Royal Mail Agreement may mean post not delivered until 4pm

The Royal Mail's agreement with the CWU yesterday includes a provision for the posties to start work an hour later, and have mail delivered by up to 3pm in the towns and cities, and 4pm in rural areas.  This move has been slammed by small business organisations who see it small businesses as bearing the brunt of the cost of this.  Businesses in rural areas now have little guarantee that the mail will be delivered in time to be opened and read before the end of the normal working day.

The CWU is calling for a "before 12noon" service for businesses, but this is still currently not planned for implementation by the Royal Mail.

Sandra Patterson, Director of Boxby, says "for years we ran boxby out of Straiton, one of Scotland's smallest villages, when we started our mail was delivered at 8am, when we left the village it was around 1pm, 2pm on Mondays due to all the junk mail that went out with the mail on Mondays. Having mail deliveries at 4pm will be a very real situation for villages such as Straiton, I know that there are many small and homebased business in and around the village and the lack of a reliable and timely mail service is a very real problem for them."

Book online for 30kg Parcels to Europe for only £10+vat

Boxby is pleased to announce that our parcel delivery partner; ParcelsPlease, has today launched an online parcel booking service for their cheap European Parcel delivery services. Although ParcelsPlease have been sending parcels up to 30kg out to Europe from as little as £10+vat for the last few months it has been via an offline system, and the integration into an easy access online booking system where customers can pay with paypal as well as credit and debit cards will make the whole process so much easier.

Parcels to France, Belgium, Germany and Netherlands are only £10+vat for up to 30kg and 3m in girth, and that's a big parcel.  Parcels to Spain, Slovakia, Poland, Italy and the majority of the other European countries are only £30+vat for the same big parcels.  And because these cheap prices are flat rate prices, it means that you can book with confidence.

Royal Mail Boss's bonus could spark another Postal Strike

The postal strikes seen last Autumn caused huge amounts of postal disruption to the Royal Mail's services, and for the customers, many of who defected permanently over towards the commercial parcel companies.  So, all in all, not the grounds one would think for a huge bonus for the Royal Mail's boss.  Incorrect. Adam Crozier is in fact planning to take a £2million pound bonus, surely the spark that will drive the mail worker unions away from the talking tables. 

The CWU and Royal Mail are still in talks to resolve the underlying issues that caused last autumns postal strikes, centering currently around the ability to fund the £10bn pension deficit and Royal Mail modernisation plans. 

Add to this uncertainty an election, a possible change of government and a Conservative party who look likely to head down the route of full privatisation for the Post Office, only one thing looks certain, and that is that the medium term future of the Royal Mail is likely to be littered with more strikes and disrupted mail deliveries.

Still, not to bother Adam Crozier, who will be taking his £2m bonus and leaving to join troubled TV network - ITV.  Well, says Boxby, at least the workers don't go on strike there!!

CQout to take on ebay acutions in USA

CQout, the online auction website based in the UK celebrates it's tenth birthday with an announcement that it's set to take on ebay, in America.

CQout managing director, Siamak Bashi said, "We have recently celebrated our 10 year anniversary of providing auction services to UK where our reputation for trust and security is second to none which has helped us to grow to become one of the largest auction service providers. Our plans are now to continue our growth by providing tailored services to our US customers. We believe auction users in the US deserve a better service than they are currently getting from eBay."

This is bold statement by the CQout MD.  Ebay has stood as the unchallenged leadeer in the online auction world now for over a decade.  However, despite seeming bold, and a bit optimistic, there could be a very good market for CQout in the US.  Over the past year or so, ebay has changed its sellers policies, fees and structure in order to provide customers with a more secure, and more trusting buying environment.  These changes, although unpopular with the old fashioned small sellers that used to be ebay's bread and butter, have proved popular with customers who don't want to take the risk of getting an item of dubious quality from an unknown seller.  Ebay's share prices are rising, there are more customers than ever and those customers are spending more, so no-one can argue with the commercial sense and logic of ebay's decision.

So what about the little guys?  Well the logical answer is that they will find a new alternative venue, one that caters more for the smaller seller, the buyer that's looking something that's a bit different, and unique, rather than the discount designer clearance market that ebay seems to be moving into.  And why not CQout?  The only other credible alternative to ebay in the UK is ebid, maybe there will be a new entrant in the market?  Maybe ebay will harness the use of their recently acquired gumtree for small sellers.  It's all up for speculation at the moment.  Either way, there will be changes and who better to maybe raise their game and take on new markets than an auction website that already has 10 years worth of experience.

EU Regulation could threaten Smaller Online Businesses

A recent draft regulation being considered by the EU requires all internet retailers to have a physical bricks and mortar shop.  This is a regulation drafted to protect the owners of luxury branded goods, looking to stamp out illegal copies and brand fraud.  However Ebay and Amazon slam these proposals, saying that it would cut the growth of e-commerce off in it's "teenage" phase, and that the proposals would just let the luxury brands continue with price fixing and discrimination.  The lobby group of the brand owners say that the proposals are also there to stop the "free riders", the businesses that benefit off the back of the corporate and other physical business's advertising and marketing, and who, because they don't have to incur the costs associated with staffing and owning a premises are able to offer the goods at discounted prices.

Here at Boxby, many of our customers are these so called "free riders" and we feel that the legislation proposed is not only discriminative but also anti-competitive.  It seems to me that the luxury brand owners are simply looking to take out a tranche of competitors that they haven't yet learnt how to effectively compete with.  If the issue is simply that of "free riding" then the brand owners have the ultimate ability to control that, or to get the web retailers to contribute to the costs of the global marketing and brand awareness, and it's plain, old fashioned and easy - they simply increase the cost price.

But at Boxby, we are at a bit of loss as to why the brand owners would looking to use anti competitive legislation in order to acheive it.  Our theories are that it has less to do with recovering market costs, and more to do with controlling the distribution and selling of their products to a smaller and more controlled selling venue. 

When someone is buying a luxury item, £700 on a handbag for instance, the thing at the top of their mind isn't that they've just saved £20 by buying it online.  Part of the enjoyment is the purchase itself, the whole retail experience.  And if the brand owners want to get people into bricks and mortar shops then the way to do it isn't be regulation, but by better marketing and presentation.  Maybe making the shop assistants a little less snooty, and pay a bit more attention - particularly to those customers that don't instantly look like "our type of customer".

Eitherway, the Internet is the greatest leveller in retail, and the way for the EU to address this isn't by bringing in legislation that takes business and marketing and retail backwards a couple of decades.

Ebay Changes from 01  April 2010 make Ebay Sellers P&P top priority

Anyone selling on ebay should check out the changes to the ebay selling standards, otherwise known as the DSR's with effect from 1st April 2010.  There is significant increase in the performance targets with the P&P charges and the despatch times low star rating being halfed from 4% tolerance rate to only 2%. 

This is an important aspect to selling on ebay.  Most of the ebay selling process is within the control of the seller, it is them that write the descriptions, take the photos, invoice and deal with communication.  However when it comes to P&P charges, and definitely times, the ebay seller has to hand over to the delivery company or the parcel company and they are to a large degree in their hands.

Choices that ebay sellers can make to protect their DSRs include;

• Careful choice of parcel company.  Using one that delivers on a next day service as opposed to a economy service.
• Thinking carefully about using parcel deliveries where you are reliant upon the customer collecting from a pickup point.
• Always using a company that gives tracking.
• Using a parcel company that gives you customer service.

The key to all of this is communication and customer service.  The emphasis now is on the seller to be proactive to ensure that the buyer receives their items as quickly and efficiently as possible.  Therefore you, as a seller, need to make sure that you deal with a parcel company that answers the phone, and turns around your queries within a satisfactory timeframe.  And if that means not going with the bargain bucket bottom dollar parcel service then it's time to make that move.  Because now your DSR's are being rated even more strictly on the performance of your couriers and delivery companies.

Ebay launches trading platform in Russia

Ebay launches it's Russian language auction site at the End of March 2010, taking on the Russian auction website Molotok.  It will also be enabling buyers to use Paypal.

The US State department is currently undertaking a visit to Russia, the CEO of Ebay, John Donahoe, part of the delegation, to see how the US and Russia can use technology, e-commerce and social networking to improve ties between the two great nataions. 

The use of the internet in Russia is described as being fragmented and around 40 years behind the rest of the world.  Here at boxby we see the move of ebay into Russia as being a key step in helping ordinary people access and use the internet.  Ebay's platform with it's millions of items and users is many people's first venture onto the internet. 

Boxby specialises in delivering all those heavy, bulky and large items that can't be shipped using normal parcel services.  Alistair Patterson, director at Boxby said today "we don't currently have  a large number of couriers covering deliveries in Russia, I guess this is something that i'll have to look into".

This isn't just a failed delivery - it's and M&S failed delivery?

What's so special about an M&S failed delivery, well, it's letting your loved one down on Valentines day, on a Sunday, when it's normally too late to do anything other than rush out and get the Garage Forecourt left overs.

Many customers who booked delivery of M&S red roses to their loved ones for a special Valentines delivery were let down yesterday as they received texts and emails alerting to the fact that it just wasn't going to happen.  Most of the time customers can cope with the non-delivery of their parcels but valentines day just isn't one of them. 

As Valentines day this year fell on a Sunday, it meant up to a 50% fall in the numbers of flowers and roses sold, so M&S saw Sunday deliveries as a good way to grab an extra chunk of sales.  However, the non-deliveries will backfire, and customers can be forgiving of non-deliveries, but not red roses and not on Valentines day.

Ebay delivery quotes quickly and easily with boxby. 

Our newly re-vamped Boxby homepage makes listing your ebay jobs even quicker and easier.  For exisiting boxby members, listing an ebay job for delivery quotes and and prices from our couriers is such a simple job that you can do it one handed  - copy, paste, click, click!  That's it, and then we send it off to over 1000 registered couriers to quote to delivery prices to you.

And remember that Boxby is totally free, for customers and couriers.  No deposits, no up front fees, no jobs fees, and every penny you pay goes direct to the courier.

The reason that Boxby can deliver a Rayburn Cooker from Derby to the Isle of Wight for only £69 vat inc, is that Boxby has thousands of courier companies, registered with them, and that means they have thousands of vans driving round the UK and Europe every day.

And that's how Boxby couriers can always get you the cheapest price possible every time guaranteed.