New regulations at the Post Office

[Evianers]

This morning we went to the local post office to send off several parcels: to UK, to Canada, and 3 within France.

The woman at the counter told us "you can no longer wrap the packages in paper - they must all be put into boxes".

Since we had been 3 times to another PO last week, we could not understand this. She then showed us the back of the sticker which one has to adhere to parcels for posting within France. In miniscule letters it did in fact say this.

However if one pays a surcharge of €5[!] they will accept parcels wrapped in paper. When we complained that the other PO had accepted all parcels without comment [except to say that there was not sufficient sticky tape on one] the woman telephoned to Evian PO and asked whether what we were saying was true! Unbelievable!

To cut a long story short, she did eventually and reluctantly accept the three French parcels without extra cost but warned us this would be the last time. Boxes or nothing! [Except padded envelopes we suppose]. So lesson learned. Anyone else had this problem?

Happy festive season!

[Clair]

This is not new and the Evian P/O has probably just been lax or slow in applying the existing requirements.

[quote]Le colis ne doit pas être (partiellement ou totalement) recouvert de papier.

The package should not be (fully or partially) covered with paper.

Envois non standards (avec supplément tarifaire de 5,00€): Colis recouvert (partiellement ou totalement) de papier.

Non-standard packages (supplement 5.00 €): Parcels (fully or partially) covered with paper

source[/quote]

[AnOther]

So if I wrap my cardboard box in wrapping paper..............................................[blink]

[Evianers]

No, no, a thousand times no.

[Just what we did.... and look what happened to us]!

[Suze01]

The 5€ surcharge is not always applied - I guess it depends on the person who serves you, or even how well you know them. I recently sold two sets of roofbars on leboncoin. You can imagine how they were wrapped! Bits of cardboard, lots of duct tape, lot's of brown paper/boulanger sacs, and I wasn't charged the surcharge.

[AnOther]

A bit of over enthusiasm at work here I think.

I suspect the rule is meant to apply to wrapped items such as Lisleoise's item (roof bars - that must have been fun at the PO [blink]) but be it over wrapped in paper or not a box is a box is a box !

[Théière]

[quote user="AnOther"]A bit of over enthusiasm at work here I think.

I suspect the rule is meant to apply to wrapped items such as Lisleoise's item (roof bars - that must have been fun at the PO [blink]) but be it over wrapped in paper or not a box is a box is a box !

[/quote]

I don't believe it was over enthusiasm, a while back I sent the small watch repairing tool to Sweet17. In the UK I would have put it in a padded jiffy bag no problem.  In France I went to three PO and each one refused to allow it in such envelope bag and insisted it went in a Colisimo box for considerably more money both for the box and postage [:(]

[Mr Coeur de Lion]

This will be interesting then, as this afternoon I will be shipping a small external hard drive off to Australia, in the exact same jiffy bag that the thing was sent to me in from cdiscount.

Will let you know how I get on.

EDIT: Accepted package in the jiffy bag no problem. What I was confused about was not having to fill out and put a green declaration label on it.