Doug Smith wrote:
Last Tuesday at my third attempt to post a pair of rims to the USA , my
parcel was at last accepted by our local Post Office . Today only three
days later it was returned to me from London's Heath Row Airport stating
it was oversize. Not having a clue what this oversizing meant with a
parcel within the weight limit I returned to the GPO to inquire why this
should have happened. They said the situation was getting worse and to
their knowledge many other customers had the same problem. Since the the
new pricing change in August to include size the indivdual post offices
check , accept and send the goods on their way. Only later to discover
its the large sorting centres are returning these items they consider
wrongly sent. In my particular case the parcel was well within its
weight but some few centimetres too large. I intend to follow up this
incident and attempt to reclaim the buyers shipping costs. The reason
given Parcel Force did'nt fulfill the task they paid to do.
So folks the situation with our shipping costs soaring every few months
along with the new changes which appears not to be working at all
smoothly your USD's are going to be mighty stretched! Its worth noting
the items such as complete bikes , wheels, rims will be the most
affected especially in the normal type of cardboard box method.
I think Doug may have fallen foul of the not so new restriction on the size of Small Packet Rate parcels. The Royal Mail Small Packet Rate is an economical tariff for parcels weighing not more than 2Kg, a weight limit which can apply to most cycle components, including a pair of alloy rims. However, the latest size limit for Small Packet Rate is that the length + width + depth must not exceed 900 mm, and none of those dimensions should exceed 600 mm. Rims are obviously therefore excluded from that rate, but can go via Parcelforce, which has higher size limits, but will cost around 35GBP airmail to the USA. The Parcelforce size limit is maximum length 1.5 metres, and maximum length + girth 3 metres. There is no problem in cutting a frame box down to within that limit to accommodate a frame, but the cost did go up in August. Hilary Stone told me recently of a new internet based service (Parcel2Go.com) backed by Fedex which has rates about the same as Parcelforce was 3 years ago, which I propose to use in future for larger packages, including frames. With all of these rates we are dependant of the accepting office weighing the item correctly, and if they don't I think they should pay up for their mistake, but it is a bit like getting blood from a stone.
Peter Brown, Lincolnshire, England