Collect Plus: 1st carrier on eBay & Amazon
It’s been known for some time that Collect Plus have been included in the eBay UK postage flow alongside Royal Mail and ParcelForce, but did you know that they’re also the first new carrier integrated with Amazon?
Collect Plus on eBay
On eBay sellers can offer Collect Plus as a delivery option and then print postage labels and pay for the delivery directly from eBay through PayPal. Sellers can then simply drop off their parcel at one of over 4,500 local shops.
The big advantage of this, especially for casual sellers, is that the Collect Plus local shops are open for extended hours in comparison to Post Offices. Often you’ll be able to drop a parcel off early on your way to work or late into the evening when you return home.
It’s worth noting that the delivery options on eBay Postage are pretty limited – Royal Mail Standard Parcels, First Class (with or without Signed For) or Special Delivery, ParcelForce 24 and 48. There’s not even a Royal Mail Second Class delivery option so Collect Plus really does increase the delivery options available for sellers.
Collect Plus on Amazon
Amazon is the big surprise to see Collect Plus fully integrated on. For the moment there is only standard delivery available to UK Mainland on Amazon from Collect Plus. Knowing Amazon we can guess that the goal is to make sellers’ lives easier when handling their orders, and hopefully help them save money on their shipping costs. If it’s easier for sellers to manage their orders and ship their packages, hopefully they will ship them on time and, using tracked shipments, should have fewer lost packages.
If you use Collect Plus on Amazon then delivery charges are deducted from your account (and the Collect Plus emails you an invoice for reference).
Who is Collect Plus for?
It’s unlikely that you’ll use Collect Plus on eBay or Amazon if you’re a large seller. There are better solutions (such as the Collect Plus import facility). If you’re a serious seller you probably also have a daily collection by Royal Mail and/or a courier and have too many packages to consider dropping them off at a local depot or shop. However if you’re a smaller seller, have the odd parcel too large for Royal Mail, or if you are a part time online seller and want to drop off parcels in the early morning or evening then the Collect Plus options could be perfect for you.
steve says
3:36 pm on 30/07/2012
Isnt it an ex director of paypal that is behind collect+ ? anyway, limited appeal; its just tooo slow, typically 7-10 days on the trials we did – got ‘where is my item’ queries on most! just won’t do the job.
Chris Dawson says
4:04 pm on July 30th, 2012
Yes, Mark Lewis is ex eBay UK Managing Director.
Gerry007 says
5:06 pm on July 30th, 2012
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Used them a few time lately [Have a collect+ shop 100 yards away].
All items delivered to the buyers home within working 3-4 days.
What I like is the £3.99p [inc VAT] for the 2kg service, just a shame it is a bit slow [but is as advertised]
Chris Dawson says
5:15 pm on July 30th, 2012
The £3.99 inc VAT is a good price. It’s like everything though… you just have to choose between speed of delivery and cost.
No Royal Mail 2nd class (as it’s over 1kg) so choices are 1st Class at £8.30 or Standard Parcels at £5.30 and that makes Collect Plus very attractive
Gerry007 says
5:33 pm on July 30th, 2012
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+ another £1 for any kind of tracking = RM Recorded
Chris says
11:00 pm on 30/07/2012
I looked into using Collect plus a year or so ago. I found that the nearest shop operating the system to me was about 3 miles away.. I suppose this is the problem with living in a very rural area. But I would be interested to know just how spread out the claimed 4,500 local shops are or are they proportionally based in urban areas?
Gerry007 says
11:23 pm on July 30th, 2012
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Knock yourself out, here:
http://www.collectplus.co.uk/orders/new
Steve says
12:01 pm on 31/07/2012
Not a good service for me either, way too slow and the first time I used this service, the parcel went astray, and it arrived slightly damaged, customer was not happy so had to refund the postage to keep them happy, I still got a bad feedback. Terrible. I’ll stick with Royal Mail
Mark says
2:40 pm on 31/07/2012
Do they offer the deliver to shop option?
For security this may only be an option to paypal verified customers, sending the collection code to the registered email address/ mobile number.
From the buyer perspective this would be useful (although I would probably buy some beer when collecting the item- costing me more!).
Chris Dawson says
3:22 pm on July 31st, 2012
Generally it’s just too difficult to do deliver to shop for marketplaces. However the buyer can have any delivery address that they choose that’s convenient for them to be at home/work or a neighbour/relation – they just enter the address when they pay just as they would for any other payment method.
dbl says
8:00 pm on 31/07/2012
I have to add a plus point here as a buyer. I needed to exchange an item purchased from an outlet, got a link on the back of the packing slip to their Collect plus page, purchase postage with Paypal dropped it off at the local shop (there are more collect plus shops than there were post offices even before the closures) got a receipt, job done.
My exchange arrived in a couple of days, no contact needed with seller all sorted and I rightly paid the postage back to them without fuss … magic