ISSUE AFFECTING ALL C&D ACCOUNTS USING TRACKED 24/48

When manifesting orders the following error occurs:

'Sorry, we were unable to generate your paperwork. Please quote reference 'd4193bf9' if contacting us for help.'

This issue has been occurring for over 3 weeks, it seems to only affect Tracked 24/48 orders. We're then forced to use an Emergency manifest for the collection driver and manually dispatch all orders individually on the specific sales channels.

Unfortunately the issue is difficult to replicate and only occurs every 2 or 3 days. We've spoken to C&D support team several times over the last few weeks and they have confirmed this is affecting all customers using domestic tracked services.

This is absolutely unworkable when you've got hundreds of orders to dispatch, the ability to print and manifest an order are the basic elements of any courier service, and I’m not sure why this isn’t being addressed with more urgency.

Can you please offer an update for all customers experiencing this issue?

We have just had a letter saying that RM have checked our electronic customs data for the last month and found 2 items not compliant.

1 - Senders Country

2 - Postage Costs

1 - The senders country would surely come directly from the senders address input into click and drop - Company Addresses / Trading Addresses. The country is a required field and IS FILLED IN. So how can we be non-compliant on that?

2 - What do you mean by Postage Costs? Are we supposed to put in there what we charge the customer for postage, why is that relevant to customs as any customs charges etc is supposed to be just on the goods not on what we charge for postage!

And the amount we charge is not just the postage amount, we charge a bit for packaging etc. That's going to confuse.

Or perhaps we are supposed to put what it cost us to send - well that's not a good idea is it !!

Its not even possible as we don't know exactly how much you are charging us for a parcel until we manifest, and we can't manifest until we have printed the labels - and we can't print the labels with the shipping cost until we have manifested and we can't manifest ......... etc.

This could and SHOULD have been sorted months ago - not on our last day of trading this year !!!

There's some serious things now that need looking into which people have requested for too long or that aren't addressed anywhere. Guys, we need feedback and help for these things, or people will start using other couriers. We spend thousands a month on postage and we're going to pull the plug on RM at some point if it can't get streamlined.

Completely normal requests are completely ignored, and to be honest it's getting extremely difficult to actually use Click & Drop now, even from a business point of view, efficiently.

Let me start:

With the introduction of new Customs/HS Code/Export rules, these things need sorting as a priority in my opinion before others star using other couriers.

1) Postage Cost - It's absolutely critical to see the postage cost before applying, as we need to provide this now on Customs labels. It isn't known until you manifest, it's surely common sense to see this before we apply postage? Or is this auto populated into the label at the cost to the customer, and not the cost of what we're charged by RM? Needs clarifying. One email off RM suggests "... and the postage costs should be the price the end customer has paid not the price we charge our customer." so which is it?

2) "Addressee Identification Reference Number" - This has started appearing on Australia, Canada, Brazil, Peru, and Russian postage. This is a required field to complete with a stern warning that post is destroyed without it being provided. After speaking to RM for 4 hours and nobody knowing, I have established it is the UK equivalent of the National Insurance number. It's so customs overseas know the recipient is a valid taxpayer. However, this information is NEVER going to be given to you, and you can't ask someone for it because they won't provide it. What is the solution to this? This is a matter of urgency as it makes dispatch to the above countries almost pointless. This is presumably so the recipient can be verified as a valid citizen and able to pay the duty due. Would you give every seller your NI number each time you buy an item off eBay etc?

3) EORI Numbers - now that UK has left EU, apparently we need new "XI" EORI numbers to ship to Ireland. However, there's only a singular entry point for a single EORI number. It's impossible to navigate this way. You need the ability to apply an EORI on a per-country basis, not just a generic one to every order.

4) Claims - Why is not possible to just populate the information required and streamline the claim process, given that all information required is within the order? Is it just a tactic to make people not bother because of the 'paperwork'?

I hope people share these views, let's get some movement on this. I feel these are very important.

There's lot of other tiny things but from an actual legal obligation point-of-view, the above need addressing as a priority in my opinion.

Who's in charge here and who works out what's worth integrating? It's like everything is mostly ignored? Some stuff has been being asked for years. YEARS! That's utterly staggering from a business point of view.

Let's at least hear some recent updated thoughts?

This requirement now pops up for Russia, Peru, Canada, Australia, and Brazil.

The official RM document, linked below, only mentions Russia and Brazil.

https://help.parcel.royalmail.com/hc/en-gb/articles/360014645258-January-2021-changes-to-international-customs

"Addressee Identification Reference Number: For customs purposes, Russia and Brazil require the submission of an addressee specific identification number when Russian/Brazilian individuals or organisation import goods from overseas. This is a 10 or 12 numerical digit code for items into Russia and to Brazil the individuals CPF in the format: 000.000.000-00 or a CNPJ for organisations in the format: 00.000.000/0000-00

Please be aware that when exporting items to Russia or Brazil, there is a requirement to provide the recipients identification reference detail so this can be made visible to the relevant customs authorities. Failure to provide this data can result in items being returned to the sender or even destroyed by customs authorities in Russia or Brazil."

But what about Canada, Peru, Australia? And potentially any other locations not listed?

But the problem is, however, that this is essentially something that the customer is told to keep private, such as a social security or national insurance number. How on earth are you meant to be able to acquire that information from them? They will not disclose it as we have found. We have asked and they have straight up refused to pass it on. It's like someone asking for your NI number each time you buy something. You wouldn't provide it for security reasons.

This is very important and needs clarification! It's going to result in a lot of lost or destroyed mail.

Help please!?

According to Royal Mail 'Electronic Customs Mandatory Fields' SHIPPING COST is the 'postage paid by the sender' and is entered as part of the Create Order process BEFORE you actually get to the step in the process where you enter package weight and postal service so how on earth do you know what to put in to the SHIPPING COST field without referring manually to the price list. Why cant SHIPPING COST be autocompleted by Click nDrop after the postal service/weight has been selected? Or is it acceptable to enter what the customer has paid for postage, rather than the postage paid by me as the sender?

As you know you are retiring the DropBox method in June so the alternative that you are offering needs to offer the same service or better. As it stands it’s a step backwards having a Maximum Limit of 50 Labels per batch!

My system includes the weight and service in our orders CSV Batch File and we use the DropBox method so all labels are generated regardless of an order amount being above 50 but the ‘Desktop Versions’ works differently. If above 50 on the Desktop Version it displays a sidebar notification warning that the labels will not be generated! It does continue and still imports all the orders but without the labels generated which means no Data in the Results CSV! Can you please update the Desktop Version to work like DropBox does? I.E. Allow over 50 orders with the desktop version? C & D Web can clearly process a batch with orders over 50 so I see no reason why it wouldn’t handle the same from the Desktop Version. This needs updating before the retirement in June to avoid a step backwards in C&D’s abilities.

It would be great to also offer a choice to ‘Produce & Download the Labels’ to Results Folder ‘or’ just ‘Produce the Labels’. We have no use for the labels once downloaded to the results folder so it would be great to just have a Results CSV File ‘without’ all the PDF Label Files. I would imagine this would speed the process up as well?

Fingers Crossed!