Royal Mail are asking OBA users to switch to an alternative platform before the 1st of June to avoid interruptions to their shipments. The main thrust is to ensure compliant paperwork is collected for international shipments and OBA (Online Business Account) doesn’t look like it’ll be suitable come June – we recommend speaking to your Royal Mail account manager as soon as possible to discuss your options.
The international trading landscape has been experiencing significant changes over the last 12 months, particularly in relation to the provision of data. This has been a result of the recent changes to the Universal Postal Union (UPU) regulations and has culminated in more scrutinous border controls, with non-compliant items being delayed or returned.
In response to these market changes, Royal Mail has adapted its systems and product portfolio to ensure that your non-personal correspondance exports are customs compliant, and you provide the mandatory pre-advice customs data to ensure your items can be processed without being delayed or returned.
To facilitate this, from the 1st June 2021 they will be changing the Royal Mail shipping platform to ensure you provide all of the mandatory pre-advice customs data to comply with the new international regulations. The completion of the mandatory data on Royal Mail’s approved shipping platforms will generate your labels and support the completion of the CN22/23 documentation, so you can continue to send items internationally in a compliant manner.
OBA users should switch to an online shipping platform or an approved third-party shipping solution.
This will doubtless have an impact for OBA users, but although the change might be painful it could have hidden benefits. Amazon’s Valid Tracking Rate metric is proving a real threat for OBA users and so switching to Click & Drop or an alternative shipping solution might solve two problems in one go.
“If you are an OBA user, you should switch to an online shipping platform or an approved third-party shipping solution at your earliest convenience. This will ensure your items and labels are fully compliant and can be processed by overseas posts. Where you export items of non-personal correspondence outside of a Royal Mail shipping platform you are still required to provide all mandatory pre-advice customs data to ensure your items are compliant and can be successfully processed.”
– Royal Mail
Royal Mail have a help page with further information on International shipping changes.
One Response
Does this apply even if you don’t ship internationally? Would have been nice to hear from RM first, but im sure i will around end of may!