Who banned PPI labels, eBay or Royal Mail?
eBay appear to have cancelled all listings for pre-printed Printed Post Impression (PPI) labels.
Up until now professional printing companies have been saving Royal Mail PacketPost users the trouble of printing their own PPI labels and selling pre-printed PPI labels, with the customer’s own license number, on eBay.
PPI labels (which can also be printed directly onto envelopes) are technically worthless as they should be weighed, counted and then collected by Royal Mail, although doubtless they cause Royal Mail Revenue Protection Officers a nightmare to administrate. What should happen is when items are posted the weights and number of items are tallied up and the user then pays Royal Mail for the number of items sent. What’s all too easy is to slip an extra couple of parcels in, or to under declare the total weight thus reducing your overall bill.
That’s why recently Post Offices have started to reject PPI mail and Royal Mail are asking for paperwork with each collection, not just a total at the end of the day.
Regardless how much some users might play the system to reduce their bill, PPI mail always needs a PPI label. Just as it’s not economically viable for a business to print their own letterhead paper, it makes sense to pay a printer to produce your PPI labels. Most of the time they can print them for less than you could purchase the blank labels due to the larger numbers that they process. In fact Royal Mail recognise this and offer “download files to provide to your designer or printer“. Solutions such as Packing Partner from Aimco can also incorporate your PPI impression into their label printing.
So why are eBay banning PPI printing services? If someone is on the fiddle it certainly won’t stop them ripping off Royal Mail. However honest online retailers still need PPI labels for every parcel they legitimately send and pay for and someone somewhere has to print them.
I spoke to PPI Labels who have been granted permission to reproduce the Royal Mail Cruciform by the Royal Mail Group and who’s employees have been trained and authorised to print PPI labels. All of their eBay listings have been cancelled cutting off their income stream. Fortunately they have a website so if you need labels you can still purchase direct from PPI-Labels.co.uk, rather than eBay getting a slice of fees on the transaction.
There are rumours that there’s a new three year deal signed between eBay and Royal Mail, but we’ve no confirmation of this. Nor do we have any idea why a deal should include a ban on printing services. One would expect Royal Mail to approve of professional printing to ensure PPI labels are acceptable quality and machine readable. No one wants to return to the days of applying PPI via a hand stamp and ink pad, but that’s just what some Royal Mail customers may resort to.
If you have any more information on why the listings for PPI printing services have been removed by eBay we’d love to hear from you. In the mean time as mentioned earlier – you can use ANY printing service in the country to print your PPI Impressions with your license number and PPI-Labels.co.uk are standing by and more than happy to assist.
Jimbo says
12:44 pm on 06/08/2012
To stir some debate; possibly eBay is not the appropriate venue for such a service?
Chris Dawson says
12:49 pm on August 6th, 2012
The thing is that I understand Royal Mail’s biggest problem isn’t fraudulent use of someone else’s license. It’s under declaring by legitimate users.
That being the case professional printing isn’t the issue – it’s counting and weighing by the retailer and recounting/weighing/verifying by Royal Mail Revenue Protection.
That being the case who cares where the printing is done or which venues retailers can access pre-printed labels?
fusion says
1:14 pm on August 6th, 2012
Our collection man was talking about this the other day. He collects from a few online business so have quite a number of bags and said he simply does not have the time to check every order.
Jimbo says
4:34 pm on August 6th, 2012
In the past I have seen PPI lables being sold as pre-paid postage. I’ve also seen sellers selling customs certificates, bag ties, washed stamps etc. This is why I wondor if eBay is the right venue for this kind of service. Do PPI label vendors validate account info before producing the labels?
fusion says
4:44 pm on August 6th, 2012
Now and then I receive a return back in the original packagin with the PPI on it. I believe customers may assume this is a free stamp or that our account is charged.
Stuart says
1:51 pm on 06/08/2012
It would be revenue protection that check it at the sorting office, not the posty that collects it.
Every so often we get red x labels put on our bags and then this is checked randomly for problems.
Royal Mail then contact you to say either the weight is wrong or something (only if there is something wrong) for example in the last three months that have suddenly decided that some of our parcels are to large to send, products we have been selling for 4+ years.
Oddly enough they don’t contact you when it’s in their favour as we tried it the last time they red x us…..odd!
fusion says
2:26 pm on August 6th, 2012
how our postie was describing, it was his duty to collect and check the packages were correct before collecting and confirming them. Then he takes it to his depot and just empty’s the bags into a larger storage bag/container to be sent to a main hub.
However it may be different depending on area etc. But as you said, there maybe random searches at depots (Ill be all ok though).
He was saying though Royal Mail are stepping up to crack down on this heavily.
Gerry007 says
2:38 pm on 06/08/2012
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There has been alot of talk around our area with the collect posties, who regularly find several PPI items randomly in letter boxes.
Some have been pulled from the system to check authenticity, but the vast majority just get through, possibly fraudulently.
One of the biggest frauds is double printing [or at least reprinting after download] of PPI, when purchased on Paypal.
As there is no additional paperwork, it is quite easy to fiddle.
Recently, I talked to an RM Manager & he said they estimated that over 50,000 items a day were going through their system with some sort of postal error, but as they were individual in their presence, & to stop the whole system would simply be uneconomical..
There is another point that I found, which is rather frighten & serious about PPI & I bought it to the attention of RM, but I will not say what it is here, as it could open up a large can of worms.
Instead I will email Chris & let him decide if it is worthy of publishing…..Standby Chris!!.
Jez says
4:02 pm on August 6th, 2012
with the recent problem of my Post Office refusing to accept my PPI mail, my account manager has told me I can post them in the letterbox if they fit
Gerry007 says
4:20 pm on August 6th, 2012
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Re; ‘I can post them in the letterbox if they fit’
This is precisely what we have been told NOT to do, as it is not checkable & how do you ‘post’ the confirmation documentation that should accompany the items ??….
Jez says
4:25 pm on August 6th, 2012
Well it was a non starting anyway as 99% of my mail wouldn’t fit in the letterbox, but you’re correct about the documentation.
Having put it with hassle from the Post Office over PPI for the last 2 weeks ending in him refusing to accept it on health & safety grounds as advised by his Union and Royal Mail being next to useless in resolving the problem I’m now waiting for a resolution to the problem from the Royal Mail CEO
RichardC says
3:32 pm on 06/08/2012
eBay clearly don’t have a clue about business accounts/PPI, or how the frauds are perpetrated within Royal Mail.
The removal of PPI labels from eBay is, in my opinion, a tactic to divert attention away from Royal Mail’s incompetence.
eBay get the negative publicity for ‘allowing’ the sales of PPI labels. Royal Mail on the other hand have been seen to have taken a decisive and swift action.
eBay, in removing the labels from sale, have fell for it.
Gerry007 says
4:42 pm on August 6th, 2012
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Of Course ebay is not the only place on the www.
http://www.bing.com/search?setmkt=en-GB&q=printed+ppi+labels+for+sale
Plenty of adverts here….
Brown Owl says
10:13 pm on 07/08/2012
My guess is that Ebay banned a particular PPI Labels seller because, alongside perfectly acceptable ppi labels, they were also flogging spoof recorded delivery labels with false barcodes. The idea is that you ‘enhance’ your mail with the spoof labels to kid customers that the mail has been tracked. This is said to significantly reduce the number of ‘item not received’ claims. A lot of Ebay sellers don’t want to pay extra for genuine recorded delivery postage.