Royal Mail Seller Guide

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Key actions for sellers

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1. Generate labels for any existing orders from previous shows before the Royal Mail conversion deadline (18th June, 2am BST)
2. Once converted to Royal Mail, for each existing listing (both Marketplace or BINs & Auctions in future shows) update to new shipping profiles. You can either
1. Update each listing manually, or
2. Delete old listings and create new ones

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If you do not follow these instructions your buyers will be overcharged for shipping!

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Royal Mail Summary

• Royal Mail is now our shipping partner for UK domestic shipments. We are going to be using Tracked 48 to provide high quality service to buyers
• DPD will continue to be used for international shipments and occasionally for large domestic shipments
• We believe this will have the following benefits
• Fewer damaged, lost or stolen packages
• Better buyer experience resulting in repeat customers and better seller reviews
• Streamlined operations through collections
• Despite moving to a more reliable shipping provider, most buyers will see very little change in shipping costs
• There will be no change to your day-to-day running of shows. Whatnot will continue to provide you with prepaid shipping labels to ship your items
• Shipping at Whatnot has historically been based on item weights. However, Royal Mail bases their pricing on both weight and package dimensions. As such,
• You are going to need to utilise standard shipping profiles which Whatnot has pre-defined for you for ease. Each category will have its own standard shipping profiles
• You can also create your own custom shipping profiles for items that you frequently sell
• Sellers who have an Online Business Account (OBA) with Royal Mail will be able to include Whatnot items in their regular collections. Those without OBA can also schedule collections for up to 25 packages at a time

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• Standard Shipping Profiles (SSPs)
• For the majority of items sold on Whatnot, we have defined “Standard shipping profiles” (SSPs) These profiles are a best-effort to accurately reflect the dimensions & weight of commonly sold items
• Custom Shipping Profiles (CSPs)

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Shipping profiles

In case you frequently sell items outside of the listed SSPs, you can create your own Custom Shipping Profiles (CSPs). See instructions here.

�When creating Custom Shipping Profiles, you need to measure the dimensions and weight of the item you are selling NOT the dimensions of the box you are shipping it in

Step 1: Measure item dimensions (not box dimensions)

Step 2: Create custom shipping profile

What are Custom Shipping Profiles

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Packaging

• Whatnot’s Royal Mail integration offers 4 main package formats
• We are going to be using Tracked48 to provide high quality service to buyers
• Once you generate a label, the label will show the type of package you need to use
• The envelope or box you use must be no larger than the the Max dimensions of the format indicated on the label

If you use the wrong Format or exceed the max dimensions buyer will get charged additional shipping costs by Royal Mail. This may be charged back to you by Whatnot

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Bundling & pricing

• Bundling
• Our Smart Bundling algorithm will try to fit as many items as possible into a standard package used by Royal Mail
• Bundling logic will depend on both weight and dimension of item
• Once either the weight or dimension limit is exceeded as result of bundling, algorithm will automatically switch to the next package size. You do not need to worry about package sizing - all you need to do is consider size and weight of individual items
• Pricing
• Despite moving to a more reliable shipping provider, most buyers will see very little change in shipping costs
• Buyers will no longer pay for each additional item. Example of how pricing will work:
• If a buyer purchases a pack of cards, they will pay £2.70 for Large Letter. They can then keep buying without paying for additional shipping until their bundled purchases no longer fit in a Large Letter
• Once the dimensions of Large Letter are exceeded, buyers will pay an extra £0.69 to move to a Small Parcel

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Collections

Royal Mail offers sellers of all sizes the ability to schedule collections

• Online business account
• Sellers who have an Online Business Account (OBA) with Royal Mail will be able to schedule collections as usual
• Note that labels will be prepaid by buyers on the Whatnot app. You will not need to purchase any labels from within your own account or use your own shipping rates
• No online business account
• Sellers without OBA can also schedule collections for up to 25 packages at a time
• We recommend scheduling collections using Royal Mail’s app, which allows sellers to scan the label barcodes. Alternatively you can book collections using this link
• For sellers who frequently ship more than 25 packages per show, we recommend investing in an OBA. This will significantly reduce the time it takes to ship items out and give sellers more time to stream. You can apply for an OBA with Royal Mail here

If you have an OBA please send us your OBA number, business name, and postcode at sellersupport@whatnot.com

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Breaks & other formats

• We understand that with formats such as mystery and breaks, sellers often do not know upfront how many items or exactly what type of items each buyer will receive
• To combat that, we have designed standard profiles for common formats, which should work for 95%+ situations
• In case there is a significant weight or dimensional difference between the standard shipping profile selected and the item(s) that need to be sent, sellers should adjust shipping profiles of the specific shipment after the show
• For example, if the generated label is for a Large Letter, but buyer received a box, seller should adjust the label
• Reminder that all sellers receive five free adjustments per week

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Other notes

• Bulk CSV upload
• Sellers will need to download a new bulk CSV upload sheet from here
• Sellers can also add their own Custom Shipping Profile to the CSV by overwriting Column G with name of their personal profiles created in the app

When using CSV uploader, you MUST select item category in-app first. If you do not do that, shipping profiles will NOT be displayed

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