Overseas Parcels

[A2B]

Sure i'm not alone in seeing more and more parcels from overseas that require either a signature or scanning as proof of delivery, i've no problem in doing this but as a lot of these parcels have tiny barcodes it's getting difficult to see which ones are in need of scanning.

Not so long ago they used to come through with a "signature required" sticker, i take it this has been done away with?

[wannabeek]

Yeah, no idea why they did away with the 'signature required' stickers, probably cutting some hours somewhere. I've read on this forum that not every country with a scannable barcode actually needs scanning, the reason being that it has to be a reciprocal agreement - if they don't scan ours then we don't scan theirs.

If that is the case it'd be helpful and sensible (i.e. never gonna happen in Royal Mail) if they told all of us nationwide which countries we do scan for. Because I've never heard this officially, I look for and scan any barcodes in the usual format - a load of numbers ending with the two letters showing the country of origin.

If they said that all the ones ending with CN (being China) didn't need scanning then it would cut down on loads!

[Lounge Lizard]

Yeah, no idea why they did away with the 'signature required' stickers, probably cutting some hours somewhere. I've read on this forum that not every country with a scannable barcode actually needs scanning, the reason being that it has to be a reciprocal agreement - if they don't scan ours then we don't scan theirs.

If that is the case it'd be helpful and sensible (i.e. never gonna happen in Royal Mail) if they told all of us nationwide which countries we do scan for. Because I've never heard this officially, I look for and scan any barcodes in the usual format - a load of numbers ending with the two letters showing the country of origin.

If they said that all the ones ending with CN (being China) didn't need scanning then it would cut down on loads!

They possibly did away with the 'signature required' stickers to cut some hours at HWDC but they're not really needed if we've all got PDAs now with their black dot indicating 'signature required' and no black dot indicating 'no signature required'.
But some of the ones ending with CN do need a signature whereas many of the US ones that come through with RM Special Deliveries don't require a signature.

[wannabeek]

A colleague had one of those US specials delivered to them recently. It was a fairly cheap item, cost less than a tenner, took 2 weeks from ordering to get it to the UK, yet as soon as it arrived here it was given Special Delivery status and delivered by us the next morning!