We send out low value items - sweets - which typically are under £20. So standard post is fine for us. I would say that 2% of orders results in a customer messaging saying item not been received - we send out perhaps 250 orders a week and get a message a day saying haven’t received the item.

The problem I think is for standard post the royal mail doens’t update amazon when delivery confirmation is received. Ebay does - it shows as delivered. The delivery confirmation code is similar to tracking number and is located on the shipping label above the little square barcode. This delivery code can be put in royal mail track and trace, but only updates once the parcel is delivered. For instance, it doesn’t show when the parcel is dropped off or collected. The tracking details nearly always show exact GPS and map location of delivery.

Of all the people who message claiming not to receive item, nearly all go away never to be heard from again when we send a screenshot of the tracking from royal mail website which has their road shown on it along with time and date - usually a day or two after they order. There was an excellent letter put up on this board a couple of weeks ago which we now use as a template, I’ll copy and paste our standard message to end of this so you can see it in action. You need to be assertive but not accusatory.

You can reprint labels to get the tracking code - but you only have 28 days to do so. So when we print now, we print one to the label printer which obviously gets used, and we ‘print’ one as a PDF which goes in an Amazno file on the computer.

Obviously some parcels do get lost - and if the parcel isn’t delivered that delivery confirmation won’t update on royal mail website - but across all platforms and our own website etc, our loss rate with royal mail is incredibly incredibly small - around 0.2% - around 1 in every 500 parcels. Nearly everything goes standard second class post, and interestingly, for the last two months or so over half of the parcels are being delivered next day using this service.

So our standard reply to INR messages when tracking shows as being delivered:

Morning
We often get these messages on Amazon as the royal mail tracking doesn’t update for some buyers screens in Amazon.

Your parcel was delivered to you by Royal Mail on xxx June. The tracking reference you can put in to Royal Mail website is xxxxxxxx - in case you can’t do it I’ve attached a screenshot of the tracking confirmation from the Royal Mail website. It also has a map and exact GPS co-ordinates of the location, I’ve also attached this too.

If you could check with other residents at your address, and if it’s still not located please let me know and I’ll forward your messages on to Royal Mail who will investigate and question the post man/lady. If you do find it then there is no need to contact me again and I’ll close off the file.

Regards
Andrew

SWEEEEEETZ (A local charity and community sweet shop in Dunstable, Bedfordshire, providing employment to disabled and under-privileged children and young adults)

Hope this helps!