An Post Tracked - How long til something is considered missing?

witnessmenow · 02-02-2021 11:35am #1

Hello,

I sell through an online market place and ship basically all over the world (Mainly Europe and the US)

I have been using mainly standard An post shipping (large letter), but since Late November/December I've had huge amounts of complaints that stuff hasn't arrived even after 6 weeks. (more complaints in January than in my previous 3 years of selling combined)

But even with registered I'm having the same problem, tracking updates to say left Ireland the next day and then goes completely silent. One customer is after receiving their package 7 and half weeks after I sent it. I have several other customers who are waiting over 5 weeks for tracking to be updated.

I contacted An Post through their contact form about the 7 and half week package 3 weeks ago and they never responded.

Does anyone know how long an item needs to be missing for An Post to consider it missing? I contacted them again the other day to ask this question but still waiting for an answer. As a side note, what is the best way to contact them?

I currently have my store closed while the shipping is like this, but I'm hoping to open up again, possibly with only tracked shipping, but I'm not even sure that's any advantage to me.

I understand shipping is an absolute mess at the moment, but most customers are not going to wait 7 weeks before looking for refunds when the tracking hasn't been updated, especially when An Post delivery estimate time on their website still shows 7-14 days as a worst case to most places.

Is using registered any advantage to me? I'm not worried about fraud from the customer, but I think realistically, most customers are not going to wait more than 6 weeks so I will have to issue a refund at that part, except now I'm also refunding shipping that was 3 times more expensive.

Like if the package gets there in 8 weeks, are An post going to refund me? (doubtful) but I will have already refunded the customer, even the majority of people want me to resend the item rather than get a refund (I sell things they can only buy off me).

Value of the items are not high enough to use other postal services, Even registered post would be about 50/50 split if they only order one item.

silver2020 · 02-02-2021 8:05pm

There are very few flights. Post goes airmail. You are literally in a queue and fighting for space. Same for all countries. You need to ship by dhl (good rates if you have volume) or for europe use some landbridge carriers (dhl do this too as do UPS/Nightline). You'd actually be surprised how competitive some of these carriers are especially if the items are small

But at present some european packages can take 6 weeks. Forget australia and NZ. Same with south america. USA is slow too at about 3 weeks.

If the item was sent standard post there's literally no possible way of tracking it.

Pity there's no enterprising person in Netherlands or other EU country that would take a box of small packages and put it though local postal service. You send a box of pre-labeled and pre stamped packages by dpd or similar and they simply drop the individual packages to local post office.

Now there's an idea for some enterprising Irish people on the ocntinent

markmoto · 03-02-2021 12:48am

witnessmenow wrote: »

Hello,

I sell through an online market place and ship basically all over the world (Mainly Europe and the US)

I have been using mainly standard An post shipping (large letter), but since Late November/December I've had huge amounts of complaints that stuff hasn't arrived even after 6 weeks. (more complaints in January than in my previous 3 years of selling combined)

But even with registered I'm having the same problem, tracking updates to say left Ireland the next day and then goes completely silent. One customer is after receiving their package 7 and half weeks after I sent it. I have several other customers who are waiting over 5 weeks for tracking to be updated.

I contacted An Post through their contact form about the 7 and half week package 3 weeks ago and they never responded.

Does anyone know how long an item needs to be missing for An Post to consider it missing? I contacted them again the other day to ask this question but still waiting for an answer. As a side note, what is the best way to contact them?

I currently have my store closed while the shipping is like this, but I'm hoping to open up again, possibly with only tracked shipping, but I'm not even sure that's any advantage to me.

I understand shipping is an absolute mess at the moment, but most customers are not going to wait 7 weeks before looking for refunds when the tracking hasn't been updated, especially when An Post delivery estimate time on their website still shows 7-14 days as a worst case to most places.

Is using registered any advantage to me? I'm not worried about fraud from the customer, but I think realistically, most customers are not going to wait more than 6 weeks so I will have to issue a refund at that part, except now I'm also refunding shipping that was 3 times more expensive.

Like if the package gets there in 8 weeks, are An post going to refund me? (doubtful) but I will have already refunded the customer, even the majority of people want me to resend the item rather than get a refund (I sell things they can only buy off me).

Value of the items are not high enough to use other postal services, Even registered post would be about 50/50 split if they only order one item.

They had form called m58 to fill for missing post. They will ask copy of original receipt etc and it would take 2-3 month before you get a refund.
Check with post office branch they might have copy or give you better updates. And the only way you get refund if you specified value.

markmoto · 03-02-2021 12:50am

witnessmenow wrote: »

Like if the package gets there in 8 weeks, are An post going to refund me? (doubtful) but I will have already refunded the customer, even the majority of people want me to resend the item rather than get a refund (I sell things they can only buy off me).

item.

No they will not refund you for slow delivery.
If you looking for timing delivery you have to look at courier websites like dpd, fedex, dhl, etc

witnessmenow · 03-02-2021 3:59pm

silver2020 wrote: »

There are very few flights. Post goes airmail. You are literally in a queue and fighting for space. Same for all countries. You need to ship by dhl (good rates if you have volume) or for europe use some landbridge carriers (dhl do this too as do UPS/Nightline). You'd actually be surprised how competitive some of these carriers are especially if the items are small

But at present some european packages can take 6 weeks. Forget australia and NZ. Same with south america. USA is slow too at about 3 weeks.

If the item was sent standard post there's literally no possible way of tracking it.

Pity there's no enterprising person in Netherlands or other EU country that would take a box of small packages and put it though local postal service. You send a box of pre-labeled and pre stamped packages by dpd or similar and they simply drop the individual packages to local post office.

Now there's an idea for some enterprising Irish people on the ocntinent

Will do some more digging around with other providers, I've used parcel2go a few times for larger packages and the courier is sometimes there or there abouts price wise and is pretty fast.

Quantity wise is extremely variable and I would imagine will be largely impacted by a large increase in overall cost of item if postage goes up. I had 330 sales in November and December, which was unusually high for me (or maybe it's "growth"

), but even that is not very high (40-50 packages a week).

Thanks for sharing the timeframes you are seeing, very helpful.

I wouldn't even contact An Post about a non tracked thing!

markmoto wrote: »

They had form called m58 to fill for missing post. They will ask copy of original receipt etc and it would take 2-3 month before you get a refund.
Check with post office branch they might have copy or give you better updates. And the only way you get refund if you specified value.

thanks, at least I know the process and time frame of getting a refund now. I haven't been in the post office at all since the New Year

markmoto wrote: »

No they will not refund you for slow delivery.
If you looking for timing delivery you have to look at courier websites like dpd, fedex, dhl, etc

This is just a personal opinion i guess, which is worthless, but I feel there is something in-between "timely delivery" like a courier and 7 weeks. With no official statement from An Post saying "delivery times could be up to 8 weeks" or whatever, or tracking being updated with "delays with output flight" there is nothing for the customer to do but complain to me.

Like there has to be an upper limit to what is considered just slow or what is considered missing. If the cut off for not delivered is 12-16 weeks (assuming refunds take 2-3 months and you probably need to wait a month before you can complain), its basically pointless to go with tracked for any other reason than proving the customer actually got it. A customer is not going to wait that long before escalating.

If the package arrives within 5-6 weeks, all good

if it arrives between week 6 and week 16 you are completely out of pocket, you've already refunded the customer and you aren't getting money back from An post. Maybe the customer will pay you again, but good luck with that!

If it doesn't arrive at all, you're better off cause you might get your money back from An post.

roots2branches · 03-02-2021 11:18pm

Tracking always seems to go dead once it leaves Ireland, it's totally unacceptable in this day and age that all EU postal services can't sync up.
Express/Registered post is supposed to be next day delivery, not next week or the week after and I'm talking domestic within Ireland. It's an utter shambles. I appreciate the system is under extreme strain right now but Express Post as a service seems to have been switched off by An Post though they are still happy to take your money.

Funny how Amazon's packages are still arriving in a couple of days from the UK. Clearly, An Post is prioritising Bezos over Irish businesses. The regulator should be penalising and acting, it's an utter disgrace and it's time this monopoly was fixed.

I asked if there was a way I could access express post service online and print my own labels without their annoying labels. Volume requirement is 10,000 shipments. FFS, absolute shower, Zero support for Irish small business. The reps are useless too, never get back to you. I'm constantly being overcharged. Useless organisation full of fat cats and overpaid managers all lazying around building up their pensions and backsides.
I do not for one moment mean the hard-working postmen and woman, but the rest of that organisation needs a good cull.

Darc19 · 03-02-2021 11:38pm

roots2branches wrote: »

Funny how Amazon's packages are still arriving in a couple of days from the UK. Clearly, An Post is prioritising Bezos over Irish businesses. The regulator should be penalising and acting, it's an utter disgrace and it's time this monopoly was fixed.

I asked if there was a way I could access express post service online and print my own labels without their annoying labels. Volume requirement is 10,000 shipments. FFS, absolute shower, Zero support for Irish small business. The reps are useless too, never get back to you. I'm constantly being overcharged. Useless organisation full of fat cats and overpaid managers all lazying around building up their pensions and backsides.
I do not for one moment mean the hard-working postmen and woman, but the rest of that organisation needs a good cull.

Amazon deliver themselves to an post parcel hub. Hence you see an an post label and not a UK delivery service label. Hence, they are domestic parcels and get delivered within 1-2 days.

10,000 is the annual number and there's flexibility. That's under 200 parcels a week. That's not huge volume. Where I am we did about 60,000 parcels last year and I'd say we're a smallish operation.

I know a dpd customer that does similar volumes and she doesn't see herself as a big customer. She has about a dozen staff.

They do have discounted tracked standard parcel labels that you can buy in advance and simply stick them on.

As for your rant - that's based on what? That they don't fawn over a small operator?

As for monopoly? Have you not heard of DPD, GLS, fastway, nightlife, DHL, ups - all provide domestic parcel and package delivery at good rates if you have volume.

witnessmenow · 04-02-2021 1:24am

Darc19 wrote: »

Amazon deliver themselves to an post parcel hub. Hence you see an an post label and not a UK delivery service label. Hence, they are domestic parcels and get delivered within 1-2 days.

10,000 is the annual number and there's flexibility. That's under 200 parcels a week. That's not huge volume. Where I am we did about 60,000 parcels last year and I'd say we're a smallish operation.

I know a dpd customer that does similar volumes and she doesn't see herself as a big customer. She has about a dozen staff.

They do have discounted tracked standard parcel labels that you can buy in advance and simply stick them on.

As for your rant - that's based on what? That they don't fawn over a small operator?

As for monopoly? Have you not heard of DPD, GLS, fastway, nightlife, DHL, ups - all provide domestic parcel and package delivery at good rates if you have volume.

I requested a call back from a customer rep earlier in the year and they didn't have anything additional I could do other that what I was already doing, I would be low enough volume as mentioned above, 50-ish a week on a good week. I think they guy was saying I needed to meet a certain weight target a week or something to avail of discounted rates, was it 3KG or something (was it even all to the one country?), not something I would be hitting anyways.

The other reason I wanted to talk to them is they don't seem to have a API or a bulk upload option. I went through it with him that as far as I can tell, and he didn't offer any alternatives, to purchase an order I need to

Fill out the customers details manually into the webpage
Fill out customs/contents details manually
Fill out my details manually into the webpage (no way to save it)
Pay for this package (again no way to save, other than maybe your browsers auto-fill)
Repeat for every package

So for me doing 50 packages that is an absolute pain in the ass, so much so I just bring them into the post office as its a bit quicker for them to do that me. I have to bring the stuff to the post office anyways, so I save time by getting them to do it, but it costs the post workers time every week.

The other thing about it compared to others so if you do go through the gauntlet of doing it online, you have no way of using a label printer to print it out, the label they give you is an A4 Page with a load of instruction on it where the label is a small section that needs to be cut out. I guess you could grab that particular section or whatever from the PDF but its a crap solution in bulk.

The rep asked me to email somewhere with this feedback and I heard nothing.

I'm buddies with a few people from around the world doing similar style operations as me and I think all of them have a bulk upload feature and can print labels with a label machine.

I don't think they are deliberately trying to offer crappy support to small actors, but their interface is well behind what other countries offer. I think bulk upload and label support is a minimum what they should be offering.

I'm at the stage now where I am actively seeking out re-sellers of my products because I can not scale up my current offering as a part time thing. Postage is the biggest road block. Even prior to massive delays we are currently seeing, the postage was a huge time cost.

roots2branches · 05-02-2021 11:53am

Darc19 wrote: »

Amazon deliver themselves to an post parcel hub. Hence you see an an post label and not a UK delivery service label. Hence, they are domestic parcels and get delivered within 1-2 days.

10,000 is the annual number and there's flexibility. That's under 200 parcels a week. That's not huge volume. Where I am we did about 60,000 parcels last year and I'd say we're a smallish operation.

I know a dpd customer that does similar volumes and she doesn't see herself as a big customer. She has about a dozen staff.

They do have discounted tracked standard parcel labels that you can buy in advance and simply stick them on.

As for your rant - that's based on what? That they don't fawn over a small operator?

As for monopoly? Have you not heard of DPD, GLS, fastway, nightlife, DHL, ups - all provide domestic parcel and package delivery at good rates if you have volume.

My stuff is large envelopes and small packets, it's not viable to use DPD. An Post has a monopoly on that sector.
It's just me here, I have no staff and with lockdown, I am at full capacity. I'm struggling to keep up with demand, working 12 hours a day 7 days a week for the last 3 months. So don't preach to me about small business, I'm probably not far off 10,000 orders a year but why restrict access to more efficient solutions, it should be available to all businesses regardless of volume. Take a look at what Royal Mail offer for business customers and An Post's lack of IT investment is why little to no business software can easily connect to their APIs.

And when you agree on rates for post going outside Ireland and you find they've charged you triple that amount, you try getting in touch with your rep or their account department to actually speak to someone to get it sorted. No one replies, they are fecking useless!
And try getting any responsibility for lost/undelivered post. It takes them 3 months to reply to that lost post form. It's simple, I pay them money to deliver my orders on behalf of my customers. If they fail, they should compensate. It's that simple!

As for Amazon, your point makes no sense. My stuff is also delivered to the sorting office by An Post. The difference is, An Post clearly have signed a legal agreement with Amazon to fulfil their orders on time. So yes, Amazon is prioritised over Irish business. Pure and simple and it's a f***ing disgrace and the regulator should act!
But try explaining that to a customer who's getting ****ty with you because their Amazon order was delivered by An Post within two days and that came from the UK yet your order is 3 weeks late and came from Ireland.

meijin · 05-02-2021 12:31pm

roots2branches wrote: »

But try explaining that to a customer who's getting ****ty with you because their Amazon order was delivered by An Post within two days and that came from the UK yet your order is 3 weeks late and came from Ireland.

Since some time Amazon deliveries are done by their own drivers (or some contracted company), no?

They provide live tracking location of the driver on the delivery day. It's certainly not An Post delivering packages for them here.

Darc19 · 05-02-2021 12:49pm

roots2branches wrote: »

As for Amazon, your point makes no sense. My stuff is also delivered to the sorting office by An Post. The difference is, An Post clearly have signed a legal agreement with Amazon to fulfil their orders on time. So yes, Amazon is prioritised over Irish business. Pure and simple and it's a f***ing disgrace and the regulator should act!
But try explaining that to a customer who's getting ****ty with you because their Amazon order was delivered by An Post within two days and that came from the UK yet your order is 3 weeks late and came from Ireland.

So you deliver your packages directly to the parcel hub with tracked barcodes?

Somehow I doubt that as you need serious volume for that capability.

Even at our 50,000+ level the best we get is an post truck picking up brutes from us and bringing them with other people's brutes to a parcel hub.

Amazon deliver directly into the parcel hub. Yes they will get priority just like you or I would give our largest customer priority.

As for royal mail. Yes they have better online options, but they are more expensive and their service is worse going by many reports in the UK media. So be careful what you wish for.

Also An post don't have a monopoly. Do you understand what a monopoly is?

Dpd can deliver as you said, but they are more expensive. Nothing stopping them reducing prices. Last year we had a rate of €6.35 for UK parcels with DPD. That was cheaper than an post, so we used DPD.
We use them for all EU delivery as they beat an post there too.

DHL were second cheapest for us then GLS. Anpost were above all of them.

roots2branches · 05-02-2021 5:21pm

meijin wrote: »

Since some time Amazon deliveries are done by their own drivers (or some contracted company), no?

They provide live tracking location of the driver on the delivery day. It's certainly not An Post delivering packages for them here.

No, maybe in Dublin but postman delivers Amazon for me.

roots2branches · 05-02-2021 5:31pm

Darc19 wrote: »

So you deliver your packages directly to the parcel hub with tracked barcodes?

Somehow I doubt that as you need serious volume for that capability.

Even at our 50,000+ level the best we get is an post truck picking up brutes from us and bringing them with other people's brutes to a parcel hub.

Amazon deliver directly into the parcel hub. Yes they will get priority just like you or I would give our largest customer priority.

As for royal mail. Yes they have better online options, but they are more expensive and their service is worse going by many reports in the UK media. So be careful what you wish for.

Also An post don't have a monopoly. Do you understand what a monopoly is?

Dpd can deliver as you said, but they are more expensive. Nothing stopping them reducing prices. Last year we had a rate of €6.35 for UK parcels with DPD. That was cheaper than an post, so we used DPD.
We use them for all EU delivery as they beat an post there too.

DHL were second cheapest for us then GLS. Anpost were above all of them.

I don't understand what the difference is between Amazon rolling up at the sorting centre with a truck of parcels and An Post themselves rolling up. It all goes into the same system regardless of how it gets there.
I've looked at my tracking and I see my orders moving very quickly to the sorting centre. There they sit for days and days.
Why should Amazon be given a priority? An Post is not a commercial company, it's state-owned and it has no business granting Amazon a competitive advantage over Irish businesses. The regulator should be acting.

As I said, DPD is fine for larger items but they're not going to do much for low-value items under 500 grams that will go on a large envelope rate in the €2-4 cost.

I don't know why you're making excuses for An Post. I pay extra for express post that they guarantee next day delivery but it's taking 1-2 weeks. It's not good enough when they are prioritising Amazon. Sorry, that's just blatantly obvious to me.

Darc19 · 05-02-2021 8:53pm

roots2branches wrote: »

I don't understand what the difference is between Amazon rolling up at the sorting centre with a truck of parcels and An Post themselves rolling up. It all goes into the same system regardless of how it gets there.
I've looked at my tracking and I see my orders moving very quickly to the sorting centre. There they sit for days and days.
Why should Amazon be given a priority? An Post is not a commercial company, it's state-owned and it has no business granting Amazon a competitive advantage over Irish businesses. The regulator should be acting.

As I said, DPD is fine for larger items but they're not going to do much for low-value items under 500 grams that will go on a large envelope rate in the €2-4 cost.

I don't know why you're making excuses for An Post. I pay extra for express post that they guarantee next day delivery but it's taking 1-2 weeks. It's not good enough when they are prioritising Amazon. Sorry, that's just blatantly obvious to me.

You seem to have an issue that an post won't do a bespoke service for you.

I get daily CSV file downloads of all parcels with their status and January saw a 96% next day delivery (ex Sunday)
That includes Friday dispatch being delivered on Saturday and Saturday dispatch being delivered on Monday (yes we get Saturday collection)

I suspect Amazon are similar.

As for your issue with Amazon. Guess how many people they employ in Ireland?

And remember they are in effect an Irish customer of anpost. They charge Irish vat and drop their parcels off in Dublin.

And anpost IS a commercial company and it is semi state and must compete with the other delivery companies. Yes the state owns the shares but it operates independently.

But what I really don't get is that you whine about "monopoly" "prices" and not getting calls back, but you want regulations that they cannot give different deals to different customers?

You have it very messed up.

roots2branches · 05-02-2021 10:28pm

Darc19 wrote: »

You seem to have an issue that an post won't do a bespoke service for you.

I get daily CSV file downloads of all parcels with their status and January saw a 96% next day delivery (ex Sunday)
That includes Friday dispatch being delivered on Saturday and Saturday dispatch being delivered on Monday (yes we get Saturday collection)

I suspect Amazon are similar.

As for your issue with Amazon. Guess how many people they employ in Ireland?

And remember they are in effect an Irish customer of anpost. They charge Irish vat and drop their parcels off in Dublin.

And anpost IS a commercial company and it is semi state and must compete with the other delivery companies. Yes the state owns the shares but it operates independently.

But what I really don't get is that you whine about "monopoly" "prices" and not getting calls back, but you want regulations that they cannot give different deals to different customers?

You have it very messed up.

So you agree a price with me for a service I provide for you and when the monthly statement comes in you find I've overcharged you 3 times.
When you try to contact me I don't return your calls or reply to your emails.
When you email my accounts debt they don't reply either. But sure, An Post, great service, great bunch of lads.

I'm guessing you're based in the Dublin area where everything seems to be honkey dorey. Try getting your post into the Dublin area from another part of the country, your CSV report would be a very different story.

You carry on being an An Post/Amazon fanboy but you'd soon change your tune if you were in my position.

Over and out.

markmoto · 08-02-2021 1:21am

witnessmenow wrote: »

I requested a call back from a customer rep earlier in the year and they didn't have anything additional I could do other that what I was already doing, I would be low enough volume as mentioned above, 50-ish a week on a good week. I think they guy was saying I needed to meet a certain weight target a week or something to avail of discounted rates, was it 3KG or something (was it even all to the one country?), not something I would be hitting anyways.

The other reason I wanted to talk to them is they don't seem to have a API or a bulk upload option. I went through it with him that as far as I can tell, and he didn't offer any alternatives, to purchase an order I need to
Fill out the customers details manually into the webpage

Fill out customs/contents details manually

Fill out my details manually into the webpage (no way to save it)

Pay for this package (again no way to save, other than maybe your browsers auto-fill)

Repeat for every package

So for me doing 50 packages that is an absolute pain in the ass, so much so I just bring them into the post office as its a bit quicker for them to do that me. I have to bring the stuff to the post office anyways, so I save time by getting them to do it, but it costs the post workers time every week.

The other thing about it compared to others so if you do go through the gauntlet of doing it online, you have no way of using a label printer to print it out, the label they give you is an A4 Page with a load of instruction on it where the label is a small section that needs to be cut out. I guess you could grab that particular section or whatever from the PDF but its a crap solution in bulk.

The rep asked me to email somewhere with this feedback and I heard nothing.

I'm buddies with a few people from around the world doing similar style operations as me and I think all of them have a bulk upload feature and can print labels with a label machine.

I don't think they are deliberately trying to offer crappy support to small actors, but their interface is well behind what other countries offer. I think bulk upload and label support is a minimum what they should be offering.

I'm at the stage now where I am actively seeking out re-sellers of my products because I can not scale up my current offering as a part time thing. Postage is the biggest road block. Even prior to massive delays we are currently seeing, the postage was a huge time cost.

I think you went into wrong dirrection.

If you want to do bulk shipping with anpost you have to open account and they supply you with stamp printer and mailing bags which you can bring directly to anpost depot or postman will collect at your business premises.

If you think you are small enough for that scheme you can collect bunch of register or large parcel(green) stickers at the post office and stick everything at home then go to the post office and proceed.

And new thing they have now called advantage card 35% off discount

https://www.anpost.com/Commerce/eCommerce-hub

If you describe your flow I can advise you better way.
Used to do mailing orders for years.

If you like my post click like button. Thanks

Darc19 · 08-02-2021 1:10pm

roots2branches wrote: »

I'm guessing you're based in the Dublin area where everything seems to be honkey dorey. Try getting your post into the Dublin area from another part of the country, your CSV report would be a very different story.

You carry on being an An Post/Amazon fanboy but you'd soon change your tune if you were in my position.

Over and out.

The problem with making assumptions is that you tend to be wrong.

I'm nowhere near Dublin. I'm actually semi rural.

CSV report is available to every account holder that ships tracked packages.

As for Amazon, I'm no fan as they compete against me, (I'm cheaper) hence I know how they operate. Always good to know your competitors.

Likewise, I believe it is my job to ensure my customer gets their parcel, hence I know exactly how various delivery companies work as my responsibilities don't finish until the customer has it in their hand.

witnessmenow · 08-02-2021 6:54pm

markmoto wrote: »

I think you went into wrong dirrection.

If you want to do bulk shipping with anpost you have to open account and they supply you with stamp printer and mailing bags which you can bring directly to anpost depot or postman will collect at your business premises.

If you think you are small enough for that scheme you can collect bunch of register or large parcel(green) stickers at the post office and stick everything at home then go to the post office and proceed.

And new thing they have now called advantage card 35% off discount

https://www.anpost.com/Commerce/eCommerce-hub

If you describe your flow I can advise you better way.
Used to do mailing orders for years.

If you like my post click like button. Thanks

Possibly did, but the reason I requested the call back was to discuss whatever options were available to me and they told me I wasn't doing the numbers for business serivces.

He did mention the advantage card, but it didn't seem to me like I was able to get a discount on the specific stamps I nearly always use (E2.90), I could be wrong on that though.

Yeah I previously had a large collection of the stickers so when we went to the post office we were good to go, but I've since started incorporating the CN22 and the Declaration of Aviation Security(EU) into my labels to cut down on my time to pack.

My flow before Chritstmas was:

- 90- 95% of orders were regular postage (not tracked).
- Vast majority are < 100g and fit into a "large envelope" (E2.90 stamp to basically anywhere in the world, only to Ireland is a different price). Sometimes it went up to the 250g category (E4.50).
- I print out the addresses using a label machine, its only one of the small ones (I would buy a bigger one if needed, it is for royal mail print at home labels for example). As mentioned above I now incorporate any additional info needed into this label.
- I previously used pre-buy stamps and drop things into the local postbox. I had to change this because in 2019 they brought in a new customs process for the USA where I now needed to go into the post office to process packages for the US. US would be the single biggest country in terms of orders so I would have to go to the post office for them regardless. As of Jan 1st, that customs process is now in for at least the UK now as well. Each items I have to go through this process for takes a couple of minutes at the post office. I do still pre-stamp everything before getting there, but it doesn't really save any time.

Not sure if there is anything else to my flow really.

Darc19 · 09-02-2021 4:34pm

witnessmenow wrote: »

Possibly did, but the reason I requested the call back was to discuss whatever options were available to me and they told me I wasn't doing the numbers for business serivces.

He did mention the advantage card, but it didn't seem to me like I was able to get a discount on the specific stamps I nearly always use (E2.90), I could be wrong on that though.

Yeah I previously had a large collection of the stickers so when we went to the post office we were good to go, but I've since started incorporating the CN22 and the Declaration of Aviation Security(EU) into my labels to cut down on my time to pack.

My flow before Chritstmas was:

- 90- 95% of orders were regular postage (not tracked).
- Vast majority are < 100g and fit into a "large envelope" (E2.90 stamp to basically anywhere in the world, only to Ireland is a different price). Sometimes it went up to the 250g category (E4.50).
- I print out the addresses using a label machine, its only one of the small ones (I would buy a bigger one if needed, it is for royal mail print at home labels for example). As mentioned above I now incorporate any additional info needed into this label.
- I previously used pre-buy stamps and drop things into the local postbox. I had to change this because in 2019 they brought in a new customs process for the USA where I now needed to go into the post office to process packages for the US. US would be the single biggest country in terms of orders so I would have to go to the post office for them regardless. As of Jan 1st, that customs process is now in for at least the UK now as well. Each items I have to go through this process for takes a couple of minutes at the post office. I do still pre-stamp everything before getting there, but it doesn't really save any time.

Not sure if there is anything else to my flow really.

You fall between two stools.

Even larger customers get very little discounts on large letters, but currently they have love stamps €8 for 10.

Each has a postal value of €1, so three of these will save you 50c a package and you can stock up.

US/UK is a pain, but you should be able to print cn22 labels

paddylonglegs · 19-02-2021 8:30am

markmoto wrote: »

I think you went into wrong dirrection.

If you want to do bulk shipping with anpost you have to open account and they supply you with stamp printer and mailing bags which you can bring directly to anpost depot or postman will collect at your business premises.

If you think you are small enough for that scheme you can collect bunch of register or large parcel(green) stickers at the post office and stick everything at home then go to the post office and proceed.

And new thing they have now called advantage card 35% off discount

https://www.anpost.com/Commerce/eCommerce-hub

If you describe your flow I can advise you better way.
Used to do mailing orders for years.

If you like my post click like button. Thanks

Hi markmoto,

I could do with some advise from you please.

Similar to the OP, I was shipping worldwide before Christmas and came across awful delays (as expected), 6-8 weeks and a lot of customer wanting refunds etc.

I had closed my store pre 2019 before the long customs labels to fill out for US, and now UK.

For the last few months I used up my green customs labels for outside Europe (and they all delivered) but am aware now that I have to start using this new method.

You mentioned about using a specific printer and being able to print these customs labels myself. How do I go about this? Do I need to set up an account with an post and I can buy these labels and printer? My packages are classed as packets, between 250g and 500g, with boxes 280mm x 200mm x 80mm.

I send approx 15 packets every week internationally.

Could some one give me a steer on this? I have tried to find a solution on the an post site and the post office don’t seem to know.

Thanks

Edit: I’m just reading a previous post about the cn22 label. Is it possible to fill out and print these at home/office and bring it to your post office? I could be queuing up with 20 packets some days.

An Post Tracked - How long til something is considered missing?

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