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Calling on all Royal Mail customers !


sailing123

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Hi,

Royal Mail is refusing to give access of their Click and Drop API to Al/Cubecart for the development of an integration between Cubecart and Royal Mail Click and Drop. The main issue is apparently the potential resulting cost of support ! Another reason is that small businesses must post more than 100 orders a day. The judgemental error that Royal Mail is making is to look at Cubecart as one small customer rather than a collective of small businesses being our ecommerce platform. The Electronic customs compliance is approaching fast, 1 January 2021 so we must act now to make them change their mind. They gave access to their API to Woocommerce, EKM, Bluepark and all, why not Cubecart !

If you are using Royal Mail for your shipping and would like an integration with Click and Drop, please reply to thread or DM me so that we can send them a list of existing customers they may well lose to competition. 

Without an integration, they expect us to manually import the data into their system, madness ! 

Thank you.

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Even more crazy when they eventually (after being difficult for a few weeks) allowed me access to a Despatch Manager Online account to write, test and support a plugin for this system which was then replaced by the Click and Drop system. Apart from setting up the dev account, they didnt have to provide any additional help or support.

Do customers who already have a Click & Drop account have access to the API documentation - that was the way I originally got around RM initially saying they would not provide access - I simply used a client's account with their permission and got all the information that way

27 minutes ago, sailing123 said:

If you are using Royal Mail for your shipping and would like an integration with Click and Drop, please reply to thread or DM me so that we can send them a list of existing customers they may well lose to competition.

One other option I already suggested to @Al Brookbanks this morning, would be to use social media such as Twitter 

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Unless you have an integration, you have to manually import from a excel or cvs file all your data. You never get access to the API documentation.

Thanks Ian for sharing your experience with Al. I hope the matter will get resolved soon. To more noise we can make the better so that they start listening ...

 

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1 hour ago, sailing123 said:

Another reason is that small businesses must post more than 100 orders a day

Unfortunately, they are probably correct in that very few CubeCart users will be sending 100 orders a day

 

34 minutes ago, sailing123 said:

Unless you have an integration, you have to manually import from a excel or cvs file all your data. You never get access to the API documentation.

They closed that loophole then !

 

35 minutes ago, sailing123 said:

I hope the matter will get resolved soon. To more noise we can make the better so that they start listening ...

I think this would have to be Al's decision as to how much noise and what noise he would like to make

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1 hour ago, havenswift-hosting said:

Unfortunately, they are probably correct in that very few CubeCart users will be sending 100 orders a day

Actually this is where people and Royal Mail get it wrong. It is not about how many items individual Royal Mail customers are posted per day, it is how many RM customers are collectively using the same platform. Al/Cubecart will be the sole contact for Royal Mail, representing a bunch of us. Therefore Royal Mail should be looking at Cubecart as one user if the technical support is their main concern ! Collectively, there is no doubt that we dispatch more than 100 items a day. 

It is like saying all the small Ebay sellers sending less than 100 items a day are therefore not allowed to use Ebay integration with Click and Drop ! 

I am certainly making noises internally with my Royal Mail Account Manager.

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I send over 100 items a day via Royal Mail, just not most via cubecart, I'm still using PPI though cause moving over software I use over to click and drop was such a big pain the ass.

If it worked, I'd run my ebay through cubecart, wouldn't be far off 100 on it's own that.

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I cannot vote twice to my own thread but could not help writing an update out of frustration !  The more votes we can get the better, I noted that Squarespace with only 28 votes, got the green light on 17th August. Royal Mail decided to develop a direct integration for them ... although with Cubecart we are not asking for them to do the integration so I still cannot understand why not give the access, unless they want to have total control ?

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Just now, sailing123 said:

I cannot vote twice to my own thread but could not help writing an update out of frustration !  The more votes we can get the better, I noted that Squarespace with only 28 votes, got the green light on 17th August. Royal Mail decided to develop a direct integration for them ... although with Cubecart we are not asking for them to do the integration so I still cannot understand why not give the access, unless they want to have total control ?

I don't know why I am promoting this because I'll have a lot of work to do! 😆

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 4 months later...

I have just been searching for an extension thinking someone would have made one by now and found this thread. Hopefully replying now will bump it a bit and other users will see and click the vote button. We all need this.

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On 2/23/2021 at 9:23 PM, WSD said:

I have just been searching for an extension thinking someone would have made one by now and found this thread. Hopefully replying now will bump it a bit and other users will see and click the vote button. We all need this.

That's exactly what I've just done!

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Originally the Click and Drop integration was only in beta and RM would only open it up to a few selected accounts and would only allow it to work with integrations they had written themselves.  As the answer on 20th November shows, this has now changed

-------------------------------------------------------------

Hi all and thank you for your feedback. Following our successful trial of the Click & Drop API integration, we have now activated this integration for all accounts. You can find it in your Settings > Integrations.
Thanks to everyone who took part in the beta program.
Further information on how to import orders with the API can be found here:
https://help.parcel.royalmail.com/hc/en-gb/articles/360011462338-How-to-import-orders-with-the-Click-Drop-API

-------------------------------------------------------------

So all RM users with an account can use this and any developer can use their API documentation to write a plugin - @Al Brookbanks I would say that this should probably be a standard core / free plugin and because you have nothing else to do in your life at the moment ........

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I have a Royal Mail business account, I used to use the OBA PPi but switched over to Business Click & Drop so we can still get average weights on parcels and large letters plus we get track and trace on them all (oh and free 6 x 4 labels 😀) BUT I have to manually do the orders which can take hours even though I have a good routine. Yesterday we had 7 mails sacks sent out so you can imagine the hours we waste doing this.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 4 months later...

Any news on a possible plugin or addition with the next Cubecart update ? The API is now accessible to everyone and Royal Mail is now forcing retailers to use C&D. I was given a deadline of 3rd of September 2021 when I will not able to use my OBA account any longer. 

Surely extracting an excel file of orders to import into C&D would be a step in the right direction until a proper plugin is developed. 

Every time we do a manual entry in C&D is a possible source of error without counting how time consuming it is.

Please, could this request affecting many of us be reviewed ? 

Thank you.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm at the point of looking to move to woocommerce or one of the platforms that does have the click and drop integration.  I also have an etsy store and the speed I am able to do all the postage on orders compared to manually doing the orders from my cubecart store is unbelievable and I need to save time wherever possible.  Spending hours doing postage is not cost effective.

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