Petitioning Royal Mail about shipping paints!

[Ray Rivers]

To be pragmatic about the whole thing...

I can buy GW and Andrea paints from distributors here in Spain. I'm sure I can find someone in Europe who sells Vallejo as well, though I haven't looked. That just leaves Foundry and if necessary, I can buy 4 pots at a time from them with no big deal.

Where this hurts UK distributors is that a lot of times I might buy other stuff from a shop and order paints at the same time because it is convenient. I have never had an order fail to reach me because of spillage due to paint.

Our world, however, is becoming less and less convenient with every passing day. Not much we can do about it.

[Cubs]

Pain in the bum, because I just found a good eBay seller who sells Vallejo in batches of 5. Arse.

It's not cheaper than in town, but it is if you factor in parking and, let's face it, convenience.

[Leon Pendraken]

Well... 2,500 people is a tiny blip on the radar.

I would suggest that the folks who are going to take the greatest hit here... the companies that sell paint... like Foundry and GW... get together and start a REAL campaign via their newsletters and web sites to make a much greater effort to get folks to sign the petition. These folks also have sales data which should be packaged and presented to show the effect this is going to have on UK exports.

If the companies who sell paint can't be bothered to band together and work to change this crap law, you really can't blame the poor consumers.

GW have replied to me basically saying that they will continue to ship their paints through Royal Mail, regardless of the restrictions.  I guess that won't change until they get caught and get a letter from Royal Mail.  Foundry are yet to reply to my email.

I'll let you know if I get a reply

Excellent, I you get something back from them on that, and please let me know.

[Elk101]

Moonshado, that's a great email, right up my street. It goes almost as far as suggesting that they are arseholes with no more thought to their customers than 'how can we get more money out of them' while maintaining a polite tone throughout. Nice!

I am currently thinking of assisting Royal Mail with some more money making suggestions and was looking to lead with this:

"Given significant concerns over the potential for paper within mail items to fuel fire hazards it has been determined that books may only be posted up to a maximum page content of 50. This allows Royal Mail to safeguard other mail items from potentially deadly conflagrations. Books of more than 50 pages may of course still be shipped in component packages of up to 50 pages. For example, Lord of the Rings may now be sent in 23 convenient, safe packages instead of 1 potential deathtrap."

[moonshado]

@Elk101 they would more that likely consider your idea as a serious way forward.

I got my reply to the questions I asked;

Thank you for your response.
 
The restrictions on water based paints, enamels and wood stains are in place as part of our Terms and Conditions.  Whilst we have no immediate plans to change the policy, I have escalated your concerns to our senior policy and decision makers for consideration.

 For those of you who aren't fluent in the language of bureaucracy I'll translate into plain English;

Damn those are all valid points for which we have no good answers, so we'll just ignore them and politely give you the finger.
 
 I have replied as follows

It was naive of me to think that I might actually have my concerns considered.

Your brief,curt reply leaves quite a bit to be desired. Your avoidance of answering any of the questions I raised and your meaningless response does suggest that you have very little care for your customers requirements and do not feel that you have to clarify your less than sensible policy.

I had erroneously believed that you as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer might actually have some input into policy. I won't be holding my breath awaiting the favourable consideration(or any consideration) of your senior policy and decision makers, who ever they may be.

But I just might be wasting my time. In the highly unlikely event that I ever hear what their senior policy and decision makers think I will post their response here. In the meantime I need to find a local supplier of acrylic paints.

[Gibby]

Well said!

[Bir Hacheim]

Having found out about this from another forum, I have already signed the petition about this mindless rule. It affects not only customers but mainly small businesses that would need the profit to help their work.

It seems strange that to get a larger number of paints you have to keep paying postage over and over again when it would probably be a lot cheaper to get the delivery in one hit? Maybe me being a bit cynical???

[Cubs]

It really is just an income generator, no more, no less and the insultingly feeble excuse holds about as much water as my bladder on a night on the beers. In what way are multiple parcels of paint safer than a single parcel of same?

It was always going to happen when the company floated on the stockmarket and I just hope they get reamed on this one and more people use alternative delivery methods.

[moonshado]

@Cubs Have to agree with you. The annoying bit is we are penalised but they let the drinks industry ship relatively large volumes in glass bottles. But then the drinks industry as a lot of political clout and the Post Office won't go up against them as they would loose.

[Leon Pendraken]

Update - 9th December

As we mentioned previously, Royal Mail have changed the reasoning for these restrictions from 'Dangerous Goods' to 'potential damage to other mail', so we have now sent them a list of questions as a result:

"As a follow-up to our recent discussions on water-based paints, and the restrictions on them in your guidelines, I have a few more questions:-

1.  In our original discussions, the reason given for Parcel Force being able to ship these items was due to them having a Dangerous Goods license.  Now that we have determined that these items are not in fact 'Dangerous Goods', what is the new reason for Parcel Force being able to ship these paints, and how are they overcoming the same 'potential damage to other mail' reasoning which worries Royal Mail?

2.  Do you have any statistics which show the frequency of breakages/leakages in the mail, and more specifically, how many of these are caused by water-based paints?

3.  The restrictions allow the shipping of upto 1 litre of alcohol, does this not pose a greater risk of leakage / breakage than 4 small pots of paint, even more so when the alcohol is likely to be shipped in a single glass container?

Many thanks,

Leon Pengilley"

We will now have to wait and see what they reply with before proceeding.

In the meantime though, we still need to grow the support, and get this noticed on a national scale by the mainstream media.  To do this, we're asking you to help out by doing two things:

1. Write to your local MP, using the template which can be found on our new Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/PostOurPaint/posts/245576305607450 (modify it to suit if you wish).  A full list of UK MP's listed by their consituency can be found here: http://www.parliament.uk/mps-lords-and-offices/mps/?sort=1  If you get a response, please let us know on the Facebook page, or here.

2.  Write to any local newspapers or other media in your area to bring this to their attention as well.  The MP letter template linked above can be used for this as well, with only minor modification.

Also, please head over and join our Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/PostOurPaint which allows us to keep everyone up to date with the latest news and discussions as we move forward with this.  You can also update here as you get responses from your local MP's / media.

Thanks for reading, and again, thank you for your support.  Please pass this update around your friends, forums and Facebooks, and we'll keep pushing to get these restrictions changed! 

PS, I hope everyone has a merry Christmas as well, there might not be many paints under your tree, but I hope there's something good in their place...!

Cheers!

[Ray Rivers]

Might I suggest that instead of seeking these folks to reverse themselves, offer an alternative form of mailing.

A package (containing the paints) within a package might ease their worries.

[Leon Pendraken]

Might I suggest that instead of seeking these folks to reverse themselves, offer an alternative form of mailing.

A package (containing the paints) within a package might ease their worries.

Thanks for the post, we've suggested quite a few alternatives to them like this, including shipping all paints in boxes as opposed to Jiffy bags, extra packaging inside the boxes, all paints in airtight gripseals, etc. but they're not open to any of them at all. 

We package all of ours in the gripseals anyway, but I've yet to hear of anyone who has encountered a broken pot of paint in any delivery.  It seems to be the next excuse they've offered up as a reason, yet they can provide no evidence at all that breakage/leakage ever happens.

[Ray Rivers]

Then I can only say it is a major play by large companies such as GW and Vallejo to improve market share and regain lost sales to small independents.

[Cubs]

We package all of ours in the gripseals anyway, but I've yet to hear of anyone who has encountered a broken pot of paint in any delivery.  It seems to be the next excuse they've offered up as a reason, yet they can provide no evidence at all that breakage/leakage ever happens.

In 30-odd years of the hobby I can't say I've ever encountered, or even heard of, a hobby paint leaking in transit. I think the PO have simply identified a healthy area of business they can squeeze for more money, without bothering to even invent a halfway intelligent excuse.

[Conquistador]

<snip> without bothering to even invent a halfway intelligent excuse.

Refer to my definition of Bureaucracy in another thread.   

Logic - the other unknown virtue in bureaucracies.

Gracias,

Glenn