So . . . I’ve now sold an item for posting and it is bigger and heavier than the restrictions on all the available carriers. It’s an old 50″ TV that I scalvaged near some houses that were being renovated. It’s much heavier than a new one and much fatter. It took me ages to get it back as it was too heavy to carry. I had to balance it on the bike and push the whole stack home gingerly whilst praying to the gods of gravity and inertia.
I’ve now managed to fit the TV inside a TV box that I found but no one will come collect it. The carriage limit for most carriers is around 30kg, once you go over that the price increases rapidly & you have to use special freight services. So it seems I have three options;
1: Send it by van on shiply
2: Take it there myself
3: Cancel the order
Shiply will cost more than the price of the item + postage, taking it will take me a while on the bike but I can probably be there and back in a couple of days. It’s 200 miles each way & the first leg is pulling a 40kg payload so the ride back will feel like flying.
No doubt some people will think “just cancel the order fool”. I’ve already agreed to ship this thing & it wouldn’t be the first item I’ve shipped at a loss due to a mistake, I try to stick to “my mistake, my problem” whenever I can. And it’s not about the money, it’s about the junk. This is me trying to be disciplined and work through.
I found a trailer a few days ago which I think I can modify to carry the TV. It would take me four days to cycle there and back. But do I need the tent? I could sleep under the sky & have less to carry, that’s what I’ll probably do.
Journey Checklist;
- Bike Trailer
- Tent?
- Charged UPS
- Laptop
- Label Printer
- Foldable scalvage containers for foraging on the way back
Update:
Welp, I slapped an Evri label on it for £10 above the postage cost I received, pushing my take down to £9.21 total. Hopefully there’s enough play in the system for me to get away with it. I discovered the shipping weight of the TV is advertised as 28kg on the manufacturers’ web site & my bathroom scale reads 40kg. The packing must weigh something but no way it weighs 12 kilos – bathroom scales are inaccurate at low weights.
Update:
They didn’t collect it, driver just walked past and lied that I told them not to collect it. Of course, it’s Evri. Why was I thinking they would provide the service advertised?? Let’s see if they come back after complaining to their stupid dumb chatbot.
Update:
It’s three days later and no word from Evri. Back to square one, it would be minus the cost of the Evri postage label but thankfully I booked via parcel2go who have their own contact system and can actually be reached. This is turning out to be one expensive endeavour.
Whilst rebooking the delivery parcel2go said they got the error message “Country/Postcode is not covered”. My goodness, I can think of a few explanations for this but #1 on my list of guesses is Evri drivers really do not like collecting parcels & refuse to collect from anywhere they can expect anything but the easiest in & out. From past experience they refuse to collect from Tescos for this reason & I have seen them refuse to collect from the post office too (they just walk past and ping the GPS to prove they have visited the location). Anyway, parcelforce didn’t show as an available option before so we’ll see if that works. Unfortunately there is a £6 surcharge, which would have been £14 but parcel2go knocked £8 off for the inconvenience. That brings my profit down to around £3.
Update:
They took it wooo!!!
Update:
It was destroyed in transit. Now we begin the arduous task of claiming compensation from parcelforce via parcel2go. In hindsight maybe I should have taken it there myself on the bike trailer, it would have made a good story. Perhaps I could have packed it better, I don’t know – I packed it pretty good I even found a real TV box that it fit inside.
Update:
Apparently my claim was accepted and will be paid shortly. The final irony here is that now my profit from the transaction is greater than it would have been had the item been delivered successfully. This was a costly lesson in terms of time, stress & loss of item. I won’t soon forget it.