Track your deliveries via Royal Mail and USPS
If you are making pottery or other crafts in the UK, it may be useful to find out more about sending and delivering your work, not just to other addresses in the UK but to other countries abroad. A case in point here would be the USA, where there are many avid collectors of ceramics and it is so useful to be able to track your deliveries via Royal Mail and USPS.
You won’t want to skimp when it comes to deliveries. You’ve taken a lot of time and trouble to produce your crafts so you don’t want it damaged on going missing due to poor delivery. You want peace of mind for yourself and importantly, your customer, that your work will be delivered in the same great condition as when it left you.
I love our local Post Office for sending my own parcels and for deliveries abroad I use the excellent Royal Mail International Tracked and Signed service, perfect for parcels with maximum dimensions of WxDxH of up to 90cms (no side linger than 60cm) and a maximum weight of 2kg. When using Royal Mail International Tracked and Signed service at the Post Office, your parcel will be weighed and a special postage label will be adhered to its front or top face. A custom’s declaration will also be required – this is a small white sticker that the Post Office will have and on which the contents, type of goods, weight and value and sender’s signature must be written (I keep a number of these stickers at home so I can pre-fill and save time in the Post Office).
Once your parcel has been accepted and paid for at the Post Office you will be given a receipt and certificate of posting that contains a tracking reference consisting of letters and numbers. With this reference, you can track the delivery journey of your parcel on the Royal Mail website (just tap ‘Royal Mail track and trace’ into Google). From there you can see when your parcel leaves the UK.
The Royal Mail Track and Trace website also allows you to track your parcel once it arrives at a processing facility in the States. At this stage the website will show a button ‘Continue tracking’ and clicking on this transfers you to the delivery partner, USPS’s website. There you may continuing tracking your parcel, from the main processing facility, to a regional distribution centre and then out for final delivery. On the USPS Tracking you and your customer may choose to receive text or email updates of the stage the parcel is at – very reassuring.
Good luck with all your deliveries and your work.
You can browse and purchase Simon’s ceramics in his online Etsy shop at OlleyPottery.com