[OT] Cheap postage

I sometimes see an item from a UK seller on Amazon which is so cheap that it hardly covers the cost of postage.

I pay 54p for a second class letter (74p if it's thicker than 0.5cm) but some sellers must be paying a lot less than this.

What sort of prices are they paying?

Reply to
pamela
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pamela a écrit :

At a car boot and a bit sceptical - I bought a pile of pre-franked envelopes for TNT Post, marked 'delivered by Royal Mail' for just a few pence. All had a return address on them, which needed deleting. As said, I was sceptical, but I have had none returned as not delivered. They cost just a few pence each.

Reply to
Harry Bloomfield

But you have broken the law. Send him down.

Cheers

Reply to
Syd Rumpo

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Reply to
Peter Johnson

Just noticed this one:

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Reply to
Peter Johnson

That document quotes (on page 7) the same prices as I said I was paying.

Reply to
pamela

Page 5 is no different to what I said.

Reply to
pamela

I get the same with electronic parts from China via Ebay. Often with a total cost little more than UK postage would be for the same item. They do take several weeks to arrive - but are delivered at the local end by the PO. I suppose there might be some form of reciprocal arrangement with China - but can't see 'us' posting things in that direction as much.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

If the sender of this item from China paid 74p (as I would have to) for second class postage for the UK portion of the delivery then there isn't much left!

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Reply to
pamela

Yes. But if the PO collect (or have it delivered to them) a vast number at one go, there will be economies of scale there. Like the bulk mail you must get at home.

There must be a big saving - otherwise Virgin would be bankrupt. ;-)

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

I just got a card from moonpig.com. They are based in Guernsey, the envelope was not franked, it had a Guernsey stamp on it that someone had licked and stuck on. (It was cancelled)

Reply to
Graham.

AIUI it's a troll on the postal treaties. Countries accept international mail on the basis that money from sending mail from a country pays for deliveries into that country: no money changes hands internationally.

This was fine in the days of sending letters, because most letter traffic is two-way, so senders balance out receivers. It also balances out different costs reasonably well: it costs more to send and deliver mail in Switzerland (where wages are high) than in Mali (where they aren't).

It doesn't work when the traffic is mostly one-way - Royal Mail are delivering this stuff for free and there's nothing they can do about it: jacking up the price of letters or packets to China won't help them.

What I can't quite work out is the shipping method... I suspect this is going air freight filling up unused spaces on flights (possibly commercial flights), which is why the timeline can be so variable. Going sea freight is about 30-35 days which is within the time estimate, but many things arrive quicker than this. Perhaps sea freight is used at busy periods of the year.

My most recent delivery from a Hong Kond seller was posted in Vientiane, Laos and others from Phillipines and Malaysia, so there's obviously something more complicated going on.

Theo (who generally buys from a UK seller if possible, but some stuff simply isn't available)

Reply to
Theo

I do too. But as regards electronic stuff, it's often far easier to find on Ebay and pay than to wade through the RS and CPC etc websites.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

That shows that for 2nd class the price for a small item sent 2nd class can be as low as 37p, a good bit lower than the 55p for using a stamp and 64p for a "large" item. I suppose that some of the items sold on eBay for around a pound actually only cost a few pence each in bulk, so that there is still some profit even after postage and packing, but there cannot be much.

What has surprised me recently is the speed of delivery: in the last fortnight I've ordered from two separate eBay traders smallish low-value items and chosen the cheapest postal option (one was post free, meaning included in the price). In both cases the estimated delivery time was

3-5 days. In fact both were delivered the day after I ordered, and one in just over 12 hours from placing the order. One was delivered by Amazon (but that wasn't where I ordered it from) and one by Yodel. If this happens frequently, and people get to know, then hardly anyone will pay extra for 1st class postage or for Amazon's premium delivery service. My guess is that Amazon are gearing up for the delivery of fresh supermarket produce, but I don't know about Yodel.
Reply to
Clive Page

There are discounts for franked mail and for online business account holders. Large customers may also get discounts for supplying the mail pre-sorted by post code. If you do enough business with Royal Mail, you can get to negotiate your own prices.

Reply to
Nightjar

I'm sure that the big corporations get a good discount but big corporations don't tend to be the sellers I have had cheap & small packets from. Some of the vendors (in the UK) are not much more than a home business and yet even they seem to be paying little for postage.

Reply to
pamela

I scanned the pdf for what you're referring to and saw "37p" on pages 7 and 9.

How does a vendor qualify to use "Account (OBA code BPL)" as mentioned on page 7?

Similarly for "Mailmark Franking" on page 9?

I know is some poor soul, who recently sent me a small lightweight item which fitted in an ordinary envelope, paid a whopping ?2.70. Yet others pay much less.

I'm interested because, in the end, the buyer pays the cost of delivery.

Reply to
pamela

That would mean that the Republic of Bongo Bongo could accept containers full of mail destined for the UK from, say the US, and then require the UK post office to delivery it.

In return, Bongo Bongo receives a dozen dusty Christmas cards from the UK to deliver in a year. Come to think of it that's almost what seems to happen.

It starts to explain why some vitamins I recently ordered from New York came via Sweden.

Reply to
pamela

Don't go there!

Reply to
Stuart Noble

I know *exactly* what you mean, and I've been a VM customer ever since NTL/CableWest decided to purchase the VM brand name[1] (and a shit load of ADSL trouble[2]) from Branson about a decade back! They certainly know how to piss off their "Loyal Customers".

[1] In fact we've lived at our present address long enough to have refused becoming a customer of the previous cable TV company (or companies) that eventually landed up becoming part of NTL's operations. [2] Istr that the rebranded NTL/TeleWest operation finally managed to ditch the ADSL side of their operations fairly recently which bodes well for their cable network's future reliability now that it is once more untainted by ADSL connections.
Reply to
Johnny B Good

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