Affordable registered mail for e-commerce

bacon?

Are there any affordable options to deliver goods with affordable shipping with tracking?

The cheapest registered mail with an post is 8 Euro! Googling other options, I could only find a little lower, 7 Euro.

If I'm selling as an item on Etsy for 10 Euro, I'd there any alternative?

tacofries

What's the weight, size, order volume, locations etc!!! So many variables..

roots2branches

Personally, I think it should be EU law that all postal services in the EU provide tracking for all items sent through the post as standard. Technology exists, there is no reason for An Post to charge extra for it. You pay for a service and they should deliver and when they F*** up there should be some come back.
That said, if you're doing some volume you can negotiate with An Post for their registered services which usually means a flat rate up to an agreed weight.

bacon?

tacofries wrote: »

What's the weight, size, order volume, locations etc!!! So many variables..

Standard letter size, < 50 grams. Domestic Irish post

8 Euro on An Post site for registered, crazy high price.

bacon?

Agree. Also, if you're shipping goods with regular mail, too many chancers will claim they never received it.

roots2branches wrote: »

Personally, I think it should be EU law that all postal services in the EU provide tracking for all items sent through the post as standard. Technology exists, there is no reason for An Post to charge extra for it. You pay for a service and they should deliver and when they F*** up there should be some come back.
That said, if you're doing some volume you can negotiate with An Post for their registered services which usually means a flat rate up to an agreed weight.

sasta le

Get friendly with your post man

Peregrinus

bacon? wrote: »

Are there any affordable options to deliver goods with affordable shipping with tracking?

The cheapest registered mail with an post is 8 Euro! Googling other options, I could only find a little lower, 7 Euro.

If I'm selling as an item on Etsy for 10 Euro, I'd there any alternative?

There's a signifcant additional cost to the carrier for registered mail or a similar system that provides proof of deliveryh, since every delivery requires a direct personal interaction between the post carrier and the addressee of the item - you can't just put stuff in a letterbox and move on. I doubt that An Post's charge is very much out of line with what other postal systems charge. There's a reason why you're not finding other carriers offering better deals.

Is there an alternative? Sure - do what mail order services have been doing for well over a century, send low-value stuff by regular post and simply swallow the cost of consignments that go astray. It costs less to do that than to provide tracking and proof-of-delivery for every item, no matter how low the value. Keep registered post or similar for higher value items.

Darc19

roots2branches wrote: »

Personally, I think it should be EU law that all postal services in the EU provide tracking for all items sent through the post as standard. Technology exists, there is no reason for An Post to charge extra for it. You pay for a service and they should deliver and when they F*** up there should be some come back.
That said, if you're doing some volume you can negotiate with An Post for their registered services which usually means a flat rate up to an agreed weight.

What an utterly ridiculous idea.

Track every envelope????

That means giving an unique number to every piece of mail, get it tracked and delivery confirmed

Cost to send a letter would skyrocket and for 99:% of people it would be of no benefit whatsoever

Definitely one of the worst suggestions I've seen

tacofries

If it fits in an A5 envelope and through a letterbox I think it's €2 for Irish postage and €2.90 for international postage but its not tracked or signed. Go to the An Post counter and ask them to test it or else just go and buy €2 stamps, send a few out and see if it gets delivered or not.

bacon? wrote: »

Standard letter size, < 50 grams. Domestic Irish post

8 Euro on An Post site for registered, crazy high price.

roots2branches

Darc19 wrote: »

What an utterly ridiculous idea.

Track every envelope????

That means giving an unique number to every piece of mail, get it tracked and delivery confirmed

Cost to send a letter would skyrocket and for 99:% of people it would be of no benefit whatsoever

Definitely one of the worst suggestions I've seen

What an utterly ridiculous reply!
Firstly, with the exception of post where you place your own stamp, all post has an ID number. Take a letter to the post office and their €1 stamp they print will have a unique ID. There is no reason on earth this cannot be a small barcode.
So when the letter passes through the sorting office it can be scanned and a record created. Then all the postman has to do is scan it before he sticks it through your door, it takes a second. You then have proof that An Post have done what you paid them to do.

It can still be processed as standard mail and they can charge a premium for faster express post or services that require a signature.

If I pay for a service it should be delivered. An Post can loose your letter and there is nothing you can do about it. That's not acceptable in this day and age.

paddylonglegs

Email an post with your query and requirements. They will email back with a suggestion that works best.

It’s a start but at least gives you an idea

Peregrinus

roots2branches wrote: »

What an utterly ridiculous reply!
Firstly, with the exception of post where you place your own stamp, all post has an ID number. Take a letter to the post office and their €1 stamp they print will have a unique ID. There is no reason on earth this cannot be a small barcode.
So when the letter passes through the sorting office it can be scanned and a record created. Then all the postman has to do is scan it before he sticks it through your door, it takes a second. You then have proof that An Post have done what you paid them to do.

It can still be processed as standard mail and they can charge a premium for faster express post or services that require a signature.

If I pay for a service it should be delivered. An Post can loose your letter and there is nothing you can do about it. That's not acceptable in this day and age.

It takes a good deal more than 1 second to extract an item from a bag and scan it while standing in the street, without a work surface. Your proposal also requires letters to be handled individually at the point of deliver, which means the current practice of pre-sorting and bundling them will have be abandoned.

Basically, you're proposing to add complication, delay and expense to the post handling system so that people who don't want proof of deliver are compelled to pay for it anyway. It's not a good plan.

Darc19

roots2branches wrote: »

What an utterly ridiculous reply!
Firstly, with the exception of post where you place your own stamp, all post has an ID number. Take a letter to the post office and their €1 stamp they print will have a unique ID.

So everyone has to go to a physical post office, get a stamp with a unique barcode, take down the details of that barcode and then post it.


Most post has a standard stamp or simply Franked in a bulk mailing.

As I said, ridiculous idea especially as for an extra cost, registered post is already available.


However, a Lower cost OPTION for what you are suggesting would be a good idea. Eg, a €2 confirmed delivery fee without signature where if there was a dispute, the geo location of the scan could confirm the location of delivery

Deub

I don’t think you will find a lot cheaper. You can do a test by sending 50% of your volume by registered post and 50% by letter. After a while, you can calculate the one that is cheaper overall.

air

Is there state subsidy of postage from China? It's crazy how cheaply even tracked items can be bought from there online.
I see the US changed their policy last year to pass on more of the cost to Chinese shippers.

roots2branches

Peregrinus wrote: »

It takes a good deal more than 1 second to extract an item from a bag and scan it while standing in the street, without a work surface. Your proposal also requires letters to be handled individually at the point of deliver, which means the current practice of pre-sorting and bundling them will have be abandoned.

Basically, you're proposing to add complication, delay and expense to the post handling system so that people who don't want proof of deliver are compelled to pay for it anyway. It's not a good plan.

No it doesn't, you clearly know nothing about organisations like Amazon who use pick scanning tools so that even the brain dead can pick the right items at speed.
As I said before, you pay for a service, it should be provided and when it goes wrong there should be come back. Perhaps if your business had to put up with the lost mail of An Post you might have a different attitude.

roots2branches

Darc19 wrote: »

So everyone has to go to a physical post office, get a stamp with a unique barcode, take down the details of that barcode and then post it.


Most post has a standard stamp or simply Franked in a bulk mailing.

As I said, ridiculous idea especially as for an extra cost, registered post is already available.


However, a Lower cost OPTION for what you are suggesting would be a good idea. Eg, a €2 confirmed delivery fee without signature where if there was a dispute, the geo location of the scan could confirm the location of delivery

I never said everyone has to go to a post office. But If you want tracking, go to the post office. There's this thing you get called a receipt, it has the code on it.

No need for extra cost, just An Post doing what they are paid to do.
An Post make plenty of profit. Perhaps if they lost their useless middle and upper management and had some brains behind the organisation they could not only deliver a better service for Ireland but allow its small businesses to prosper.

Peregrinus

roots2branches wrote: »

No it doesn't, you clearly know nothing about organisations like Amazon who use pick scanning tools so that even the brain dead can pick the right items at speed.
As I said before, you pay for a service, it should be provided and when it goes wrong there should be come back. Perhaps if your business had to put up with the lost mail of An Post you might have a different attitude.

You clearly know nothing about organisations like post offices. Amazon delivers packages, typically one at a time, and rarely more than 2 or 3 to the same address at the same time. The post office mostly delivers letters, mostly handled (at the point of delivery) in pre-sorted bundles of up to 50. Your proposal requires the bundles to be disassembled, and each item individually scanned, by a worker standing in the street without a work surface to operate on. This is not going to be a cost-free exercise.

If Amazon could be competitive with a post office in delivering letters with proo-of-delivery, don't you think they'd be competing in that market already, in countries where the post office is open to competition? If you can point to a country where Amazon is doing this, please do. If you can't, maybe have a little think about why you can't. Indeed, if you can point to any country where the post office does what you suggest, do. And, if you can't, again, there is an obvious conclusion to be drawn.

If you want to pay for the service of proof-of-delivery of a letter, you can. Your proposal seems to be either that people should have this service without paying for it, or that they should be required to pay for it whether they want it or not.

paddylonglegs

OP has this thread been much help?

roots2branches

Peregrinus wrote: »

You clearly know nothing about organisations like post offices. Amazon delivers packages, typically one at a time, and rarely more than 2 or 3 to the same address at the same time. The post office mostly delivers letters, mostly handled (at the point of delivery) in pre-sorted bundles of up to 50. Your proposal requires the bundles to be disassembled, and each item individually scanned, by a worker standing in the street without a work surface to operate on. This is not going to be a cost-free exercise.

If Amazon could be competitive with a post office in delivering letters with proo-of-delivery, don't you think they'd be competing in that market already, in countries where the post office is open to competition? If you can point to a country where Amazon is doing this, please do. If you can't, maybe have a little think about why you can't. Indeed, if you can point to any country where the post office does what you suggest, do. And, if you can't, again, there is an obvious conclusion to be drawn.

If you want to pay for the service of proof-of-delivery of a letter, you can. Your proposal seems to be either that people should have this service without paying for it, or that they should be required to pay for it whether they want it or not.

I wasn't comparing Amazon to An Post, simply referring to the technology that they, and any business that handles high volumes of picking use to scan bar codes at speed.
The bundles you refer to will not make a difference. At the sorting office every item of mail is processed individually either by human or automation so that the address is read, at that point a scan can be made of the ID.
When it comes to the post man, yes he may have a few items to post through the door but why on earth do you think he needs a table to do the scanning? You do realise every courier on the planet scans on delivery!
Granted, the handheld scanner An Post currently use are cumbersome because they include a signature pad and keyboard. But that is not required.
You're just making excuses, it can be done and with ease.

The cost difference between standard post and registered/express is outrageous but registered/express post is more than just tracked. It is prioritised with next day delivery. Fair enough, that is a premium service and I can see the value in but there is no tracking only service.

The point is, I pay money for a service. If An Post fail to provide me with the service I paid for I should have come back. I don't and reason I don't is because there is no tracking. It's not acceptable in this day and age. An Post have a duty to prove they delivered what I paid for. Simple!

Peregrinus

roots2branches wrote: »

I wasn't comparing Amazon to An Post, simply referring to the technology that they, and any business that handles high volumes of picking use to scan bar codes at speed.
The bundles you refer to will not make a difference. At the sorting office every item of mail is processed individually either by human or automation so that the address is read, at that point a scan can be made of the ID.
When it comes to the post man, yes he may have a few items to post through the door but why on earth do you think he needs a table to do the scanning? You do realise every courier on the planet scans on delivery! . . . .

Parcel couriers do; letter carriers don't. Now, why do we think that this might be?

You say "when it comes to the postman . . ." as though this were a minor, incidental part of the whole system, but it's the key to it. Yes, it's relatively easy to scan each item of mail at the point where it is sorted, but as the consignor I don't care where or when it is sorted. I want to know where and when it is delivered; that's the only scan that really matters to me. And you talk about the postman posting "a few items" through the door but - no offence - bear in mind that your own door may not be typical. I've already pointed out that mail is sorted for delivery into bundles of up to 20 or even up to 50. That's because lots of mail is delivered to addresses that regularly receive mail in quantities like that. They are sorted into bundles so that, from the delivery office onwards, they can be bulk-handled. This is done because it is efficient. Imposing a requirement to disaggregate the bundles and scan each item individually at the delivery address is, it follows, ineffecient. And inefficiency costs money.

You ignore the question I already posed; why is nobody already doing what you suggest? Previously you've blamed An Post's "useless middle and upper management": and general lack of brains, but that can't possibly account for why the USPS doesn't do this, why Deutsche Bundepost doesn't do it, why La Poste doesn't do it, why PostNL doesn't do it, and why private sector competitors of these agencies in countries where that is permitted, like UPS and TNT, don't do it.

SFAIK no general postal service, whether public-sector or private-sector, does this, roots. Until you accept that, and are willing to be open-minded about the reasons for it, you're not going to have much success in persuading us that you are right and the rest of the world is wrong.

drunkmonkey

roots2branches wrote: »

The point is, I pay money for a service. If An Post fail to provide me with the service I paid for I should have come back. I don't and reason I don't is because there is no tracking. It's not acceptable in this day and age. An Post have a duty to prove they delivered what I paid for. Simple!

If you have a proof of postage your entitled to put in a claim for lost post even with standard mail. It's a while since I done it but I think it was capped at about €20 per item. Best of luck finding the claim form but it does exist.

tonysopprano

An Post are ridiculously expensive. For example I was posting 5 items to UK, each standard letter size and weighing 110grams An Post total was €22.50. I drove to Newry and posted them there for £7 instead.

thomas 123

Trying to get my own online business off the ground here also.

An post is the most expensive part of the whole product cost.

A packet is €4.80, most of my products fit that category.

I emailed the commerce team yesterday, hopefully they can do something, but I think you need 30+ parcels a week.

Darc19

tonysopprano wrote: »

An Post are ridiculously expensive. For example I was posting 5 items to UK, each standard letter size and weighing 110grams An Post total was €22.50. I drove to Newry and posted them there for £7 instead.

Comparing international airmail from one country to another versus internal mail cost.


Now let's look at how much it costs to post the precise same items from the UK to Ireland. £21.20 - about €24


Now, if you knocked 10g off the weight and it fitted an C5 envelope (about 15% bigger than a5), the cost here would have been €8.50

Royal mail from UK to Ireland for same would be £8.40 / £9.50

So comparing like for like, an post is cheaper than royal mail.

Peregrinus

tonysopprano wrote: »

An Post are ridiculously expensive. For example I was posting 5 items to UK, each standard letter size and weighing 110grams An Post total was €22.50. I drove to Newry and posted them there for £7 instead.

An Post are not the worst. Had you wished to send the same five items from Newry to Dublin it would have cost you £21.20, which is about €23.90.

Both post offices start to charge you serious money if you're posting internationally and the weight of your item exceeds 100g. An Post will give you domestic postage rates if you are posting from the Republic to Northern Ireland, but the UK Post Office does not reciprocate for items posted from Northern Ireland to the Republic.

jimmii

air wrote: »

Is there state subsidy of postage from China? It's crazy how cheaply even tracked items can be bought from there online.
I see the US changed their policy last year to pass on more of the cost to Chinese shippers.

A lot is to do with the universal post union which sets the rates. China is classed as a developing country still for some reason so because of that it's cheaper to post from China to London than fo post from Birmingham to London. In the US Trump has been complaining about it for a while and they were meant to pull out of the union at the start of the year as USPS were making a loss on every package coming in and it was costing $130m+ a year! I seem to recall that <500g with China post was incredibly cheap (presumably subsidised as well?) which may be why sometimes things come in two packages from the same supplier but no idea where I got that from I'm sure others have a better idea.

Hope that's it taking it too off topic lol

Peregrinus

The basic deal with international post is that if you post something in country A for delivery in country B, you pay country A's post office (obviously). They keep the whole payment, and they are responsible for getting the consignment to country B. Country B's post office is responsible for delivering locally, and they don't get paid for that.

This arrangement was arrived at by the UPU in the late nineteenth century. It looks unfair, but the basic idea is that every letter generates a reply, and when the reply is sent country B gets the postage while country A handles local delivery at no cost, so it all comes out in the wash. Even if not every letter generates a reply, the system still works so long as letters from A to B generate replies at about the same rate as letters from B to A do.

The problem is that this isn't always true. I might send a single letter taking out a subscription to The New Yorker, say, and this generates 52 replies as the magazine is sent to me every week for a year. That's a very good deal for the US post office, and a very bad deal for the post office in my country.

And the internet has made things worse; I order something online from China, and the order is fulfilled by post; the post office in my country doesn't get any revenue at all out of that.

So, a few years ago, countries started moving away from the simple-but-no-longer-fair system that used to be in place. The US Postal Service was first, I think,; it withdrew from the system and started requesting other post offices to make annual payments to them based on the difference in weight between the volume of post sent from that country to the US, and the volume of post travelling in the other direction. (The flip side of this, of course, is that that the USPS has to be willing to make payments to foreign post offices where the balance of postal flows is in the other direction.) Lots of countries now do this, but whether China participates in this system I can't say.

thomas 123

Peregrinus wrote: »

The basic deal with international post is that if you post something in country A for delivery in country B, you pay country A's post office (obviously). They keep the whole payment, and they are responsible for getting the consignment to country B. Country B's post office is responsible for delivering locally, and they don't get paid for that.

This arrangement was arrived at by the UPU in the late nineteenth century. It looks unfair, but the basic idea is that every letter generates a reply, and when the reply is sent country B gets the postage while country A handles local delivery at no cost, so it all comes out in the wash. Even if not every letter generates a reply, the system still works so long as letters from A to B generate replies at about the same rate as letters from B to A do.

The problem is that this isn't always true. I might send a single letter taking out a subscription to The New Yorker, say, and this generates 52 replies as the magazine is sent to me every week for a year. That's a very good deal for the US post office, and a very bad deal for the post office in my country.

And the internet has made things worse; I order something online from China, and the order is fulfilled by post; the post office in my country doesn't get any revenue at all out of that.

So, a few years ago, countries started moving away from the simple-but-no-longer-fair system that used to be in place. The US Postal Service was first, I think,; it withdrew from the system and started requesting other post offices to make annual payments to them based on the difference in weight between the volume of post sent from that country to the US, and the volume of post travelling in the other direction. (The flip side of this, of course, is that that the USPS has to be willing to make payments to foreign post offices where the balance of postal flows is in the other direction.) Lots of countries now do this, but whether China participates in this system I can't say.

Super interesting.

tricky D

Peregrinus wrote: »

....


I've already pointed out that mail is sorted for delivery into bundles of up to 20 or even up to 50. That's because lots of mail is delivered to addresses that regularly receive mail in quantities like that. They are sorted into bundles so that, from the delivery office onwards, they can be bulk-handled. This is done because it is efficient. Imposing a requirement to disaggregate the bundles and scan each item individually at the delivery address is, it follows, ineffecient. And inefficiency costs money.

Yup, basic logistics/economies of scale of this kind means one batches up and unbatches as close as one can, to the start and end of the chain. This makes even more sense when billing is taken into consideration. I swear I had the UPU spreadsheet but can not find it.

Peregrinus wrote: »

The basic deal with international post is that if you post something in country A for delivery in country B, you pay country A's post office (obviously). They keep the whole payment, and they are responsible for getting the consignment to country B. Country B's post office is responsible for delivering locally, and they don't get paid for that.

Add to that the fact that some early systems were based on recipient paying where refusal of delivery made the whole thing untenable.

Peregrinus wrote: »

This arrangement was arrived at by the UPU in the late nineteenth century. It looks unfair, but the basic idea is that every letter generates a reply, and when the reply is sent country B gets the postage while country A handles local delivery at no cost, so it all comes out in the wash. Even if not every letter generates a reply, the system still works so long as letters from A to B generate replies at about the same rate as letters from B to A do.

The problem is that this isn't always true. I might send a single letter taking out a subscription to The New Yorker, say, and this generates 52 replies as the magazine is sent to me every week for a year. That's a very good deal for the US post office, and a very bad deal for the post office in my country.

This problem led to many systems adopting newspaper post and parcel post systems within their own philaletics.


As an aside other categories like this include: regular, official, revenue/fiscal, military, air, regionals/locals, war occupations, telegraph, return labelling.

Peregrinus wrote: »

And the internet has made things worse; I order something online from China, and the order is fulfilled by post; the post office in my country doesn't get any revenue at all out of that.

So, a few years ago, countries started moving away from the simple-but-no-longer-fair system that used to be in place. The US Postal Service was first, I think,; it withdrew from the system and started requesting other post offices to make annual payments to them based on the difference in weight between the volume of post sent from that country to the US, and the volume of post travelling in the other direction. (The flip side of this, of course, is that that the USPS has to be willing to make payments to foreign post offices where the balance of postal flows is in the other direction.) Lots of countries now do this, but whether China participates in this system I can't say.

Iirc, the last major UPU revision was mid noughties and at the time the rates and system suited USPS. Then China took over as the main ecommerce hub which flipped the rates/system advantage away from USPS to China Post and now USPS is feeling the strain. Something like that.

Darc19

US threatened to walk away from the UPU and that led to major changes that are taking effect this year

This is a good read for those interested
https://www.joc.com/regulation-policy/new-era-dawns-universal-postal-union_20200108.html