UK Mail specialises in offering innovative parcel, mail and logistics services designed to provide local and international business which suit all their clients’ requirements. Formerly known as Business Post Group, UK Mail has built up their business intuitively over the last 40 years in order to offer some of the most competitive and client-oriented services on the market.

The leading mail delivery and logistics organisation has a national network which consists of over 52 sites and 2,500 vehicles; enabling them to offer customers a fully-integrated service which places their best interests at the core. Whether parcels, letters or pallets; UK Mail can deliver a solution that’s 100% geared towards their customers’ requirements.

UK Mail strives to serve as a dynamic organisation well-equipped to serve clients of all sizes, and from a wide range of different industries. UK Mail’s loyal customer base ranges from giant mobile phone networks to local family-run businesses. They are a company who embraces innovation and strives to take heed of any new technologies which could contribute to the convenience and quality of the services they offer.

Services Designed for Your Business

UK Mail offers a number of carrier services to multinational clients, including stores which operate solely online; delivering parcels, mail and pallets to the addresses specified in a 100% secure and conscientious fashion. Their services are aimed at business-to-business (B2B) organisations which require time-efficient services; having supplied such services to companies including O2 and Talk Talk.

The company is thoroughly delighted to have built-up such an extensive list of international clients and business customers, whom all rely on UK Mail to consistently provide a high level of service that other providers find hard to match. Irrespective of the size of their client’s business, UK Mail has complete confidence that their diverse and high quality services will meet their needs.

Amongst the services available from UK Mail are parcel delivery, mail, courier and specialist logistics, online, and IT solutions and services. The company prides themselves on offering advice and guidance to customers who are unsure of which service is right for them, and cite customer satisfaction as their highest priority in everything they do.

Find Out More About UK Mail

Whether a client is looking for international parcel delivery, a same day courier, or is interested in seeing how online fulfilment solutions could assist them; UK Mail can deliver.

If you would like to find out more, please don’t hesitate to contact UK Mail or visit our website for further details – www.ukmail.com

(Text provided by UK Mail.)

Ipostparcels offer a service geared towards the business-to-customer (B2C) market in order to offer next day parcel delivery and collection services to suit each individual’s requirements – all for an affordable, low price.

Customers name the collection address of their choosing; allowing them to choose whether parcels are collected from home or a place of work to ensure parcels are more likely to be received by the recipient, and not inconveniently sent to the local depot because the recipient was not available. Customers also have the option to make use of ipostparcels’ network of 52 depots placed around the UK for a drop off or pick up service, allowing them to save even more money on their delivery charge.

This innovation offers a viable and more convenient alternative to queuing at the post offices, and is particularly well-suited to eBay sellers as it affords them the opportunity to send their products often for an affordable price.

Services and features for Online Sellers

ipostparcels’ eBay service allows customers to sync their eBay accounts to ipostparcels; allowing them to instantly populate the ‘quote and book’ form on their website with any of their sold items. This gives the customer immediate access to next day delivery.

Offering security to customers is a paramount consideration for ipostparcels, and they ensure that their customers’ details are kept secure and confidential at all times. eBay does not inform ipostparcels of their users’ account or password details in order to maintain rigorous security standards for additional peace of mind.

ipostparcels can collect customers’ parcels and undergo a fast next day delivery that’s guaranteed to reach the recipient in the timeframe promised by the seller. Being able to guarantee a quick delivery the very next day will encourage the seller’s customers to leave positive feedback ratings and thus encourage repeat and extended future business.

These benefits are all available for very low comparable prices, which has made this particular bespoke service one of the most popular.

Many Amazon deliveries are handled by Yodel and according to the FT, Yodel are failing to deliver some 15,000 parcels a day. Their parcel volume is up from 1/2 million a day to 1.5 million and they’re struggling to cope. Demand is up 20% on that forecast with the surprised realisation from Yodel chief Jonathan Smith, that “This appears to have been a very strong online Christmas”.

Yodel were formed by the merger of HDN and DHL Home Delivery and are now the second biggest delivery network after Royal Mail. If they can’t cope at Christmas than how are the smaller guys faring? Let us know if you’re courier has coped admirably or if you’ve had a major fail with upset customers

My favourite post is the one where they’ve dug deep into the depths of Google to find a page where the Google engineers have created a one off custom landing page for a search result. If you want to see it visit the P4D blog or simply do a Google search for the word “Askew“.

The Business Model

P4D is a courier service with a twist. They’re one of only a few official partners of the major courier companies like City Link, DHL, TNT, Fedex, YODEL, Parcelforce and Palletways, offering heavily discounted parcel and pallet delivery prices to smaller businesses and individuals. They built their own booking systems in-house with an aim to keep them as easy to use as possible and they can integrate your shopping cart with your shipping account to make deliveries simpler still – no more manual entry ever again!

P4D differs from the competition because they’re a software company at heart looking to make the parcel delivery process hassle free, but as well as low prices they also pride themselves in offering exceptional customer support – especially when things go wrong. They answer emails quickly and oftentimes out of hours, plus they’ve a dedicated Customer Service team to take your calls.

The Software Solution

In 2008 Stephen teamed up with Chris Black – Chief Geek! P4D already offered cheap deals, but Chris designed systems that were instant, intuitive, and for regular senders took away all the admin headaches. Customers sending more than 200 parcels a month became P4D Pro customers with even cheaper tariffs and a courier service to suit their business, plus access to online invoicing, file uploads for delivery addresses, and full customer support as well.

P4D now offers a wide choice of courier services – whatever it is you want to send they’ll do their best to find you a solution, but for regular shipments their website quote tool simply works it all out for you. They can link up to any online shop, not just eBay, and have their own API (you’ll know one if you have one!) for technical bods wanting to integrate their shipping account with their sales.

They even offer their customers the opportunity to carbon offset their deliveries with a clever bit of code that calculates how long your shipment spends on the road or in the air, and you can also ‘round up your pound’ for their chosen charity, which changes every three months.

Find out more

If you’d like to find out more about P4D, Steve or his Account Managers will be more than happy to chat with you. They’ll get to know your business and work out how low they can get your tariff, plus determine which courier service best suits your needs. Otherwise, you might find the answer to your question already listed on their website in the FAQ section.

If you’re not a regular sender, but you’re looking for great deals and an easy booking system, you can get an instant quote online 24/7 for the very next parcel you want to send or get some advice from a P4D Customer Service Guru on 01295 267200.

Keep in touch

P4D have a strong online presence with a growing community around the web. Find them on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and many smaller networks.

Be sure to meet their Superhero and introduce him to your friends! .

The news has been full of horror stories suggesting that in no time at all Royal Mail will be charging as much as £1 for a 1st class stamp, but that’s unlikely to happen in the near future. The price of a 2nd class letter stamp (currently 36p) will still be capped by the regulators and too high a differential between 1st and 2nd class would simply result in customers abandoning 1st class post.

What the relaxation will do is to remove some of the restrictions which don’t allow Royal Mail to effectively compete with their competitors, whilst retaining the Universal Delivery Service which ensures they deliver to every household in the country six days a week.

The price proposed for deregulation are:

• First Class deliveries – letters, large letters (A4 in size and up to 750g in weight) and parcels
• Second Class deliveries – for large letters and parcels up to 1Kg in weight
• standard parcels
• business mail – metered or franked mail and pre-printed envelopes
• bulk mail – mainly large businesses sending a large volume of post in a single mailing for example, bank statements

Royal Mail will still be required to provide access to their competitors, meaning that the likes of TNT Post and UK Mail will still be able to get your credit card bills delivered. Royal Mail would have the freedom to set the wholesale price to their competitors for access to its network but would be subject to rules regarding the allowed margin between the wholesale and retail prices so they won’t be able to price them out of the market.

Royal Mail’s chief executive Moya Greene has insisted that maintaining the universal services and not having freedom to set prices would mean the company couldn’t survive. The latest proposals which are now subject to 11 weeks consultation should go some way towards addressing her concerns.

What is likely to concern online retailers is how much the cost of sending packages could rise. The good news however is that Royal Mail now have so many competitors in the packet delivery space that that alone should ensure Royal Mail have to remain competitive if they want to keep your business.

It’s worth remembering that Royal Mail have to provide a more comprehensive Universal Service than anywhere else in Europe. With that in mind if you want to make your voice heard you can submit your response to the public Universal Postal Service consulation on Ofcom’s website up until the 5th January 2012.

FBA or Fulfilment by Amazon means that you never again have to pick and pack a single order, or if you choose they can fulfil your day to day run rate products leaving you more time to manage your business and source new suppliers and products. It doesn’t even matter if you’re selling on your own website and eBay in addition to Amazon – they’ll still pick and pack all of your orders on your behalf.

Sellers can now also benefit from Amazon’s European Fulfilment Network – You ship your products to a fulfilment Centre located in your home country (e.g. in the UK) and they can be subsequently made available at the seller’s choice on Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr and Amazon.it. Currently FBA is available for orders Sold on Amazon in all EU Marketplaces but in the UK you can also use it for Webstore and UK Multi-channel Fulfilment orders.

If you’re about to have your Christmas stock delivered and would like to cut down your order processing time on Amazon and your picking and packing time for website and eBay orders then Amazon FBA might be worth taking a serious look at. Of course if you have excess stock left at the end of the Christmas period you can request Amazon return it to you at any point in time. FBA could work out more cost effective than taking on additional temporary warehouse staff and having to train them at the busiest time of the selling year.

One other advantage is that some Amazon categories such as Toys are closed to new sellers over the next few months as Amazon refuses to let their customers down over the Christmas period. However even if you’ve never sold on Amazon before you can still sell in the Toys category if you let Amazon fulfil your orders with FBA.

Do you already use Amazon FBA, or would you consider doing so over the Christmas period? What would stop you trying the service with a couple of product lines and what could convince you to put the majority of your fast selling lines into Amazon and let them fulfil your orders for you?

TNT has secured Guernsey Post as a client, which will see well-known high street brands use the service with their deliveries being handled by TNT Post UK. Current projected volumes are 17 million items in the first year of operation with the company targeting vendors who use websites sites such as Kelkoo and eBay to promote their products.

However don’t get too excited at the prospect of a competitor to Royal Mail. Firstly TNT are targeting businesses who generally have a minimum volume circa about 250 items per collection. That puts the service out of reach of most eBay businesses, but the volume requirements will also depend on format, geographic location and volumetrics (size and weight).

Click to embiggen

Our expansion into packets and parcels is a key part of strategic growth plan in the UK. We have applied our principles of innovation, customer service and value for money to this new offer. We aim to improve customer satisfaction and reduce costs. Online retail packets and parcel delivery is a growing trend within the postal sector and our focus is to be the main provider in this sector.
Nick Wells, CEO, TNT Post UK

There is no one sector that TNT Post will specifically target but CD’s DVD’s, toiletries, computer consumables are some of the sectors. Weight and format specifications will depend on the service .

Many retailers will be somewhat disappointed that the launch of a new service is probably unsuitable for them due to the volume requirements. I’m however more disappointed that the fulfilment will still be via third parties such as Royal Mail. However TNT Post UK, are the largest private sector postal operator in the UK and the chances are that once established they’ll start to eat away at the market share.

Doubtless TNT Post UK will also start rolling out “final mile” delivery services probably starting in the cities where they have the greatest mail volumes, in fact TNT Post have been running trials since way back in 2008.

File this under “One to watch” and don’t plan on jumping ship in the near future, not that is unless you’ve got a daily delivery volume of 250 parcels per day, in which case let us know if you’re going to trial the service, how much financial saving TNT Post offers you, and what the delivery experience is like.

Without exception the message I got back was that the delays caused by the snow were totally unavoidable. All couriers are designed for parcels to flow through their networks. In normal circumstances a parcel despatched in Plymouth for example, will be picked up, sorted in the local depot, routed to the national hub, passed on to a local delivery depot in Edinburgh and be out for delivery by the next morning.

As soon as parcels stop flowing through the delivery network it causes problems and couriers simply don’t have the facilities for storing parcels. Most couriers resorted to hiring temporary warehouses and this is where the problems really started for eBay sellers.

There has been much said on various forums that couriers operated a last in first out process. Couriers themselves (including Royal Mail) insisted that their procedures are to operate a first in first out policy. In reality most couriers were unable to even transfer parcels to the North of England and Scotland. These parcels were not only delayed but had the knock on effect of clogging up warehouses in the South.

There has been speculation that Royal Mail purposely delayed old mail, in preference to parcels posted later, in order to meet their delivery targets. However it’s worth pointing out the period from 6th December 2010 to 1st January 2011 was already excluded from their published quality of service targets.

This is the case every year for Royal Mail (exact dates will vary year to year – basically it’s the first Monday in December until the beginning of January). There would be no logic in as rushing through new mail at the expense of mail already delayed in the network, simply to reduce the total quantity of delayed mail, as delays over this period are not included in aggregated figures.

Once the weather improved doubtless all couriers processed new parcels as they arrived at the same time as working through the backlog. With the best intentions in the world, if parcels have been stored in temporary warehouse it would likely be impossible to process them sequentially. This is compounded by the fact that in many cases they were stored in multiple locations in different parts of the country wherever the courier managed to secure temporary warehouse facilities.

For future instances of poor weather on-line retailers face a difficult decision. Do you post all your sales knowing that whilst some will get through others will be delayed or do you hold back despatching items to avoid being caught in the backlog? Again if you hold back shipping items (even if you pack them) do you yourself have space in your warehouse to hold a weeks worth of packed orders if you delay despatch?

Hopefully we’ve seen the last of the poor weather for this year, but what plans will you put in place for next time your deliveries are affected by snow?

Streetwise give the ability to send a single or multi-parcel consignment of up to 20kg for £11.99+VAT. The big benefit of this is if for instance sell products like car headlights and a customer buys two, rather than reboxing them into a new outer case you can simply ship them both in the original manufactures packaging without paying two courier charges.

If you go over the 20kg weight limit the cost is an additional 35p/kg, and there are some volumetic limitations (maximum box size is 160cm x 90cm x 80cm with a maximum weight of 30kg per item).

Streetwise use the APC network and can collect from your home or office and of course will leave a card if your customer is not at home and redeliver for free on a day convenient to them. It’s a next business day service

Payment for ad hoc deliveries is by credit card/PayPal without requiring an account, although for regular volume users prices can be negotiated.

The next few months are going to be the busiest of the year and many eBay sellers will be looking forward to some bumper sales. Many sellers will be looking for couriers for the first time and I remember many years ago when I sold my first large order which was too heavy for Royal Mail. If you don’t already have a courier contract set up this is the time of year to get prepared.

Whilst the Streetwise price per delivery isn’t the most competitive, if you have a one off multi-parcel delivery to send it’s worth checking their service out as it could be a time and money saver.

Disclosure: Streetwise advertise with TameBay

eBay are basing the standardised delivery information on the couriers official transit time so Express is for next day deliveries, Standard is for 1-2 working days and Economy is for 3-5 working day transit times.

This doesn’t however take into account how many working days the seller has added in for handling time. It opens up the bizaare situation where a seller with 3 days handling time prior to despatch but using a next day courier will have an “Express delivery” shown taking 4 days, but someone with a 1 day handling time and a 48 hour courier will have their delivery labeled as “Standard” but only take 3 days to arrive with the customer.

eBay need to take into account handling time as 4 days (or longer) can hardly be considered an express delivery. Customers are rightly likely to be disappointed at longer delivery times if they’re led to believe their being offered a premium service.

If you haven’t already it’s time to go through your listings and update your delivery methods to take account of the new delivery information. If in the past you used options like “Sellers standard service” or “Other Courier” check what they’ve been mapped to. Consider changing them to “Other courier 24 hour” or “Other courier 3 days” to ensure that your items aren’t displaying an economy service when you’re offering faster delivery times. If you do have a longer despatch time but use a 24 hour courier it may even be worth displaying a shorter handling time but switch to “Other courier 3 days” to avoid displaying Express shipping and disappointing customers.

What do you think of the new delivery options now that they’re live? Do you like the new standardised delivery information or did you prefer the old method where the courier or Royal Mail service was displayed?

Edited to add: Oh joy of joys – have you seen what happens if you have two delivery options which take the same length of time but one’s tracked and the other isn’t?

They both show as “Standard” although in this case one is “Royal Mail 1st Class” and the other is “Royal Mail 1st Class Recorded”. I’m not sure how customers will tell the difference though, unless they’ve figured out to click the postage tab lower down the listing to identify the actual service being offered.

The pricing is competitive with Royal Mail prices for recorded delivery items over 250gm for VAT registered companies and over 500gm for those who are not VAT registered.

An advantage of myHermes is that they’ll collect from you eliminating trips to the Post Office and once you get to know your local agent they’re very flexible at collecting at a time suitable for you. At the other end they’ll also deliver to your buyer and again if your customer isn’t at home they’ll try again at a different time of day – even in the evening.

If you want to take advantage of the new £2.75 pricing you can book parcels online at myHermes.co.uk.

Disclosure: myHermes advertise with TameBay

Up until now the email address has been an optional field, and in fact still isn’t asterisked as a compulsory field. However if the email address isn’t entered a pop-up appears insisting that it’s required.

This is just creating double work as far as I’m concerned – I’m not too worried about Parcelforce emailing my customers to let them know that the parcel is on it’s way. I already scan the tracking numbers into eBay and have auto-emails set up to let buyers know that their item is on it’s way, I don’t need or want Parcelforce to duplicate this and in fact much prefer all communications for eBay customers to go through eBay.

With the moves eBay are making towards a closed message system I suspect it won’t be too long before buyer email address aren’t even available to sellers. This will leave the dilemma of entering your own email address into each Parcelforce shipment or entering a fake email address. Although customers are normally appreciative of receiving despatch notifications, doubling up on emails from different sources is just a waste of time.

There are some companies many eBay users will already know such as myHermes, Parcel2Go, DHL and Interlink as well as a brand new delivery service just launching this week called myParcelDelivery. myParcelDelivery’s unique selling point (apart from price) is that they offer services from a large range of couriers including DHL, UPS, CityLink, TNT and UK Mail.

The new Delivery Hub is sponsored by SafeStore self storage, who have 90 locations across the UK many with 24 hour access.

The biggest shocker for me is the absence of Royal Mail and ParcelForce from the Delivery Services Hub. Regardless of other couriers Royal Mail are heavily integrated into eBay Postage, are the one company which pretty much every eBay buyer and seller will use at some point, and their absence simply doesn’t make sense.

Regardless of the absence of Royal Mail the eBay Delivery Services Hub is well worth a visit, especially if you have any over-sized or the occasional International parcel to send.

Disclosure: myHermes and Parcel2Go advertise with TameBay

The downside is that buyer don’t generally like surcharges and in addition it reduces transparency of pricing. The price you see will no longer necessarily the price you pay and surcharging in a world where Detailed Seller Ratings and Buyer Protection Claims form part of Seller Performance measurements might not be the best option.

Whilst many buyers are aware from painful experience that it costs more to deliver to their address for many it comes as an unwelcome surprise. There are two options available for most sellers – either charge a flat rate across the UK for all destinations, or surcharge buyers when it costs you more.

eBay are asking which areas of the UK should be included if surcharges are introduced on the site, and the current list includes The Highlands and Islands of Scotland, Northern Ireland, Isle of Man and Isles of Scilly, British Forces Overseas and (a surprising one as few couriers surcharge for this destination) the Isle of Wight. The Channel Islands are also mentioned, but they’re not actually part of the United Kingdom and eBay currently treat them as an intenational destination for buyer blocks, although up until recently they were treated as part of the UK.

Would you like the option to surcharge for domestic deliveries based on Post Codes or would you prefer to have a flat rate across the whole of the UK? Will the fact that buyers can rank you with Detailed Seller Ratings affect your decision? Would you apply a surcharge for items which you deliver to some parts of the UK with free postage?

*PowerSeller log in required

To qualify for the 99p offer you’ll need to register at Parcel2Go.com and use the Parcel2Go eBay upload tool which links to eBay. This enables you to upload delivery information from your eBay ended items and imports it into Parcel2Go ready for you to select the 99p offer and book a collection date which can be from Tuesday onwards.

The service offered at 99p is HDNL Standard 24 – 72 hour delivery, which normally costs £5.99 + VAT. Although the offer is for bookings made on Monday only, you can arrange a collection date for any day during the week. There’s no limit on the number of parcels you can send using the offer, but it’s strictly a jiffy bag or box service, letters will not be accepted.

This has to be the best delivery promotion I’ve ever seen, 99p is an unbeatable price and if you want to take advantage I’d recommend you register with Parcel2Go and get your eBay account linked ready for Monday morning.

Disclosure: Parcel2Go advertise with TameBay

The deal for a dozen red roses for my dear old mum on Valentines day would have been perfect, but because she lives on the Isle of Wight (not “Isle of White” as per the listing!) I’m not allowed to buy them. The seller is offering free delivery, but is being selective as to where they’ll deliver and are excluding huge chunks of the UK with a list of over 200 prohibited Post Codes.

I know many sellers have battled this dilemma for years, some couriers charge different rates for delivery to the far flung reaches of the UK, but is it really fair to discriminate against buyers based on where they live? Why would a seller want to ban 100s of 1000s of potential customers?

There are a number of solutions – work out your average cost to deliver across all UK Post Codes and charge that – over the course of a year it’ll average out. Choose a different courier – Yes that might be a radical solution but why wouldn’t you want to deliver to everyone that wants to buy from you?

So as a seller, how do you handle deliveries where the courier may surcharge for certain areas? Do you bump the price to some of your customer? Do you average your delivery charges over the course of a year? Do you use a different carrier for some deliveries or do you simply swallow the difference and absorb it?

As for the Weekly Deal on eBay – I’m surprised eBay let it through. Why would eBay promote a listing that a ton of their customers aren’t allowed to buy? It’s hardly what I’d call a good buying experience to have your order canceled, especially when it’s themed around flowers and Valentines Day. I’d recommend boycotting the listing, visiting Arena Flowers via PayPal offers and giving them your custom instead.

DHL, part of Deutsche Post DHL, will keep their international parcel business. HDN say that adding DHL’s domestic business will better position them to compete with intensifying competition from other couriers as well as the ability to challenge Royal Mail more effectively.

For existing customers of both delivery services it should be pretty much business as usual. The newly acquired business will continue to trade under the DHL Domestic name until the two businesses are fully integrated.

What’s less clear is the effect it might have on the many 3rd party companies who resell DHL services to eBay sellers and the knock on effect across the industry. It will be interesting to see if they can keep their pricing competitive or if the two businesses merging affects costs from courier resellers.

Parcel2Go have also got some £50.00 free deliveries for 2nd prize and iPod Shuffles for 3rd placed winners. For a chance of winning all you need to do is to put £20 of pre-pay credit into a Parcel2Go account before 22nd December.

Now many (like myself) will already have a courier contract – so is it worth entering? Well I would give that a resounding yes! Switch some of your deliveries through Parcel2Go (where the cost starts from as little as £3.99 plus a collection charge) and you might be the lucky winner.

Think about what you could do with £3000.00 of free deliveries – I don’t even rack up that much in courier fees in a month, but I could easily upgrade all of my Royal Mail packets to courier for a month and offer a premium service. Rather than pocketing the savings I could run a free delivery promotion so that all my buyers could benefit from free deliveries for January to bump start the new year sales.

If you’re the winner you’ll hear from Parcel2Go by the end of December, and if you do win we’d love to hear how you’re going to use your free deliveries to maximise your eBay sales.

Disclosure: Parcel2Go advertise with TameBay

According to the British Chambers of Commerce three-quarters of the 250 businesses it surveyed are considering using an alternative delivery service. During previous strikes by Royal Mail workers Parcel2Go experienced huge increases in business and as the largest online parcel delivery service in the UK they’re gearing up for an expected 20% rise in bookings.

However while welcoming the increase in business, Richard Adams-Mercer, Parcel2Go Business Development Director said “The approach isn’t good for the postal system as a whole and will not halt further downsizing in Royal Mail in the future, businesses want to know that their deliveries will arrive on time. Royal Mail workers are shooting themselves in the foot.”

Disclaimer – Parcel2Go advertise with TameBay

I’ve just checked the distance to the nearest Collect+ stores if I were to send a parcel to my mother on the Isle of Wight – my nearest location is 0.31 miles away and my mother would have even less distance to travel at just 0.12 miles from her house. That’s pretty impressive!

Offering the convenience of dropping off parcels at a PayPoint outlet and delivering via the HDN to a retailer near your customer the service normally takes 3-5 days. Not only that but they can offer an easy paid returns process for sellers – simply book a delivery and email the .pdf shipping label to your customer and they can drop the item off at a local store at a time convenient to them.

Edited to add: As of this afternoon Collect+ accept PayPal

Royal Mail Premium services such as Special Delivery and Royal Mail Tracked items will still be delivered on strike days. Although delivery guarantees will be suspended during industrial action at most I’m guessing there will be no more than a day’s delay for premium services.

Over 900 managers and contract drivers will be drafted in to move mail around the country, and although business collections may be suspended but alternatives to getting mail into the system are Post Offices and Mail Centres which will remain open. Collections from Post Offices and pillar boxes may be less frequent than normal so best advice is to post as early in the day as possible.

Royal Mail have additional sorting and distribution capacity in the form of five large fully staffed sites to aid the distribution of packets through their network. This should assist eBayers as few items sold online are small enough to be shipped as letters.

It’s also worth another reminder that ParcelForce services should be unaffected by strike action and both Express 24 and Express 48 services can be purchased on eBay with PayPal postage.

The discount from myHermes rack rate is exclusive to eBay sellers and a promotional code will be announced around the 20th in order to access the lower rates. We’ll update this post with the discount code as soon as it’s published.

Edited to add The daily promo code will be published on the myHermes About Me page

The latest offering is their new Parcel2Go Lite service – up to 2kg in an A4 sized jiffy bag on a 2-5 day service costing just £3.99 plus VAT. The restrictions of the service are:

Parcel2Go Lite
• There is a collection surcharge of £5
• You must have at least 3 DHL UK parcels in your order
• This service is not a signed for service. Although over 80% are signed for
• Parcels on this service must fit in an A4 jiffy bag and weigh approx. 2kg

This service should appeal most to users with multiple items to send due to the collection surcharge. It’s also not suited for particularly light and low value items which is common to practically all delivery services other than Royal Mail.

Where this service wins is in the 1-2kg weight range as it’s priced very competitively against Royal Mail First Class or Standard Parcels. If you already user Parcel2Go it’s a perfect service for diverting some items you’d normally send by Royal Mail during periods of industrial action.

Disclaimer – Parcel2Go advertise with TameBay

The service has some great features: sender and recipient can both be notified of dispatch and delivery by email or SMS; the receiving store will hold the parcel for collection for up to ten days, and insurance up to £40 is included. Online tracking is available.

Having a play with postcodes I know in various English cities, it seems that most of the stores in Collect+’s network are small corner shops and independent supermarkets. I love the idea that this network is itself being used to support independent businesses, though I think we can probably bet that some of the supermarket chains are looking at it (and if I were Messrs Tesco or Sainsbury, parcel drop-off and collect in store would be my next product launch). As most of these stores have long opening hours, it’s a much more convenient option for buyer pick up than having to go to a courier depot.

Disclaimer: Collect+ do not advertise with TameBay, though frankly I think they should. Thanks to the lovely Maria from Seduction Lingerie for the link.

If you’ve used Collect+ either as a sender or recipient, please leave us a comment and let us know how it went for you.