Postal Service Rant

WARNING: This is a bit of rant. I don't want or expect any advise from anyone, I just want to vent some steam!


As an Etsy Seller, I have seen a few posts on the Etsy forums from people saying they have had customers complaining about high postal rates, and them saying there's nothing they can do about it, the postal rates are the postal rates. And that's true.

I completely sympathise with them. The Royal Mail has gone nuts just recently. The other week I sent out a ‘large letter’ for 90p, which was fine. This week I posted out a package that was only slightly bigger and only a few grams heavier. The only problem with the package was that it wouldn’t fit through the small letter slot – it was too tall by about half a cm, therefore I had to pay £3.00 postage for a small parcel! Insane.

What annoyed me was that I had already charged the young lady buying the item 90p for a small letter, and I didn’t have the heart to ask for the £2.10 back for the extra postage. I was worried I might lose the sale that way.

I have now had to go through all of my items and change the delivery cost on a couple of items because I can see the same thing happening again. My only other option to avoid losing money is to charge 90p postage for everything being posted around the UK, and put the item up for sale at £2 more than I would normally want to charge for the actual item. Either way, I might not sell the item either because it’s overpriced, or because people think the postage is too high.

I’m being stubborn and charging more for items I know will be parcels rather than letters. I’m not prepared to pay buyer’s postage just because Royal Mail are delusional and are overpricing small light items. I’d probably pay less postage on a lead brick if it fitted through the ‘large letter’ slot.... it’s not fair on anyone.

Royal mail are puddings!