costs over 3 euro (for the packet as well) its the only option with them.

Well, in fact I do send ~ 150 bracelets each month in bubbled envelopes as large envelopes. Not one of them came back in bits but arrived within 2 or 3 days at my customers in Germany. In total I post about 1200 large envelopes monthly. Within 5 years 7 items got lost and 3 had been returned but not because of some allegedly shredding rollers but simply due to the fact that the guys mixed up the sender and address labels.

ByronB

andreas_220D wrote: »

Well, in fact I do send ~ 150 bracelets each month in bubbled envelopes as large envelopes. Not one of them came back in bits but arrived within 2 or 3 days at my customers in Germany. In total I post about 1200 large envelopes monthly. Within 5 years 7 items got lost and 3 had been returned but not because of some allegedly shredding rollers but simply due to the fact that the guys mixed up the sender and address labels.

Really, i am only going by what she told me on the phone?? I will test this, post something to myself in a bubble wrapped "envelope"

There is hope yet!

sandin

ByronB wrote: »

Really, i am only going by what she told me on the phone?? I will test this, post something to myself in a bubble wrapped "envelope"

There is hope yet!

This was answered earlier

An Post have 4 main sizes

Envelope - up to 5mm thick C5 size (holds a5 paper)

Large Envelope (can be box if within dimensions) Max size up to 400mm long and 300mm wide, max thickness 25mm (you'll get away with 27mm). This would allow for about 150 sheets of a4 paper. (I sent 2 decks of cards to my brother in large envelope and it cost €1.50)

Packet - total of all three dimensions cannot exceed 900mm (3ft in old money), max of any one side is 600mm. This would allow for a large shoe box.

Parcel - everthing bigger than packet.

Best value is Large envelope as it fit through a letter box and postman does not have to waste time ringing doorbell or bringing it back to depot.

As for earlier comment about moving to NI - Royal mail are more expensive when comparing same service.

http://www.anpost.ie/AnPost/What+Are+You+Sending+Details.htm#largeenvelope