I use SquareSpace so I'm off to a bad start. I had to import orders using the Royal Mail desktop app. I finally got my head around importing and assigning values to each of the spreadsheet columns. Fair enough. I mail out art prints around the world but mainly to the US and UK.

First, the prints weight a fraction of the postage tube, but there is no facility on here to input the weight of the packaging which in my case is 95% of the weight. So I have to weight the package and divide the total weight over several prints if there is more than one in the order. Huge waste of time. You realise packaging weighs something, right?

Then the fun part is guessing which of the 12 mystery coded options that all sound the same I should be using to send each package. Why is this 24 hour tracked service different to this one?.. The International and Domestic codes used are so opaque and the 'explanation' link on explain each one so utterly useless, I decided to phone the helpline. It turns out I knew more than the guy who answered the phone.

A rough estimate of the cost per parcel would be REALLY REALLY handy at this stage. So I blindly selected some postage options for my parcels with my best guess work. After some problem with weights not correctly populating and redoing postage several times I finally got the the point where I thought I was ready to create the labels.

I generated the labels. Still no prices. I manifest the batches (what an absurd and overly complicated system) and then I manifest the order. Yikes! A lot more expensive than I had hoped. I want to go back into the order and test the pricing without tracking.

But of course I can't because once it's manifested it's locked in and charged to my account.

Now I'm searching on the Royal Mail app and the website for where to drop this delivery so I can end this Click and Drop nightmare. It's telling me Post Offices don't accept them and the map shows NOTHING even if you zoom out to see the entire UK. Absolutely useless.

A bit more digging tells me I need to find a Customer Service Point. WTF is this? Google tells me the nearest CSP is a 45 minute drive to Portsmouth. Sweet baby Jesus what is happening.

This has been unbelievably frustrating. Please can you get a Customer Experience and User Experience team in to rebuild and fix this entire process. Also, why do you call two distinct but similar services 'Click & Drop' and 'Drop & Go'? Just come up with a distinctive name to separate the two.

Cheers.

We send out a mixture of parcels up to 1kg in weight, and lots of large letters of various sizes. We only use C+D to generate a label and do not have any products in C+D so no weights are generated by it.

When we first started we were told we could group our LL into weights to get the best value and average them. So if we had one at 90g and one at 110g we could average them and pay for 2 at 100g. We do that for each LL weight group to get the best value.

We had a chap come and show us this and agree we could do it.

However because of how Click and Drop works, we have to do a separate manifest for each LL weight group. If we manifest with 2 separate LL weight groups in there, C+D or OBA - not sure which, lumps them all together and charges for the average on them all.
Some days we have to do 4 manifests !!

We have now been told we should not be doing that at all (probably because the weight now shows on the label - stupid idea) and we should be weighing every single parcel, putting the weight in C+D and that will calculate what weight band it goes in. Well I don't trust it to do that as it can't even keep 2 bands separate !!

After we were told to do it like that we contacted "sales" to ask if this approach is correct and was told "yes that is how it works -you just put the average in online."

The thing is, we can't even test it to see what it does because the only way to know what it will do is to manifest which we then get charged for.

We can't afford for 30+ 95g Large letters to go at a higher weight just because we have 1 or 2 Large Letters at 700g's.

Please get C+D sorted so it works how it is supposed to.

What is the auto manifest cut off time? I am constantly paying for labels I need to cancel or delay a day or two due to stock levels on some items. If I know the cut off time I can delay the printing of the labels until after that point so I can still change and cancel labels later once stock is packed, or turn the damn thing off so I will manifest what has been packed and reset the other labels that were out of stock and pack them on another day?

I'm losing money and paying for labels twice

When a customer places an order and its processed and manifested.

There are times i need to resend an order out to the same customer. Could be to replace a faulty item as an example. Rather than having to recreate a postage label from complete scratch. It would be good to go to the manifested order and have the option for a drop down "Re-Create Postage Label" along with "Re-Generate Paperwork".

This new "Re-Create Postage Label" option goes straight to creating a "New Order" but has all the customers name and address in already. Which saves having to enter it all again.

There seems to be a bug in the ‘Export to XLS’ Report in the ‘Manifested Orders Report’! If the name on the order contains either ‘Mr’ or ‘Mrs’ then the full name isn’t included in the report and Mr or Mrs is emitted! I have also noticed on some orders the report ‘sometimes’ adds a trailing space after the name even though the actual order shows no spaces after the name!

This makes it very difficult to match Orders if names don't match what is in the original order.

I have developed a system to match the order number and name to extract the Tracking details to then Auto Upload to my sales channels, if names don't match you can guess what happens! It fails!

We need to have confidence that the information contained within this file matches what was ordered!

Also: It would be great if the Manifested Orders Report could be Automatically generated every night for DropBox users?

Thanks in advance

369

So I am guessing this has been discussed in the past.

Please enable an option for auto-manifesting to turn it off or on, with this option Future Manifesting also wouldn't be needed. Why we need to contact customer support I don't know.

The reason for this should be fairly obvious. Our mail is done by average weight, we have large letter products that are 50g and 155g or higher. We are consistently overcharged by Royal Mail as when they are manifested together they average out higher than they should.

Second reason being, since a paper manifest is needed (why?) if we are printing off to drop off this is done way before the auto manifest kicks in which happens between 1800-2100 most nights.

I do not understand why in this modern age we are still having to print off paper manifests? Surely there is no need for these since all our postage labels now have a barcode and we are told Royal Mail do not charge until a label's barcode has been scanned into the system. No other courier company we use has such antiquated ways of doing business. Furthermore, nobody in Royal Mail knows what to do with these manifests. RM website and call centre say hand them to the driver and do not put them in the mail bag. Collection drivers say they have no idea what they are and do not want them, just put them in the bag!

The option to be able to amend the Future Manifest date for one or a bulk selection of orders would be helpful please.

We drop our mail off at either Royal Mail or a Post Office and due to their opening hours & our mail volumes, this would be one or two days after label printing so most of our Orders are Future Dated. One time, we needed to change the Future Date (put it back by one day) and the helpline people advised that this could only be achieved by Deleting to revert to New order status and re-inputting the mail format & weight etc and generating new labels. When you use a Royal Mail depot or Post Office who are reluctant to accept/won't accept post which is not manifested for the current date, for us this is a necessary option.