Home>> Blog >> An analysis of the specific reasons for the return of international postal parcels
With the trend that there are more and more light cargos(volumetric weight(kg):6000＜1：167) circulating in global trade, modes of trade have changed from" bulk purchase" to "direct provision" from suppliers to final consumers through online sales platform, that is, "e-commerce shopping mode", which has been increasingly recognized by consumers. It can be said that e-commerce has gradually changed the consumption habits of global consumers. Online retailers mainly sends goods to the final consumers in different countries in the form of international logistics, among which China Post Air Mail plays an important role in e-commerce activities from China to the United States, Canada, Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
More than tens of millions of small parcels are sent from China to all over the world every day. For air post parcels, the return of it accounts for about 10% of the total international air parcel post market, which is quite high. For the seller, the loss cannot be imagined if so many air parcels are returned. In order to avoid airmail parcel post being returned, or to minimize the return rate, as a company with more than ten years of experience in cross-border e-commerce logistics services, let we summarize and analyze the reasons for returns to you.
Above all, we will analyze the possible reasons for the return of air postal parcels from the general direction:
The address of consignee is incorrect or not detailed; the recipient rejects to receive the parcel, or parcel claim time has exceeded the retention period.
More than thousands of customers place orders every day. Especially when it comes to sales promotion, the orders are even countless. Therefore, it is impossible to fill in the address and telephone number of the consignee artificially, not to mention verify whether the consignee’s information is correct with the customers one by one. And all information is exported through the system, and is printed as label sheet, which is allocated automatically and send it out.
In this way, the consignee may don’t know whether the address he has written is exact, or there will always be errors in writing his own phone number. This objectively causes the local post office cannot find the exact delivery address, or cannot contact the consignee. As a result, these parcels are returned to the local post office. And this is the main reason why post parcels are returned.
The air postal parcels may be detained by the customs. The common reasons are: there are sensitive prohibited items or articles banned to be imported or exported in the parcels; or the tariffs haven’t been paid, etc.
Customs of each country has different import and export regulations for different products, such as Brazil customs has strict requirements for the import of electronic products, mobile phones and its peripheral products. Sometimes, the seller is not clear about the import requirements of the target country’s customs, or there are sellers knowing that the customs do not permit the import of this product deliberately change the trade name or take other measures to send it through emergent declaration.
Due to the seller’s unprofessional knowledge about customs affairs, you’d better consult a professional freight forwarding company. Only filling in the accurate "trade name", "H.S. code of commodity" and "the value of commodity" while making the label sheet, the package can go through the customs easily.
It's also easy to encounter the situation that tariffs are not paid. Not all countries are tax-free towards products purchased by individuals through cross-border online shopping, and not all countries set tax-free import quotas for individuals. Most European countries, such as the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Poland, no matter the weight and the value of products, one need to pay consumption tax.
Online buyers often understand the freight of international small packets provided by the seller as the total price of the door-to-door delivery service, without to pay any additional fee. So when the local post office informs that the goods can be delivered only after paying tariffs, they feel being cheated by the seller and refuse to pay, or the tariffs they need to pay may be relatively high, they would choose not to pay. Of course, the non-payment of import tariffs may have other reasons, not just due to the buyer's unwillingness to pay.
The parcels may suffer delivery delay, item loss, shortage or other special circumstances in transit.
This kind of reason is inevitable. During such a long-distance service of international logistics, it is inevitable to encounter such situations as rainstorm, typhoon, blizzard, workers' strike, and the random discarding of goods by porters. Besides, the weight of international postal parcels is very light, each of which is less than 2kg.Moreover, it is easy to be messed up. The labels on parcels may fall off due to various reasons in transit, so it’s difficult to found the certain package to send to the corresponding customer.
The most effective solution to the return of international postal parcels is to call the local post office where the consignee is located. That’s because all postal parcels are delivered by the local post offices. Although you send international postal parcels through different companies, such as China Post Air Mail, Post Netherlands, Post Malaysia, HK Post Air Mail, DHL Global Mail are commonly used. For postal services all over the world, there is a "Universal Postal Union" where they are mutually supportive and cooperative.
Why not call the post office that sends the goods? This is because they also don’t know the reason why the post office of destination country returns the parcel, and the post office of destination country will not give a feedback of reasons to them.
There are so many packages that it is unrealistic to give a feedback one by one like international express. Having a clear understand of the reasons why the international postal package was returned, you can make a summary of these possible reasons when you put up your own website. In this way, you not only could reduce losses, but also can better explain how to receive the small package smoothly to customers. As an international freight forwarding company who is engaged in providing international postal parcels service for cross-border e-commerce, it is quite important to master the reasons why postal parcels may be returned in order to provide professional guidance for customers before shipment.
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