Delivering post for over 500 years, Royal Mail is the UK customers’ favoured delivery service (48%) and the second most popular courier option for large online retailers (37%).
Royal Mail delivers 188 million parcels per year, but it’s also one of the UK’s worst offenders when it comes to lost, delayed or damaged packages. In fact, Royal Mail attracted the third highest number of compensation claims on the Claimit platform in 2024.
Here’s how e-commerce businesses can automate a compensation claim with Royal Mail in a few clicks.
Royal Mail delivery performance: Spotlight
- Royal Mail is the trading name of International Distributions Services plc, which also operates Parcelforce and General Logistics Systems (GLS).
- Royal Mail is legally required to deliver parcels to every UK address five days per week and must meet certain standards under its Universal Service Obligation (USO).
- For the last two years, Ofcom has fined Royal Mail over £15 million for failing to meet its delivery targets.
- Royal Mail attracted 10% of all claims on the Claimit platform in 2024.
Making a claim for a lost or damaged Royal Mail shipment
- Identify lost or damaged Royal Mail shipment
Instead of waiting for the end-customer to contact your customer support team, Claimit’s automated claims platform uses AI to spot delivery issues in advance. The system scans for 50+ potential shipping errors, flags potential issues in the system and sends alerts to your customer support team.
- Check claim eligibility
Each courier has different Ts & Cs. For instance, Royal Mail’s list of exclusions for lost packages includes losses arising from:
- Severe weather conditions, vandalism and acts of third parties with whom Royal Mail has no contracts.
- Incorrect, illegible or non-visible recipient name or address.
- Unsuitable packaging for the item (i.e. bendable items in containers that easily bend or not marked as ‘Do Not Bend’).
Claims for loss or delays must also be made within Royal Mail’s claims window.
- After 10 working days of scheduled delivery for regular items (5 working days for Royal Mail Special Delivery).
- Within 80 calendar days of posting (after which Royal Mail has no legal liability for any loss).
With manual claim processing, you need to review the courier-specific exclusions and claims deadlines before making a claim. With Claimit, you simply choose Royal Mail from the list of couriers on the platform and the system instantly cross references your product with the courier’s claims requirements.
- File claim with all key documentation
From photos to timestamps, all couriers require supporting evidence to make a claim. For example, Royal Mail demands ‘basic evidence’ that includes the:
- Names and addresses of the sender, addressee and claimant
- Royal Mail product used
- Postage paid
- Method of postage
- Place of posting
- Date of posting
- Contents description
But that’s just for a refund of the postage paid. For product compensation, you also need to provide evidence of the product value, such as:
- Original receipts
- Bank or credit card statements
- Invoices
- Manufacturing costs
- Auctioneers valuation
- Repair costs (in the case of damage claims)
In addition, Royal Mail asks for original documents (not copies) and reserves the right to request additional documentation on a case-by-case basis.
Confusing, right? The Claimit platform simplifies document gathering by highlighting which evidence is required and allowing you to drag and drop or upload files directly into the claims portal. You then simply click ‘claim’ and your claim is sent.
- Track claim status
Royal Mail aims to contact you with the outcome of your claim within 30 calendar days or 90 days for international claims. However, if you’re making 100+ claims per month (with 100+ claims tracking numbers), this can be difficult to keep on top of.
Claimit gives you full visibility of each claim’s status via a single dashboard, so you can monitor claim progress until resolution.
- Receive payout
After the 30-90 day period, Royal Mail historically pays compensation via cheques in the mail.
Claimit not only generates payouts 40% quicker than manual claims processes, but reimburses you instantly with digital credits, so you don’t have to wait for a cheque in the post. What’s more, by ensuring you meet all of Royal Mail’s claims requirements, we achieved an 82% success rate for Royal Mail claims in 2024.
Do I need Claimit for Royal Mail claims?
If you’re an ecommerce business that uses Royal Mail to deliver your products, you could make a significant difference to your bottom line by using Claimit. Particularly, if you:
- Send more than 50 Royal Mail shipments per month.
- Currently use a manual process to make claims.
- Have a low claims success rate (under 50%).
Book a demo for more info.
