HP have been put to shame, and rightly so, for these horrendous packaging efforts:

This one apparently contained a 10ft power cord! Arrived on a pallet!

This beast on a wooden pallet and in black wrapping contained one vanilla flavour PS2 mouse!!

Wow, that’s another big box, when you get something like that you must be thinking that they’ve sent you a nice big desktop or server……. But no:

In fact it contained 17 of these smaller boxes each with 2 sheets of A4 protected also by foam!

Perhaps we’ve been a bit hard on old HP? Here’s another effort from Amazon sending out a small hard drive (arrowed):

All in all, I’m sure we’ve all seen some ridiculous packaging efforts and perhaps we get a bit of a laugh out of some of them. However, for big corporates to be producing mass waste on this scale for us, is completely unacceptable.

After more than 120 years, Royal Mail are said to be phasing out cycling postmen.

Instead of travelling by bike, postmen and women will travel to their patches by van and then deliver the post using trolleys which are manufactured in China.

This is very bad news for the supplier of Royal Mail bicycles – Stratford-upon-Avon-based firm Pashley Cycles, who have had the Royal Mail contract since 1971.

A spokesman for the Communication Workers Union said: “Job losses and office closures will be a very real threat. Once deliveries are centralised, there will be no need for so many local offices.”

A Royal Mail spokesman said the changes were needed to “deliver the mail as efficiently as possible”.

He added: “We will continue to use a range of vans, trolleys and bikes where appropriate. There are no plans to phase out bikes completely.”

On a side-note this horrible contraption was being trialled by Royal Mail. True, it is electric, and that is something which is to be encouraged, but just look at it! Even the bloke posing in the photo isn’t so sure…

With eBay celebrating it’s 10th birthday here in the UK and also offering 10 free listing days to thank the community, I thought I would write a little article on how to handle the P+P aspects of selling on eBay.

Selling stuff on eBay can be quite a lot of fun, plus of course you can make some money. However, I’ve always found that once the fun part of watching those final few seconds tick down and the flurry of bids coming in has passed and you’ve received your cash, the ebay delivery is the part which actually requires some real effort which is often overlooked when your in the zone and typing up your description.

Not only do you have to make time to go to the local post office and stand in the queue behind the local busy body who’s only really there for a chat, but you also have to package up the goods your selling and address it all up.

Suddenly, you start to think, hmmm was it all worth it?!

I think it can be, however, it pays as always to be prepared for it. Firstly, I would recommend that you research the actual cost of posting the item you are selling.

eBay actually have a really good “postage estimator” tool which I think works with Royal Mail. Also, of course Royal Mail also have one on their web site. There is nothing worse that getting your postage estimate hugely wrong and then having to fork that out yourself cutting into your profits.

So, once you have established how much your item is likely to send, I would recommend thinking quickly about the cost of packaging. It is often more than you would think, especially if you don’t buy in bulk. Then also consider your time. Remember that you have to actually spend quite a bit of time, buying this packaging, packing the item up, driving it to the post office, waiting in line listening to the intrepid tales of Mrs Jones and her missing cat, ill uncle, broken fridge and replacement hip.

So, don’t sell yourself short, setting your P+P costs right is important, so you can adequately compensated for your efforts whilst not ripping off your bidders!

Royal Mail, in conjunction with eBay, actually have a facility to print stamps online. So, this should certainly be something worth looking at. Especially if you can squeeze your item into a post box rather than queuing up.

Of course, if you are selling large, local collection only items on eBay. You might want to take a look at our ebay delivery service here on Shiply.

One final tip is this, as I learnt the hard way. It is far better to print off the delivery address direct from the PayPal or eBay receipt email. That way, it is exactly as the eBay user specified. There can be no confusion caused, mix-ups or bad handwriting (in my case!).

I hope these tips help any budding eBay sellers and hope that you make the most of the ten days free listings.

A new web site called useyourlocal.com has been launched as a new way of picking up parcel deliveries that you miss at home!

The idea behind the scheme is that instead of having to constantly re-arrange parcel delivery or worse still queue up at your local sorting office, you can go and pick up your parcels from your local pub (whilst enjoying a nice cold one)!

We think it’s great and are glad to see it is receiving lots of publicity and pubs signing up.

The last mile problem has long been an issue with parcel deliveries. There have been attempts in the past to have “safe place drop offs” such as local shops if your not in, however many of these have not really worked.

We think this new idea does have a really good chance of success and is great for local pubs as another way of attracting punters in mid-week for a social drink.

Shiply are delighted to have been announced as the Nectar business start up of the year.

Shiply.com was chosen as the national winner in the Start Up of the Year category of the Nectar Business Small Business Awards following a lengthy judging process by a panel of experts which included Karen Hanton, founder and CEO of toptable.co.uk, Guy Clapperton, small business journalist and regular contributor to The Guardian, Financial Times and the Sunday Telegraph, Charlie Humphreys, Head of Nectar Business and Richard Carvell, General Manager at Viking Direct, part of the Office Depot, Europe’s largest stationery business.

As the winner, Shiply.com will receive not only the recognition they deserve for all their hard work but also a prize fund of £2,000 and 50,000 Nectar points.

Charlie Humphreys, Head of Nectar Business which has founded the awards says: “We’re delighted to announce Shiply.com as the Start Up of the Year in the Nectar Business Small Business Awards. It’s staggering to see how successful the business has been in just 12 months and the business really stood out for its vision for business growth.

“Everyone who runs a small business, especially in the current climate, has to work extremely hard to get it off the ground and make a success of it. The awards have represented a fantastic opportunity to celebrate great business ideas, business practice and people and I would like to congratulate all the small businesses from across the UK that entered.”

We are honoured and flattered by the accolade. It is great to receive such awards as it not only helps us recognise what we have achieved so far, but how much more we can offer in the future.

Now, where to spend our 50,000 nectar points? Suggestions below!

Shiply are pleased to announce the launch of our brand new price estimator tool:

We know that sometimes you are in a rush and just want a vague idea of cost before going to the trouble of actually listing a shipment in the marketplace.

Our new price estimator tool solves this problem. You simply specify the category into which your item fits under along with the pickup and delivery post codes. Within seconds we will return a rough estimate which should help you.

The tool uses past quotes placed in the marketplace on shipments similar to yours. We use a large pool of over 40,000 shipment requests to allow for a pretty accurate idea of costs. In some instances we will even provide you with competitor delivery quotes (if available) so that you can see just how much you can save with Shiply.

Disclaimer: Please remember this tool is exactly that, just a tool. The prices you receive are estimates, not quotes which you can accept. If you like the look of an estimate you will need to list your shipment into the marketplace (free) to receive real quotes which you can then accept at your leisure.

Like all of our tools and new services, we consider this in BETA. So do let us know your feedback (either in the comments box below or by clicking on the feedback tab to the left or just email us!). We love to hear your feedback and let us know how you find using the new tool.

USE THE TOOL BY CLICKING HERE!

Now, this is quite an old one from last year. However the lorry driver had to flee his cab after a fire broke out and over 60,000 tins of custard started exploding “like fireworks”.

The driver wasn’t aware that his vehicle was on fire, however other motorists flagged him down on A382 and he fled just before the 60,000 tins exploded causing catastrophic damage.

Police and fire crews were on the scene, but too late to save the custard destined for Sainsburys.

Eyewitness Jill Pendleton, who runs a holiday booking company, captured the spectacle on her camera.

She said: “The first we knew about it was a whiff of smoke and burning sugar and then suddenly it just erupted.

“It was incredible how quickly the fire caught hold – the whole thing was over in less than 20 minutes.

“When the heat reached the tins they started to explode and we could hear what sounded like thousands of gunshots. It was quite a fireworks display.

“There were two huge explosions which we think were either the airbags or the diesel tanks.

“The fire crews got here very quickly but there wasn’t much they could do as the contents had burned out. The driver seemed very shaken.”

Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service said the road was closed for 6 hours but that it was an accident and so accordingly no-one was taken into custardy (sorry!).

Firstly, I’m pleased to say the navigation bar on the right of the blog here is back in it’s correct position. Thanks to Liviu for fixing that one!

Now, I was forwarded a youtube video today and at first I didn’t think much of it, in fact I had no idea where it was going…

However, stick with it and you will see it has to be one of the neatest tools seen in the industry for years. We love this type of innovation here at Shiply.com, now how can we do something similar??!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCcZX8qGAX0]

No funny video this Friday, however this one caught our eye. We can’t actually believe at any professional driver would make this mistake of turning the wrong way onto a motorway. What baffles us more is how many of them followed!

As the old saying goes – would you follow them off a cliff?!

This was an interesting story we picked up all the way from New Zealand. Urgent Couriers saw a 12% slump in sales and so in an effort to help ease the pain have diversified into selling advertising on their vehicles, selling to the general public.

I for one, I’m afraid to say am a huge skeptic. They have diversified into the most hard hit market by the recession (advertising). Selling this space will be tough to say the least!

I think that Urgent Couriers are correct with looking to other avenues to increase revenue but are barking up the wrong tree here. Perhaps a small investment in advertising their own brand on the vehicles would prove more effective or better still looking at other non-advertising options.

Certainly there are a lot of options out there, thinking outside the box and looking at industries not so hard-hit is key however.