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Royal Mail drop & go Alternative
 

Hi ,,, I have been using Royal Mail drop & go service ,,

But I would like to start using a courier to pick my parcels up from my house and ship UK and overseas

When I looked on Google there are loads out there and lots of review good and bad

I have just got a Dymo 4xl printer for shipping labels

Can you guys and girls point me in the right direction to which one is the best to use ,, I do understand the cheapest is not the best

Also can I pay using stealth paypal for shipping ,,or best to use my own bank card but not to link the courier company to my 3bay account ?

Any help welcome .

Re: Royal Mail drop & go Alternative
 

a lot of these places like parcel2go offer cheap shipping methods, just not insured that I learnt that hard way after p2g "lost" 3 of my parcels within a week and I lost over 150 quid and wasn't insured. silly me.

Re: Royal Mail drop & go Alternative
 

P2G didn't lose any of your parcels. They aren't a courier.

They charge 5% of the value of the item for insurance. When using a DECENT courier (DPD / UPS) I don't believe they lose or damage 1 in 20 parcels. That would be a loss rate of 5 parcels for each driver on 100 drops.

Re: Royal Mail drop & go Alternative
 

With P2G is it okay to put put my details in on the same windows page as I run my stealth account ,, ?

Re: Royal Mail drop & go Alternative
 

What am saying is can you link the ebay account and if not paying with paypal use your own bank card and have the item picked up at a different address from where the paypal location is ...

Re: Royal Mail drop & go Alternative
 

How many items are you shipping each day?

Have a look at the Hermes website. You can link your eb account to them and import your sales. There is even an option to for CSV imports. If you use one of the parcelshops to drop your parcels off at, there is no need for a collection address. I have registered my account with Hermes with stealth name and drop off daily. Your address in not shown on any labels. You can drop off at any parcelshop. They are tracked and are insured up to £25 which can be increased. It's £2.60 for up to 1Kg. Delivery is quoted as 2 to 3 working days as opposed to 3 to 5 working days for collected. Allow longer for remote area deliveries. They don't charge extra for delivery to NI or Scottish Highlands, just islands, IOM etc.

I have sent over 5000 parcels with very little problems. The odd one lost, a few damaged, but I have made less than 10 claims overall. I pay using my card on the Hermes website. I would not use pp to pay as any claims settled for loss or damaged are paid back to the original payment method.

I also use other parcelbrokers for heavy and large items. I use interparcel for sending items with parcelforce. One item I sell weighs just under 30Kg and costs £9, parcelforce 48, through interparcel and dropped off at the depot but would be £16 if I paid direct to parcelforce. DPD also have drop off shops that can be booked using the parcelbrokers too. parcel2 go and interparcel seem to have the best prices for what I sell. I don't use collect+ as it is more expensive and you need pay extra for insurance.

Sorry for the long post. Hope it helps a bit.

Re: Royal Mail drop & go Alternative
 

I used to use Hermes, it was 'ok'. I did spend far mor time dealing with angry customers as the item

1, hadnt arrived
2, hadnt arrived in estimation dates
3, courier 'never' (apparenty) left a card and item was returned to me - que anger from

While it was nice with the one button importation and label printing, the courier collection became more and more erratic, different times of the day, sometimes didnt turn up, then they upped the postage cost and lowered the compensation.

Also my local drop off point is as dodgy as hell.

I gave up in the end and went back to Royal Mail and now get collections from them.

Re: Royal Mail drop & go Alternative
 

same thing happened to me as well, gave up. now using PPI and collection. really good.

Re: Royal Mail drop & go Alternative
 

Guess I'm lucky then. I have 4 Hermes parcelshops, 2 UPS drop-off points, a DPD drop-off and 2 collect+ places all within 1.5 miles of me. The parcelforce depot is 6 miles away.

My local post office in is our spar shop and is open the same hours as the shop, 7 days a week right up to 10pm. I send very little Royal Mail, 7 items last week, but I have had 3 not received from 2 weeks ago. Small value, used items to different places in the UK. They went out 2nd class small parcel as they are too thick for large letter. These were feedback builders for new accounts and luckily I have not had any bad fb from them.

On another account, I have had a not received case opened 5 days after the item was paid. It went parcelforce and the tracking says they to deliver Friday which is 3 days after payment was received. He was not in. No message from the buyer , just opened a case. It seems ebay messages 'pushes' people to open cases rather than actually asking first. I have answered the case with all the tracking which had been uploaded already along with the explanation they have tried to deliver and he seems ok. Says no card was left, which again is quite possible, but why not just check on the tracking and then ask?