Royal Mail Alternatives

[AndrewGC]

Now we know another post strike is in the offing - 22nd and 23rd October - I wondered if anyone had any good alternatives to using Royal Mail.

The cruncher, of course, will always be price. You can get the cost of Royal Mail using this terrific site:

Seajays Postage Costs

For heavier items we have always used:

Parcel2Go

which uses DHL amongst others. We know our drivers so well we do not even have to be in to get the parcel collected. Up to 25KG for about £7.50. Can recommend that one, then.

EBay are actually running a page with alternatives and two are:

Collect+

who seem to work on the basis that you take your parcel to your local 'centre' (which in my case is the local Mace store) and the buyer collects from theirs. This works if you have a buyer willing to collect, even if it is only a mile or so. Decent price mind. £3.79 for up to 10KG. No dealings with, so not able to comment further.

Also:

My Hermes

Which seems to be the same principle as DHL but cheaper. Might give this a try actually in the next few weeks up to Chrimbo. More of a sliding scale than DHL, but again I have no experience of.

So, do you have any other suggestions? And that goes for good and bad.

Bear in mind sites like Parcel2Go actually sell the spare capacity of carriers so many are covered by them. The downside we hear about is that DHL will therefore concentrate more on their own consignments than those through third parties.

This is our third year using them and DHL must have a lot of spare capacity because in that time we have only had one missed pickup (and they came again the next day) and 90% of our items were there NEXT DAY even though the service is a 2-5 day.

[AndrewGC]

Just a follow up on this.

Both Parcel2Go and MyHermes suffered web difficulties from the sheer amount of traffic. MyHermes also got a lot of bad publicity on the eBay boards for missed collections and apparently poor service.

We tend to use Parcel2Go (and through them DHL) a lot. Examples are an item picked up yesterday got there today. The downside is one item, a novelty chess set, arrived crushed - buyer even had the nerve to insist it 'must' have been sent out that way (of course after trading legitimately for seven years on eBay we decided to send out something broken for the hell of it.........)

Anyway, turns out after submitting a claim, DHL do not cover what it was made of so no compensation. Royal Mail WOULD have paid up for that.

I understand many sellers have switched permanently from Royal Mail. Personally I am just happy they seem to have stopped all the action - very few services you can normally rely on, and they are not badly priced.

Just hope it stays that way!

[KimberleyHowson]

Thanks for the tips on this - can't believe we're still suffering the effects of this almost a month later, but I can't help but think it'll carry on well into the new year - so it's good to get clued up on alternatives :-)