Courier Services UK Collection & Delivery

5 Reasons to use Exhibition and Corporate Couriers at your Event

gwseditor — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 16:31:16 +0000

Corporate exhibition couriers for business

Your main purpose in exhibiting at corporate showcases and events is to represent your business in a positive light, while demonstrating your knowledge and professionalism to prospective clients.

This can be made much more stressful by the need to transport your items to and from the venue, as well as to set up your stand and pack up again once the event has finished.

There are a number of specialist exhibition logistics companies that can provide a professional and reliable business expo transportation service.

Here are some reasons why they can be an invaluable tool in helping to ensure that your trade show experience goes smoothly:

1: Timely set-up at the event

Professional exhibition couriers are well-equipped to arrive on schedule, allowing adequate time for a stress-free transition before and after the exhibition or trade fair.

Hiring the right courier can ensure the efficient set-up and display of your wares and promotional materials, with careful and precisely timed delivery and collection, working around your schedule and the timings of the event itself. This can help to relieve you of worry on the day, allowing you to focus your energy on achieving your key goals of marketing your products and developing productive business relationships with other attendees at the event.

When skilled event logistics specialists are involved, you as the exhibitor will not be troubled with the setting up of your hardware and documentation, or connection to power and Internet sources. The preparation of your exhibition stand can be fully taken care of, leaving you with more time and freedom to focus on prospective clients and to prepare and rehearse your sales pitch.

2: Reliable, tracked delivery

Using the best-suited transportation methods available for your freight, corporate exhibition couriers are often equipped with real-time tracking technology, bringing you comfort in knowing that your goods will be arriving on time.

In most cases, the staff at the venue will be able to sign for your delivery ahead of schedule if the courier arrives before you do and is contracted only to deliver your equipment and not also to set up your stand. Being able to find your gear quickly and easily allows you to focus on the task at hand, which is delivering the best experience to prospects at the event.

Being well-organised and on time with the set-up of your stand will leave you feeling more relaxed and ready to build those connections with potential contacts and expand your network.

3: Safe delivery of goods, direct to your stand

A full exhibition courier service goes beyond any normal delivery; in addition, items will be unpacked, set up and packed away again after the event, directly at your stand. Couriers trained in handling and storing large or fragile items can provide a tailored service based on the specifications they receive prior to the event.

You are also likely to use promotional material such as banners, bespoke displays, flyers and leaflets, many of which can be delicate and easy to damage. In an environment where the appearance of items is reflective of your business, damaged promotional materials or advertising banners are not going to give a good impression.

Skilled couriers highly trained in corporate event shipping will be safely and efficiently able to handle an array of items, including bulky furniture and fragile glass screens and electronic equipment, alleviating both physical strain and worry for you and your team. You can rest assured that your goods will be collected and transported safely, ready for the event, and then safely returned to your premises again at the end.

4: Reduced people and vehicle requirements

It is likely that without hiring a courier for your event, you will have to take on extra vehicles and your own staff or hired helpers to handle the cargo, incurring additional costs, time and risks. This may also require further time investment in advance organisation, which will eat into the working day for you and your staff outside the exhibition hours, and may distract you from giving your best pitch in front of visitors to the event.

Expert support can be of paramount importance when you are transporting very heavy goods and pieces of equipment that may require specialist lifting and moving machinery such as pump trucks or fork-lift trucks, depending on the size of your freight and the access requirements of your premises and the venue.

These tasks require experienced professionals with the know-how to safely move such bulky items using appropriate equipment. Without your outsourcing such skilled help, you would need to organize the logistics and transportation of all your exhibits and equipment in-house. This could add an additional burden to your team, especially when the lifting and handling requirements of some items are complex or tricky.

5: Cost-effectiveness

Hiring logistical professionals to help with your stand may prove cost-effective not only on the day, but also in the long run.

In most cases, extra staff sourced within or from outside your business are needed to fulfill your logistical requirements if you were to choose not to use a courier. Bringing in extra personnel to fulfil the delivery, set-up and clearing-away of your stand on the day may not be the most cost-effective way to proceed, particularly if their time is more valuable when they are focused on other areas of the business, and may also carry risks related to liability for injury and inadequate insurance against accidental damage and breakages.

When you hire a professional courier with specialised expertise in the requirements of exhibitions, you are making the show less labour-intensive and a smoother, more efficient experience for your team - you are likely to find that you ultimately save money, with the spend on the service more than paying for itself in reduced effective time and labour costs in other departments, savings that will benefit your business.

Exhibiting at corporate events is competitive, and your level of success may depend on your attention to detail. Your chances will be improved when you have a well-organised plan for getting to and from the event, including the set-up and dismantling requirements associated with your stand. When these elements are carried out professionally and efficiently, your appearance at the show is more likely to be a success.

Exhibition and corporate couriers provide a full conference shipping and stand set-up service that can help you stand out from the crowd and focus on your primary purpose of gaining the interest and confidence of other attendees who may either become clients or refer clients to you in the future. At Mission Impossible Couriers, we are happy to offer a corporate exhibition services to suit your business needs. Get in touch today on 0117 941 2255 to enquire or complete an online quotation request form here.

The post 5 Reasons to use Exhibition and Corporate Couriers at your Event appeared first on Courier Services UK Collection & Delivery.

Same-day Courier Collection and Delivery

gwsadmin — Tue, 20 Jun 2023 11:07:47 +0000

Parcel delivery with same-day courier service

There has been huge growth in demand for same-day courier services across the UK in recent years, driven partly by the rise in online retail sales, which more than tripled between 2013 and 2021. A recent report by Mordor Intelligence predicted a 4.5% compound annual growth rate in the UK same-day courier market between 2022 and 2027.

The offering of very prompt delivery service options by online retailers, especially in major cities such as London, is fast becoming the norm. There is an expectation that when goods are purchased online, a range of delivery options should be available to choose from, including next-day delivery and perhaps even same-day delivery for some classes of products, whose timely delivery can be mission-critical for a variety of reasons, including business operations that depend on supplies.

Same-day courier services are commonly used for larger items or items of high value. However, this type of service can be utilised for any item if it is a priority that it should arrive quickly and safely. Same-day courier delivery could be used for a personal purchase from an online marketplace such as Gumtree or eBay, or by any business that needs to ensure rapid delivery of an item to a customer.

Whatever goods you are looking to get delivered using a same-day service within the UK, a good courier service will be happy to hear from you and advise on how they can help with your request.

Some large retail businesses have already started to make their own arrangements for this type of ultra-fast delivery service. Amazon, for example, is able to offer same-day delivery on a range of items in certain locations. This will depend on where you live and how close you may be to a specific Amazon fulfilment centre.

We predict that the offering of same-day courier services for online retail will continue to grow in popularity and be adopted by many more businesses. Any business that can warehouse their products within close enough proximity to their customers could potentially offer a same-day delivery service, subject to customers booking it early enough in the day.

How to book a same-day delivery service

When it comes to booking a same-day courier collection and delivery service, it is best to do a bit of research as to whether your item would be eligible for that type of service if you are choosing a courier. For some specific classes of items, and to some relatively remote locations far from where the supplier is based, this service may not be available. Also, many online retail stores will not let you pick a courier: you will have to use the ones they provide.

It is also a good idea to find out whether the service you are thinking of hiring offers a dedicated driver and vehicle for delivery. This means one driver who will collect, transport and deliver your item in a single vehicle, rather than it being passed from one vehicle to another mid-way through its route. A dedicated driver offers peace of mind that your item will be transported safely, and reduces the risk of it getting broken or lost.

Location tracking is another element that should be considered. Does the company offer location tracking of your item or parcel for the entire length of your journey? Ensuring that this is included when you book your same-day delivery service will mean that at any point in the journey, progress can be tracked and updates on the expected delivery time can be given to the recipient.

At Mission Impossible Couriers, we offer all of these options as standard with the same-day service we provide. We believe in keeping your item fully visible throughout its journey, to give you confidence in the security of the service we provide. You are welcome to get in touch for a quotation.

Same-day courier in Bristol

When it comes to hiring a same-day courier, it’s likely that your location will impact on whether the service is available from particular providers. Bigger cities and towns, and places with quick access to the national motorway network, are more likely to be have courier companies that can offer this service, as they have the capability to deliver to a greater number of locations within four to six hours. So, in assessing whether a particular company can meet your requirements, think about the logistics involved and whether or not same-day delivery is realistic given potential causes of delays such as urban congestion and tailbacks.

At Mission Impossible, we are able to offer a same-day courier service in Bristol, our home base, and in many other cities up and down the country.

Bristol is within an hour’s drive of the following major towns and cities:

Cardiff, Newport, Cwmbran, Abergavenny, Cheltenham, Gloucester, Tewkesbury, Bath, Trowbridge, Chippenham, Taunton and Swindon.

Bristol is within two hours’ drive of these large towns and cities:

Oxford, Newbury, Reading, Winchester, Salisbury, Slough, Woking, Barnstaple, Exeter, Torquay, Bournemouth, Port Talbot, Bridgend, Swansea, Merthyr Tydfil, Hereford, Worcester, Kidderminster, Redditch, Droitwich, Solihull, Wolverhampton, Walsall, Birmingham, Warwick and Coventry.

Bristol is within three hours’ drive of these cities and large towns:

London, Guildford, Chichester, Fareham, Ringwood, Gillingham, Worthing, Brighton, Royal Tunbridge Wells, Crawley, Ashford, Plymouth, Bodmin, Rugby, Luton, Bedford, Milton Keynes, Stevenage, St. Albans, Northampton, Leicester, Derby, Nottingham, Cambridge, Braintree, Poole, Southampton, Portsmouth, Telford, Shrewsbury, Wrexham, Haverfordwest, Stafford, Cannock, Stoke-on-Trent and Rotherham.

Bristol is within four hours’ drive of the following major settlements:

Aberystwyth, Bangor, Chester, Liverpool, Manchester, Blackpool, Blackburn, Bolton, Wigan, Lancaster, Kendal, Hastings, Eastbourne, Southend-on-Sea, Canterbury, Colchester, Bury St. Edmunds, Maidstone, Gillingham, Chelmsford, Basildon, Ipswich, Peterborough, Doncaster, Lincoln, Grimsby, Hull, Leeds, Bradford and Sheffield.

These are just examples that show how conveniently located Bristol is as a starting point for same-day courier services in England and Wales.

Even the great north-eastern city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne is only just over five hours’ drive away, making it viable for same-day delivery services from Bristol provided that departure is scheduled before noon, while for customers based in the major cities of Scotland, Glasgow can be reached by road from Bristol within six hours, and Edinburgh within six and a half.

The benefits of using a same-day courier service

Speed of delivery

Using a same-day courier collection and delivery service has the potential to save time for everyone involved in the delivery contract. Offering direct collection from and delivery to requested locations saves time for both the sender and the recipient, as there is no need for organising items to be dropped off at or collected from any intermediate logistical hubs or local delivery depots. Using a same-day service means that items and parcels will arrive promptly, whether travelling to another location in the same city or further afield. Those who rely on this type of service for leisure or professional items can be assured that their items will arrive in a timely fashion. In professional settings, this can be of particular importance in certain industries such as the medical and construction industries, hospitality, sports and the performing arts, where matters are often extremely time-sensitive.

Transported with care

With a same-day service, it is almost guaranteed that the driver who collects your item will be transporting it for the whole length of its journey, ensuring that it arrives safely at the desired destination, because the distance involved is likely to be manageable within a single haulage driver’s work shift. Your item will be in safe hands and handled with care, and you will not have the worry of it going through various hand-overs at drop-off locations and warehouses, any of which might otherwise pose the opportunity for it to get damaged or even go missing.

Customer satisfaction

Customer expectations for a fast and efficient delivery service are now high; and on particularly important, time-sensitive purchases, a same-day service offering may well be a deciding factor in whether or not a prospective buyer goes ahead and completes check-out or not. If they do not see a favourable delivery option that meets their expectations and needs at that moment in time, they may look around elsewhere for a supplier that will offer to provide the rapid delivery service they are looking for, which could result in a loss of business for you.

Convenience of delivery

If you have sold a large and heavy article such as an item of furniture on eBay or Gumtree, you may need it to be moved quickly in order to make space for something else. Using a same-day delivery service will mean that the item is picked up swiftly and that you will no longer have it taking up space. It will also mean that the buyer of the item is kept happy as they will receive their item quicker

Cost savings

Using a local, same-day service can be surprisingly inexpensive, and in some circumstances less expensive than the slower alternatives. Because of the speed and directness of same-day services, there can be fewer overheads to factor into costs, such as those related to time and warehousing, rests for the driver and meals. There is no need to rent warehouse space or make use of logistical hubs on items that are collected and delivered on the same day. Larger courier companies that make use of overnight stops can sometimes charge more to cover the extra costs involved in overnight warehousing during a journey.

Location tracking

Many delivery services nowadays offer tracking that provides periodic updates on the progress of the consignment at various points in its journey, whenever a juncture at which they are scanned is reached. Same-day delivery options can go further, with the added benefit of real-time live location tracking. Allowing your customers to see where their item is at any point while it is being transported offers them reassurance and the confidence that it will arrive at its destination safely.

When you use a dedicated courier, your driver is also likely to update you on their progress and to notify you promptly in the event they are delayed due to heavy traffic or a road accident causing tailbacks, which gives you the ability to warn the recipient that the delivery of their goods is likely to be slightly delayed and update them on when to expect them.

Mission Impossible Couriers are proud to offer a fast and reliable same-day courier collection and delivery service within our local area of Bristol and across many other UK cities. Contact us today on 0117 941 2255 to speak to our team for a quotation or fill in our online quotation request form here.

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Bristol Courier Service Hire Advantages

gwsadmin — Thu, 15 Dec 2022 11:29:42 +0000

When you are looking for a courier service, there may be many options of companies to consider. With Bristol being the vast business hub that it is, the city is a great area to start your search. In this article, we take an in-depth look at Bristol courier hire in terms of the advantages of hiring a firm in the city and how you can plan, prepare and execute your booking.

Advantages of using a Bristol Courier

There are many advantages in hiring a Bristol courier. In this part of the article, we’ll discuss these in detail so you can make your own decision when you next need to book a courier service.

Bristol Transport Connections to National Road Network

Bristol is the hub of the South West. As the largest city by population in the whole region, it is naturally the main central business centre. Bristol is also very well connected by road to all the smaller cities, towns and villages in the nearby counties, as well as enjoying excellent motorway links to the major cities of the South-East, the Midlands, the North and South Wales.

London is just under two and a half hours’ drive from Bristol via the M4 motorway, and Birmingham is an hour and 45 minutes drive via the M5 motorway, while Manchester is 3 hours and 15 minutes’ drive via the M5 and M6.

In the South and South West, Exeter is just over an hour and a half away from Bristol via the M5, Plymouth is two and a quarter hours away in the same direction, Southampton is just under two hours’ drive via the M4 motorway and the A34, and Bath is just 40 minutes away via the A32.

In South Wales, Cardiff is barely an hour’s drive away via the M32 and M4, and Swansea is only an hour and a half away in the same direction.

Bristol is within easy reach of all these destination cities thanks to its location at the intersection of the South-West and the Midlands.. This gives it a significant logistical advantage as a central depot for a courier company operating across a very large part of the country. The logistical benefits of Bristol’s location translate into faster and more fuel-efficient routes to destinations throughout southern and central England and South Wales. It is this that makes Bristol a prime pick for anyone looking to hire a courier in these parts of the country.

With Nottingham only two hours and 40 minutes away, Brighton just under three hours away, Cambridge three and a quarter hours away, Leeds three and three-quarter hours’ distant, and Newcastle-upon-Tyne just over five hours away, Bristol is well-positioned via the extensive motorway network for even long-distance transportation from more eastern parts of the country to anywhere in the South West of England, the South Midlands or South Wales.

Road Knowledge of Bristol Couriers

In hiring a courier company in Bristol, you can expect that the drivers who work for the company will have extensive knowledge of both the more local suburban areas and also the bigger road networks going out of the city and beyond. They are likely to have done many similar journeys before, and you can rest assured that delays to the delivery of your items are unlikely barring exceptional circumstances such as road closures, as your driver will be able to navigate the route efficiently and keep to the estimated time.

Although many now rely on Sat Nav or phone map navigation, knowing that your item or items is in the hands of someone who will have relatively good knowledge of the roads if this fails and can overrule it when it suggests inappropriately minor roads is reassuring.

Bristol as a Business Hub

As mentioned, Bristol is the central location of the South West. This makes it particularly desirable for many new businesses to locate and start trading here, while others begun in smaller towns have been known to relocate to the area in order to flourish and prosper. With all these new and growing businesses bringing enterprise and innovation as well as a need for state-of-the-art logistical planning and capacity, the city has been expanding its offering of road haulage and transportation providers to, including a wide array of courier options to suit individual needs.

The growing transportation demands upon the city have also meant that its road infrastructure has needed to be upgraded to keep up. Although many improvements were already made in the late 20th century, such as the M32 motorway to link central Bristol with the M4, which fully opened in 1975, business activity in and around the city has grown a lot since then. This has strengthened the case for more recent road developments, such as the new South Bristol Link Road that opened in 2017. This continuous focus on road improvements cements the city of Bristol as a strong location for haulage and courier companies to settle and run their businesses from.

Bristol is a thriving centre for business development and is set to continue in this role throughout the 21st century. At a city planning level, development projects are also ongoing, helping to pave the way for businesses to make their mark and prosper.

How to Book a Bristol Courier

Although hiring a Bristol courier would seem a relatively straightforward task to undertake, there are a few important steps you should take to ensure that the process goes smoothly. Checking these tasks off before the move day will mean that you won’t have to worry about any unforeseen circumstances as you will have prepared in advance.

Calculating the Weight and Dimensions of Packages for Couriers

Most courier companies will request specific dimensions, (height, width and depth), and an estimate of the weight of any items that you would like transported at the time of quoting. This is so they can give you an accurate price and plan appropriately for how they will move your item(s). It may be that they need to arrange for special equipment or extra staff if you are transporting a particularly heavy article, so give them as much information as you can to ensure that they are sufficiently prepared.

Packaging Fragile Items for Courier Transport

Consider if any of your items will require special arrangements for transport. If you have a fragile or particularly valuable item, let the courier company you will be booking with know this in advance. If it is fragile, they will be able to advise on whether or not they are trained in moving such items and if so, will be able to give you details on how they will package and handle the items, to reassure you your item will not be damaged in transit. If it is very valuable, you should check that it will be fully covered by their insurance policies.

At this point, it is in any case worthwhile asking about the courier’s insurance coverage against breakages and damage to items. If the worst were to happen, would they accept full responsibly and cover the cost of replacing the item like-for-like? If both parties are clear on where the responsibility lies and what exclusions and personal excesses or limits (if any) may apply, then in the unfortunate event that an incident does occur, there should be no unpleasant disputes, and the issue will be equitably resolved in accordance with the agreed terms of service.

Booking a Date and Time for Courier Delivery

Agree with your chosen courier on a date and time for the consignment to be moved, and make sure they are clear about the exact pick-up and drop-off locations for your items. The courier firm may give you a fairly wide window of time for pick-up and drop off to allow for any unforeseen delays or hold-ups, so make sure you are happy with the allotted slot and that it works for both you and the recipient of the item. Double-check that they have all the correct address details, and make them aware of any parking requirement. For example, is parking allowed for permit holders only, or is there free or meter-based on-road parking nearby, etc. If the courier firm has all these details, then it is much more likely that the removal will go to plan. If permits are required, you might need to arrange for a visitor permit at any end affected. If the courier receives a parking fine for parking in a permit zone and you did not make such provision, you could be liable to pay the full cost.

Bristol Courier Service from Mission Impossible Couriers

If you haven’t hired a courier company before, the process may feel slightly daunting in terms of the preparations needed and handling the logistics involved, but experienced professional couriers have the know-how to handle every detail given that you provide them with all the information they need.

At Mission Impossible Couriers of Bristol, we are on hand to assist in the moving of all of your items. We pride ourselves on offering a Bristol-based courier hire service to an exceptional standard of professionalism, and even if neither your pick-up point nor your destination is in Bristol itself, the centrality of the city as a transportation hub makes us ideally suited to offer easy access to hundreds of destinations across mainland Britain. So wherever you are based in the country, if you have an item or items that you would like transported, please don’t hesitate to get in touch or complete our online form for a free, no-obligation quotation.

The post Bristol Courier Service Hire Advantages appeared first on Courier Services UK Collection & Delivery.

10-Step Guide to Furniture Collection

gwsadmin — Thu, 17 Nov 2022 14:35:48 +0000

There may be many reasons why you would enlist the help of a furniture collection company. You may have sold items on eBay and require assistance in ensuring they make it to the buyer’s location, you may be moving house and need help getting any large items of furniture to the new property in one piece, or you may even have a piece that is past its best and not worth the cost of repair, in which case you require help from a company that offers an old furniture collection service to ensure that it is disposed of correctly.

Whatever the details, you will need to see to it that the process of getting one or more items of furniture collected, transported and delivered at the desired location is planned and executed correctly.

We’ve put together a ten-step guide that will take you through each part of the process to help ensure that your furniture collection is successful

1. Measure furniture dimensions

The furniture collection company you hire should be provided with as much relevant information as possible for their job so that they can plan its moving and transportation while making appropriate allowances for its size and weight. Providing as many supporting measurements as possible will be very useful to them. They will then know exactly what they will be expected to move and should be able to give you a very accurate quote.

Your first step would be to measure all the dimensions of your piece of furniture. Measure height, width and depth with a retractable tape-measure (a three-metre one should be enough for most items of furniture, although five-metre tape measures are also available), and make a note of these. If your item is not a standard shape, make a note of any other measurements that you think would be helpful in terms of moving the piece. There may be sharp angles or rounded edges that require their own measurements, so take down as much information as you can.

It's quite likely that the furniture collection company will also request photographs of the item or items as a point of visual reference. Taking photos that show condition before the move can also incidentally safeguard you against disputes in the unlikely event that you need to claim for accidental damages caused by careless handling or bumps during the moving process.

2. Estimate weight of furniture

As well as measuring the dimensions of your item or items of furniture in order to provide these details to the furniture collection company, it’s likely you will also need to provide a

weight or estimated weight of your item. Depending on what kind of item you are requiring to be collected, you may possibly have the facility to weigh it yourself if it is a small but heavy item. However, for most larger items that cannot fit on a standard home weighing scale, such sofas, armchairs, wardrobes, cabinets, chests of drawers, desks and tables, you will have to provide an estimated weight.

If the item is modern and you bought it from new, check your original paperwork from when you purchased the item for its specifications, which would normally include the weight. Alternatively, visit the retailer’s and manufacturer’s websites to see if this information is available there. If the item is no longer produced and there are no records of its specifications retained at these sites, you can search for it by product name on a search engine just in case there is another website where original documentation about the item has been retained.

If you have tried all these options and are still unable to find the weight corresponding to your item of furniture, or the item is an antique or second-hand and lacks any visible product name, try to look on the Internet for items that are similar in size, style and materials (e.g. fibreboard with wood veneer, solid oak, or solid pine), and adjust the weights given for them to form an estimate of that of your own piece, bearing in mind any differences in dimensions.

3. Check feasibility of moving without disassembly

Once you have collected together all the relevant specifications of your item of furniture, your next step is to assess its exit route from your property. Think about how you got it into the property in the first place. Did it come flat-packed or in parts? If it will not fit through a doorway or you can’t move it around the corners on your staircase, is it possible to disassemble it to these parts again ready for transportation?

If this is a job you don’t fancy taking on yourself, you could talk to prospective furniture collection companies and ask if any of them would offer a disassembly service as part of their job for you. Alternatively, you may be able to hire a local handyperson to deal with the disassembly of your item of furniture, and even the eventual reassembly that will be needed at its destination.

In some extreme cases, where your furniture can’t physically fit through doorways or down stairs and there is no possibility of disassembling it, you may have to think of an alternative route. This can sometimes involve taking windows out by the frame and hoisting furniture out from the first floor to the ground. If you think the transporting of items will be tricky, it is something you should immediately mention to any prospective furniture collection company you are planning to hire. As well as seeing any photos and specifications, they may want to visit the property to assess the access options and decide if further action will be needed in order to remove the furniture and complete the job to which you have assigned them.

4. Research Furniture Collection Companies

With the specifications in hand and an idea of how the items to be collected will be removed from your property by the furniture collection company, now it’s time to research your selection of service provider for the job.

To begin with, one of the best ways to find a reliable furniture collection company can be to ask friends, family and colleagues and see if they may be able to recommend a firm whose services they have used before. This way, you can generally know that the business you will be hiring has previously carried out a good job, and you may be able to get an idea of the cost of the job before making contact, although details will vary depending on what and how much the person making the recommendation had moved previously. If it was a long time ago, staff changes and even management changes since then are a potentially unknown factor to consider.

If a friend or family member offers a recommendation of a friend of theirs (who may own a van) rather than a specific company, do be just a little wary. Although they may be doing it with the best intentions, it may be the case that they are making the recommendation to help the friend out, and not because they necessarily think their furniture collection service is especially good. A final note to mention is that if you do take a recommendation from a friend and the service is not up to your standard, consider how this will impact on the friendship.

Alternatively, you can research furniture moving companies online. Ensure you do your homework here to get a clear sense of the reputability of each firm. First, spend time looking at the company’s website to see if they are suitable for the service you require and whether they come across as truly knowledgeable and dedicated professionals in their approach.

Also, take time to check if there are any testimonials on the website and customer reviews on an external review site, such as Google Reviews or Trustpilot. Occasional negative reviews may be bad luck or the hallmark of a disaffected reviewer with unreasonable expectations, but when you look at the picture emerging from the reviews in the round, do these reviews tally up with a decent average star rating, and do the reviews mention a good level of customer service?

Once you have found a company you are happy with, you can then go ahead and make contact. At this point, it would be a good idea to have a few more companies that can be used as back-up options or comparisons when moving onto the next stage.

5. Request a quotation

It may be possible to fill all the details previously collected straight into an online quotation form on a company’s website in order to receive an immediate quotation. Automatic quotation systems will tend to be offered only by relatively large companies, but if you find some operating in your area who offer this on their websites, try them to get a point of

comparison on the price that will be charged for the services you require. If an immediate quote isn’t possible from some of the companies on your shortlist, you may still find that you can request a manual quotation through a contact form on their websites. Alternatively, give each company a call, as they should be able to take your details over the phone and give you a cost there and then, if there is anyone in the office to answer your call at the time (bear in mind that some small movers may be out on other jobs and only available on their mobile phones when they are not driving or otherwise busy).

To avoid the nasty surprises of extra costs incurred on moving day or when you receive your invoice, be sure to mention any special requirements at the time of quotation, for example the removal of a window to accommodate taking out an item that is too large to move via doorways and / or the staircase. You should also advise if there are any other obstructions that need to be negotiated or moved out of the way first, if you are not in a position to clear the route yourself, though that is generally the best option. Any extra work involved to the mover may mean extra cost, and movers could bill you extra for unexpected obstacles and difficulties that you should reasonably have led them to expect, or even cancel the collection altogether until you have renegotiated terms, so give as many details as you can to be safe.

It is also worth noting that furniture collectors generally also like to know how many flights of stairs they will have to negotiate for each item of furniture they need to move, at both the source end and destination end of their journey, as this can factor into time, cost, and physical exertion level for staff.

6. Finalise how furniture will be packaged

The furniture collection company you have contracted to hire should routinely indicate how they will be packaging any items that need packaging for safe transportation, but if this is not the case, ask ahead of move day.

While most large items of furniture will not be placed in boxes ahead of transportation, there are measures that can be taken to protect corners and feet from knocks and bumps, such as wrapping them in bubble-wrap taped down with kinds of temporary tape that do not permanently damage the surface of the furniture when they are removed again.

If wet weather is forecast or encountered on the day, it is also reasonable to ask for sensitive wooden furniture items to be protected against rainfall during the time that it is between your property and the van. This can usually be achieved with the help of blankets wrapped around them.

Generally speaking, reputable furniture collection companies will have vast experience and know exactly how best to package different items of furniture that require transportation to a new home, from old sofas for disposal to valuable antique chairs, regardless of what they are made from and where they are destined

You are likely to be more concerned with the packaging arrangements if dealing with antiques, but no matter what the item, it is always a good idea to request confirmation of all of the plans for protecting your pieces of furniture from damage in transport ahead of time.

7. Assess the furniture removals company’s operating procedures

An important point of note here is to make your own assessment of risk based on the procedures the company uses in carrying out moves. Any or all of the following considerations may be relevant here, so be sure to make any enquiries you feel are needed, if only for your peace of mind:

Does it employ permanent trained and vetted staff, or temporary labour from a local Labour Ready-type drop-in agency for hire?
If it employs temporary agency workers, what are its procedures for vetting and training them?
Will a suitable number of workers be available to carry out the job? Some heavy items of furniture such as pianos generally require four people to lift them safely, one at each corner, while others are fine with two, but few are safe to lift by just one person.
What kind of vehicle does it plan to use in carrying out your job?
Is the payload of the vehicle adequate for all items you require moving?
Are blankets to protect items of furniture in the van from damage caused by friction during the journey provided?
How securely will the vehicle be protected from attempted break-ins when it is parked, either during its journey or during loading or unloading at either end?
Will your items be transported directly to their destination or unloaded at a temporary storage location part-way through their journey and then moved on separately by other staff or on another day?
Would your furniture be fully insured against damage or loss while in such temporary storage?

All of these factors can build up a picture of risk that it would be wise to take into consideration.

8. Consider the company’s trading terms and conditions

Where you a dealing with a company that has its own website, it is also wise to read it’s terms and conditions prior to any agreements being finalised. You will want to make sure that you know who will be liable if something gets damaged in transit and whether there are any personal excesses or limits on claims of damage.

If on the other hand you are dealing with small local man-with-a-van-type movers referred by a friend, you may find that they don’t have a website at all. Some smaller companies may just have a simple listing in an online directory such as Yell, or a very basic website limited to a few pages, but with no dedicated terms and conditions page.

In all these cases, you might be wise to discuss terms and conditions over the phone or request a signed agreement in writing before proceeding. Where a small local firm is reluctant to provide any such agreement or seems surprised that you are even asking for one, it may be a clear sign that they would be unwilling to accept full liability for damages or losses, so you would be taking your chances with them if you used them.

9. Set a suitable date and time

Next, find a convenient date and time that works for both you and the furniture collection company or small mover you have hired. Depending on their availability and how quickly you need the job doing, you may have to compromise a little, but with luck it won’t be too difficult to find a suitable time.

Think practically about when will work best. Are you working from home, meaning that the furniture removal job would potentially be better scheduled for a weekend? Perhaps you have young children, in which case a weekday commitment might be easier while they are at school, provided that you can take time off work that day. The date and timing may be especially important if any of your items prove to be slow and tricky to move and require special interventions.

10. Confirm delivery at agreed location

Finally, ensure you request a confirmation from your furniture collection firm once your items have been successfully delivered at the agreed location. This should come as standard with any company, but clarify the details in advance so you are not left waiting and wondering.

If your item is travelling a long distance for example, perhaps you will want to track its progress in order to update the recipient of its expected arrival time. Does the company provide an online tracking service? Alternatively, will you have access to the mobile phone number of the driver or passenger if your item is only travelling a short distance? Will you receive confirmation of delivery in the form of a phone call, text or email?

Finally, how will you be notified of any delays in delivery?

Be sure to clarify these details and if you have any concerns, raise any worst-case scenarios that spring to mind. Consider for example:

Extreme weather preventing the move from being carried out safely on the agreed date
Vehicle breakdown
An accident ahead on the route causing a severe delay, or one in which the delivery vehicle is directly involved, leading to it being towed away by a breakdown recovery vehicle
A break-in to the vehicle and opportunist theft of your furniture from it, either at one end of its journey, or while it is parked up somewhere along the route, for instance at a motorway service station or in the car park of a pub where the driver has decided to stop for lunch.

Perhaps your delivery will get interrupted mid-journey and cannot be completed in the originally agreed time. In this case, would the delivery roll over to the next day, or would the company have to reschedule for the next available date? How would any such change of schedule impact the recipient of the furniture at its destination? Knowing the arrangements that would be put in place if things don’t go exactly to plan means that at least you can prepare for all situations.

Conclusion

We hope that this guide acts as a helpful resource for when you are next in need of a furniture collection or removal service. The key take-away here is to ensure that all the details are confirmed and agreed upon ahead of time, to make for a smooth and efficient process.

If you or someone you know is looking for a furniture collection or moving service, we at Mission Impossible Couriers would be happy to discuss your requirements and offer a free, no-obligation quotation for your consideration.

The post 10-Step Guide to Furniture Collection appeared first on Courier Services UK Collection & Delivery.

How Can Furniture Removers Make Your Move Easier?

gwsadmin — Thu, 17 Nov 2022 14:20:11 +0000

Moving house can be a very stressful time. You have perhaps already had to organise the sale of your current home and the purchase of another, or perhaps your rental agreement came to an end and you have had to find another property to lease.

Either way, the associated tasks that come with any kind of move can be vast and complicated. Forms to fill in, documents to gather, paperwork to sign: the to-do list can be endless, not to mention the fact that you will eventually have to pack up all your possessions ready for moving day - just another task that can seem daunting and that you have probably been putting off.

One way you can make life easier and a little less stressful is by hiring a furniture removals company to help in the packing up and moving of your items. Let the professionals take care of this job for you so you can focus on ensuring all the administrative jobs are completed ready for moving day.

In this article, we look at the advantages of hiring a removals firm to help with your belongings, and how this can take some of the pressure off the process of moving house.

Experience

Some removals companies offer a complete house pack-up, move and unload, whereas others are on hand to help with big items such as heavy furniture. Whichever type of company you decide to go for, bringing in the professionals means hiring a wealth of experience at organising and packing up your items. They can perhaps categorise them by type or by room, and helpfully label boxed items to identify their contents, all of which will make it far easier when you come to unpack at your new residence.

Many of us can feel overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of possessions we own; and coming face to face with them all again in a situation of needing to box them up in a hurry can feel daunting and upsetting. Packing extensive household belongings in a secure, compact and efficient way for moving can feel like an almost impossible task. But by using a reputable removals company, you can take some of the burden off your own shoulders.

You most probably will want to pack up at least some of your personal items and items of special significance yourself. If this is the case, you can still rely on a removals business to help pack up your larger items of furniture and any other bulky goods, such as appliances that you may be taking with you. They can also move heavy finished packing boxes for you even if you opt to tackle the initial packing stages yourself to ensure that nothing gets damaged or lost.

Even if you opt to do not only the packing but the actual moving of boxes, hiring help with the larger, heavier items may still be the most sensible option. You have to think of the practicalities of moving the larger items. Would it be physically possible and safe for you?

Break up the task of packing into more manageable, bite-sized jobs that can be carried out in the lead up to the move, and don’t be afraid to hire help with larger items. This way, you can relax more, knowing that you do not have to worry about how you might be able to manage physically moving or packing the largest and heaviest items.

Care of delicate and breakable items

Some of the items you own, not only larger and heavier items but also ones that are particularly delicate or fragile, may require special care when it comes to packing.

Bulky goods will need strength and precision in order to transfer them safely from your existing home to the vehicle that will transport them to their destination and finally to your new home. Specific removals firms will know exactly how to do this and how to carry out this process safely, picking up and carrying weight in the correct way, to avoid accidents. Attempting to carry large items with little experience runs the risk of doing damage or incurring injury.

All fragile items, including ordinary kitchen glasses and crockery, need careful wrapping to prevent damage from knocks and bumps in transit. The most valuable and delicate fragile items, such as china or glass ornaments, vases and sculptures, will need a delicate hand and knowledge of how exactly to package them and secure them during transportation to ensure that they remain safe and in one piece for the duration of the journey. If you have items of such value, it is especially unlikely that you would want to risk them getting broken or damaged by having them thrown in loose with other items, inadequately protected by packaging, or roughly handled. They are likely to be pieces in which you have invested a great deal of time, money and affection, so it is sensible to hire reputable professionals in order to ensure that they are moved securely and safely.

Artwork, vinyl records, cassette tapes and even compact discs in jewel cases can all be damaged, crushed or broken by improper packing. Record players typically have delicate, fragile bearings and styli, which need properly securing and protecting from all impacts. Electronic equipment such as computer hard drives, headphones, loudspeakers, amplifiers, compact disc players, professional sound modules, and anything with an integrated printed circuit board inside, can also be vulnerable to knocks and bumps and should be packaged with a view to insulating them against these.

Time-saving and efficient

When it comes to moving, there never seems to be enough time: not enough time in the lead up, not enough time on moving day, and not enough time to unpack. This is especially likely to be the case if you are in work or have young dependents. In most cases, things feel rushed and successive stages of the move feel cobbled together with very much a sense of ‘it just has to get done’ surrounding the situation.

It doesn’t always have to be that way, however. Imagine a smooth and stress-free lead up to your move, moving day going exactly to plan, and as many of your belongings unpacked for you as you require. This can be the case if you hire a full-service professional moving company. Liaise with the company in advance, plan and agree exactly which items they will be responsible for, get a quotation or two, and then book in a date and save your time to focus on other aspects of the move, the ones you can more comfortably manage by yourself.

When you hire professional furniture removers, you can save time not only ahead of your move, but also on the day itself. Any removals firm worth its salt should be well practised in executing home moves with the greatest efficiency. They will have planned everything down to the last detail, ensured that they have the correct team for the job, and given you an estimated time of arrival at the source property, as well as an approximate time and date for the delivery of your items to their destination address.

Conclusion

As we mentioned at the beginning of this article, moving house can be a very stressful time, but it doesn’t need to be. Weigh up the pros and cons of getting in experts to help with your move. If you are on a tight budget and used to doing things yourself, professional removals may at first seem like a costly and partly unnecessary expense; but think about the impact in terms of reduced stress levels throughout the process and the reassurance that all your items will be moved safely and securely and arrive in the condition in which they were packed.

General removals companies are the best bet for handling complete household moves, but If you need special assistance with certain items such as valuable pieces of furniture, Mission Impossible Couriers are on hand to help. With just a few details, we can offer you a free no-obligation quotation. Feel welcome to contact us by telephone or through our online contact form here.

The post How Can Furniture Removers Make Your Move Easier? appeared first on Courier Services UK Collection & Delivery.

eBay Payment and Shipping Options

gwsadmin — Mon, 13 Jan 2020 09:00:12 +0000

How to buy antiques and collectibles on eBay Part 5:

Payment and Shipping Options

On most eBay listings in the UK and the USA, Paypal is the preferred purchase method; and in many cases it’s the only one allowed. Including a Paypal option is a requirement that has been imposed on sellers in these countries for a decade or so now; and it’s strongly recommended that you sign up for a Paypal account and link it to your bank account before you start using eBay at all.

If you try using the national eBay sites for France, Germany or some other European countries, you will find that different rules apply there; and Paypal is not always even allowed as an option by the seller. In France, sometimes only a personal cheque is allowed, which effectively makes buying impossible if you don’t have a bank account denominated in Euros. On eBay Deutschland (eBay.de), serving Germany, it’s usually the case that sellers not allowing Paypal require a bank transfer. In some cases, they will allow buyers outside Germany to pay by international bank transfer, but where they only ship within Germany and only offer payment by bank transfer, it would be wise to assume that they won’t sell to buyers without a bank account denominated in Euros.

French and German sellers who don’t allow Paypal usually end up with lower sale prices on their auctions of rarities that would be of international interest, so while they may avoid Paypal commission fees, which are typically in the order of 3.5 to 4.5% on international transactions, their overall income potential from each sale is considerably reduced.

When you purchase an item on any eBay website, if it’s small enough to go in the post, you’ll normally be offered postage by the seller. For bulky items such as furniture and for delicate antiques, however, this may not be offered, and instead you’ll see ‘Collection in Person’ as the only option. Presuming that you don’t live close enough to the location of the item to spare the time to drive there and back yourself, perhaps even accompanied by others needed to help you lift and move it safely, this is where the services of a courier come in useful.

Don’t forget that Mission Impossible Couriers regularly transports antiques and furniture bought on eBay within the UK from seller to buyer. We offer a secure and reliable door-to-door service and save you time and money compared with driving half way around the country and back yourself!

Return to Part 1: Introduction to Buying Antiques and Collectibles on eBay

Mission Impossible Couriers specialise in transporting delicate and valuable goods such as antiques and furniture. We service eBay items for both sellers and bidders. Call us today on 0117 941 2255 for a competitive quotation or CLICK HERE for a quotation request form.

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How to Bid Successfully on eBay Auctions

gwsadmin — Mon, 13 Jan 2020 08:00:59 +0000

How to Buy Antiques and Collectibles on eBay Part 4:

How to Bid Successfully on eBay Auction Items

We’ve already covered the use of ‘Best Offer’ in Part Three; and ‘Buy It Now’ is as simple and decisive as checking out on any website selling goods at a fixed price; but what if you want to bid on an eBay auction? How should you go about it to maximise your chances of success?

The first thing to note is that eBay auctions are not equivalent to live auction floor auctions, in which bids are announced by an auctioneer in real time, and others in the room (or online) are given the right to successively respond with a higher bid until no party is willing to bid still higher, whereupon the auctioneer ceremonially strikes down a gavel to signal that the item has been sold.

Instead, eBay auctions end at a pre-scheduled fixed point in time, set to an exact second. Whoever has placed the highest bid before that time wins the auction, but what they pay is not their exact bid but one increment over the next highest bidder’s maximum bid. eBay auctions also often allow bids to be lodged up to five, seven or even ten days before they end – the timespan is set by the seller.

The implications of this for bidding strategy on eBay auctions are as follows:

Firstly, the later you bid in the auction, the more likely you are to prevail. If you bid early in an auction, you will signal buyer interest and market value to other prospective buyers, who are more likely as a result to bid higher in order to secure their purchase of an item for which demand has been proven by early bidder interest.

Even if you don’t see others respond to your early bid for most of the duration of an auction, there is a good chance that there are other interested parties waiting in the wings and saving their bids for the final hour, minutes or even seconds of the auction – so beware!

The main downside to planning to bid late in an eBay auction may be that you forget to bid at all, or find that you are busy or unable to be online in the critical final minutes. This can however be circumvented by the use of an automated bid-placement tool scheduled to place your bid in the last five to ten seconds of the auction. Such tools are called snipers, and bids placed with them are known as snipes. There are many different ones available, and most are hosted on third-party websites. They typically charge a small service fee, but if your time is precious and you want to ensure that your bid is placed in the most timely fashion, this is likely to be money well spent!

Another potential downside nowadays to bidding late in an eBay auction is that if the seller has also allowed Best Offer or Buy It Now, and no-one places a bid early, someone eager to secure the item may use one of the other methods to purchase it – for example, a Best Offer that is comfortably above the auction starting price may persuade the seller to sell immediately if no-one has bid yet. In these circumstances, placing an early low bid, at or close to the starting bid, may be advisable to block the use of the other methods. Then you can return with a higher snipe at the end of the auction.

Regardless of the time at which you place your bid, you should also consider your maximum bidding level. The main driver for this should be what the item as described and pictured is worth to you.

Take into consideration all declared or visible faults and any shortcomings in the transparency of the seller’s description. For instance, if a seller has given a very short description or one that does not adequately describe all aspects of condition, you should be aware that there may be undisclosed faults. If in doubt, you can ask sellers a question requesting more detail, but this is only generally useful if an auction still has at least a couple of days to run, since otherwise it may be too late to get a response in time before you bid.

If you are buying furniture or any other large or very heavy item, you will probably also want to know the dimensions and / or approximate weight of the item before you bid. Some amateur listings omit such critical details, but you can ask questions to resolve the uncertainty.

When it comes to setting your maximum bidding level, you may also want to take into consideration what the rest of the market is likely to be prepared to pay for the same item. Is it something rare, classic, or likely to be highly prized by collectors for some other reason such as provenance or autographs? If so, you may have to bid higher than you’d ideally wish to stand a reasonable chance of success. Don’t forget that professional traders in antiques and collectibles are a part of your competition too, and if there’s a profit to be made for them at a certain price, they are likely to be willing to pay this price for subsequent resale at a higher price.

Because most serious bidding on eBay is done in the final ten seconds, you should not infer market value or the lack thereof from the current bidding level when you are looking at the auction. Always consider what the item is likely to be worth on its own merits, and how much others whose hands have not yet been declared might be willing to pay for it. Then consider how much you would be prepared to pay above that to ensure you get it, and bid at this level. In short, don’t base your bidding level on the current price shown – base it on your analysis of the highest bid an unseen competing collector might be willing to make, tempered by what the item would be worth to you!

Even so, you cannot expect to win all auctions you bid on. Sometimes the competition may bid what seems outrageously high and trump your bid even if you bid hundreds of pounds. Accept it, learn a lesson for next time such an item shows up, and move on. It’s also worth bearing in mind that some collectors are very wealthy and determined individuals, and when faced with such extreme competition, it’s better to save your money for something similar at a later date and hope the competition will be less intense that time, or even to lower your general ambitions to match your budget.

Continue to Part 5: Payment Methods and Shipping Options

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How to set eBay options for How and Where you want to Buy

gwsadmin — Mon, 13 Jan 2020 05:08:57 +0000

How to buy antiques and collectibles on eBay Part 3:

How to set options for how and where you want to buy on eBay

In addition to the category-related options, others listed in the sidebar for almost any subcategory or infracategory include condition, price, buying format, item location, delivery options and ‘show only’. These can all be used in different ways, so we’ll go through them one at a time.

Condition

In some categories, such as Antiques, the only option for condition is ‘not specified’, but in others, such as the various subcategories of Books, Comics & Magazines, a range of options from New to Acceptable is presented. You can select either only one condition or multiple conditions from this menu to limit your search. A tip for book collectors is to exclude ‘new’ by selecting all the other condition options in turn, since there is a vast number of new books and even digital media-based electronic books listed on eBay that could just as well be bought from conventional bookselling websites, and if you’ve come to eBay, the chances are you’re looking for something that’s out of print, so you’ll want to exclude all these irrelevant results! To select multiple condition categories, click ‘See All’ alongside ‘Condition’, then tick all you want to include, followed by ‘Apply’.

Price

By default, you’re usually offered a choice of three price brackets representing the low, medium and high-priced groupings for the particular subcategory or infra-category you’re looking at, but you can also manually enter a range of acceptable prices in the boxes beneath and then click the arrow to the right of the second box to activate the filter.

Buying Format

The options shown here are mutual alternatives, so you can only select one at a time; and the default is ‘All listings’. On eBay, there are two main ways to buy: at auction, or at fixed price. Fixed price listings on eBay are called ‘Buy It Now’. It’s possible for sellers to start auction listings that also include a Buy It Now option that disappears if a bid is placed.

Additionally, on some listings the seller allows the prospective buyer to submit an offer to the seller. All such listings are called ‘Best Offer’. Until fairly recently, this could only be activated on Buy It Now listings, but it’s now also allowed on live auction listings, complicating the appropriate buyer response to such listings. So as you can see, sellers have considerable flexibility these days with offering products in multiple buying formats, but you can still usefully limit your search to all listings that at least include the format you prefer!

The chief advantage of auction listings to buyers is the chance of a bargain or at least of a fair market price decided by the current market. However, this will only work if the seller’s start price is reasonable, and because sellers don’t always realise full market prices from auction listings with low starting bids, there are many who either avoid the auction format altogether or only list items for auction with high starting bids or hidden reserves.

It can sometimes be useful to show only auction-listed items for another reason, which is that they are more likely to be obscure, old items whose market value is difficult to assess for the seller. Items offered at fixed price are more likely to be common enough ones for their market value to be at least approximately known by the seller.

The serious collector is unlikely to want to limit their collecting to items that happen to be listed at auction, however. Many rarities and simply high-quality items are also listed at fixed price, and sometimes a relatively high fixed price is something to be thankful for as it deters secondary traders looking to make a quick profit and allows the item still to be available for sale when the serious buyer (you) comes looking!

‘Best Offer’ can also be your friend. If a fixed price listing is on the high side and the seller allows offers, it may be a sign that the seller is aware that the item might not sell at that price and is eager to sell at a fair price, so don’t be afraid to approach with an offer. As a general rule, most sellers reject offers that are below 75% of their asking price, but if you see an item you want that you recognise as being wildly overvalued, you can often approach with a considerably lower offer and leave a courteous note explaining why you believe it to be worth what you are offering. Sellers will vary in their reactions to such approaches; most commonly, they will reject such offers provisionally, but they may be more flexible months or years later if the item still has not sold for what they were expecting to get for it. In some cases, they may propose a ‘counter-offer’ above your offer but below their full asking price. In this case, the choice is yours whether or not to accept the compromise offer. You can even make a further counter-offer between your original offer and the seller’s counter-offer, and this way edge towards a mutually agreeable price. But be careful not to be pushed into a price you know is well above the market price and which represents only the seller’s inflated idea of what they would ideally wish the item to be worth! In some cases, sellers are so unreasonable in their expectations on price that it’s best to walk away from the overpriced carrots they are dangling before your eyes, and wait for a similar item to be offered by someone else, even if it may be at a much later date.

Item Location

The options here when you are on eBay UK are Default, UK Only, European Union and Worldwide. If you are open to buying items from abroad (which is perhaps less likely if you are collecting heavy antique furniture whose delivery costs would be prohibitive unless you a professional antiques dealer who regularly drives to the continent on buying and selling trips), then European Union and Worldwide are worth experimenting with in order to expand the range of items displayed. Collectors of books and small collectibles – or in fact anything that can be shipped affordably - are likely to benefit from broadening their horizons beyond the UK; and selecting ‘Worldwide’ from ‘location’ is a valuable aid in this process.

Please note however that even where one of these is selected, you will not be able to view or purchase items posted by sellers abroad in any of the following circumstances:

1. Where they are placed in a category in their country’s national eBay site that has not been mapped by eBay to the category you are browsing in on yours;

2. Where they are specified as shipping only within their country;

3. Where they have blocked buyers registered in your country.

To get around the first exclusion, you need to conduct searches within the national eBay websites of the country of interest to you. This may seem daunting at first, particularly if you are not familiar with the language, but persistence can pay dividends in terms of results.

To get around the second exclusion, you generally need not only to conduct your search within the national eBay site of the country of interest, but also to have set your default shipping address to one in that country. This means that you must have set up such an address before you browse – otherwise the items will not show up in the results. Foreign address services for the United States are plentiful; and there is also at least one reliable one for Germany, but this may be more trouble in some countries than others, and if you have friends abroad who would be willing to help you out, shipping to them may be the easiest option.

You can save multiple addresses in different countries with your eBay account, and change your default address between countries whenever you like. Once you’ve changed it to a foreign country for the purpose of browsing listings in that country, sign out of eBay and back in again on the national website of the country concerned to reset the filters that previously excluded you from seeing the listings in that country whose sellers disallow international shipping.

The third type of exclusion is the most severe, and cannot be avoided since you can only be registered in one country, so if you’re registered in the UK and the seller blocks all buyers registered there, you won’t be able to buy or possibly even see their items even if you search their own national eBay site while your address in that country is set as your default shipping address! Fortunately, this type of exclusion seems to be relatively rare compared with that of restricting shipping to within the country of origin, and because there’s no way to avoid it, you won’t miss what you can’t access.

Delivery Options:

This section appears in certain categories, with options of ‘free postage’ and ‘free click & collect’. Because there’s no such thing as truly free postage from a seller’s perspective, listings shown with either of these options are likely to have higher list prices that factor in the actual cost of delivery. They also tend to be used much more for new and common items where there is plenty of competition between sellers on price, so there is not much point for serious collectors in restricting searches according to either of these options!

Show Only:

This section is a ragbag of additional search filters, most of which are of little to no use to collectors and may simply restrict the range of items shown. Two that can be very useful, however, are ‘Completed items’ and ‘Sold Items’. Under ‘completed items’ you can see all recently ended listings, including those that did not sell. In some cases, you may find something that did not sell but that you’d like to buy, and in that case you might want to contact the seller and request a relisting. ‘Sold items’ is a particularly useful search because although it can be mildly upsetting to find your dream purchase that has just sold to someone else, seeing what has sold and what prices each item attained can give you extremely valuable insights into the current market for such items, informing your bidding or buying price strategy when you do find an item you want that is still available.

Continue to Part 4: How to Bid Successfully on eBay Auction Items

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How to Search for What you Want on eBay

gwsadmin — Mon, 13 Jan 2020 04:12:04 +0000

How to buy antiques and collectibles on eBay Part Two:

How to Search for What You Want

At the top of the screen, there’s a search box followed by a drop-down list of categories. Before you even use the search box, try experimenting with the category list for a glimpse of the breadth of what’s out there.

The most relevant categories will vary depending on what it is you are collecting, but those that may be of particular relevance to collectors include antiques; art; books, comics and magazines; collectables; crafts; dolls and bears; jewellery and watches; pottery, porcelain and glass; sports memorabilia; stamps; and the category listed at the very end called ‘everything else’.

The Antiques category is itself subdivided into the following subcategories, which should appear in a sidebar on the left if you enter a blank search in the Antiques category (by clicking the search button after selecting ‘Antiques’ from the drop-down menu but without typing anything into the search box):

Antique Carpets & Rugs
Antique Clocks
Antique Decorative Arts
Antique Fabrics & Textiles
Antique Furniture
Antique Manuscripts
Antique Maps, Atlases & Globes
Antique Metalware
Antique Musical Instruments
Antique Silver
Antique Woodenware
Antiquities
Architectural Antiques
Asian Antiques
Ethnographic Antiques
Incunabula
Marine & Maritime Antiques
Other Antiques
Period & Style Antiques
Reproduction Antiques
Science & Medicine Antiques

Most of these subcategories themselves have infra-categories, a display of which appears beneath them on the sidebar if you click the main subcategory. Some of these may also be pictorially shown in the main window.

Additionally, you are likely to see beneath the list of infra-categories a display of attributes you can select by ticking boxes, to narrow your search in a different way. So eBay is giving you many different options for finding listings of relevance to your collecting interests, even without searching for text.

Let’s take as an example the subcategory Antique Clocks of the category Antiques. Beneath Antique Clocks, the following infra-categories are listed:

Antique Bracket Clocks
Antique Cuckoo Clocks
Antique Longcase & Grandfather Clocks
Antique Mantel & Carriage Clocks
Antique Wall Clocks
Antique Clock Parts
Other Antique Clocks.

Beneath these, you can also select from eight ‘clock types’ that in many but not all cases coincide with the infra-categories: ‘desk clock’ and ‘fusee clock’ are different options! Then there is a choice of four ages, followed by a choice of eight materials, then eight features, and finally eight ‘style / origin / theme’ choices! Clicking any one of these options will narrow down the range of results considerably. You can click another in another area to further narrow it. Once the list of results displayed in the main window is manageable for you given how much time you have (this may be anything from a few dozen to a couple of thousand listings), you may want to start manually scrolling through them and stopping at those you want to investigate further.

For any individual result you do want to know more about, just click it, and you will see the full listing, likely to include a small picture gallery and a description. Click ‘Watch this item’ if you want to shortlist it as something of interest to you; then make use of the ‘Back’ function on your web browser to return to the main list of results, and continue through it.

A great advantage of using the category menu structure as a way into looking for items to buy is that you will see many items listed that a text-based search would have missed.

However, in some categories, such as books, comics and magazines, the number of listings is likely to be overwhelming unless you use the search text box. This can be done globally (outside any category), within a category, within a subcategory, or even within an infra-category. The relevance of results will vary accordingly, but sometimes it does pay to use a global or whole category-based text search because not all relevant items will show up in the place within the category structure where you expect them!

You can refine text box searches in various ways too. The easiest way to go about this to begin with is to click ‘Advanced’ to the right of the ‘Search’ button at the top of the page. Then enter two or more different keywords that may be relevant to your search in the ‘Enter keywords or item number’ box, and be sure to select ‘any words, any order’ from the drop-down menu to the right so that you will be returned all results for any of the keywords you’ve selected, and not only results matching all of them at once, which is the effect of the default ‘all words, any order’ condition!

Beneath this, you will see another box labelled ‘Exclude words from your search’. Quite often, irrelevant listings occur in connection with normally relevant keywords as a result of other associations or connections those keywords may have. Over time you will learn to identify keywords that are the hallmark of the irrelevant listings; and these can be entered in ‘Exclude words from your search’ so that you don’t see these listings in your search results.

Under ‘Search including’, you should also tick ‘title and description’ if you want to catch more results for the keywords you are looking for, since generic keywords of relevance are not always included by sellers in their main titles, but they may be found in the extended descriptions.

eBay also helpfully allows you to save searches for later reuse, so you don’t have to go through all this process every time! When you find a combination of inclusions and exclusions that gives you good, relevant results, provided that you have not already reached the system limit for saved searches already (about 100), you should see a heart followed by ‘Save this search’ towards the top of the results page. Saving a search will also send you daily email notifications for new results unless you opt out, but emails sent to you generally only show 12 new results for each search, so if the search is too broad, you will only see a tiny fraction of the new matches by email. You can cancel a saved search at any time just by clicking once on where it now says ‘Saved’ in the place where it used to say ‘Save this search’. You can also access your saved searches from the drop-down menu headed ‘My eBay’ at the top right of the screen at any time when you are logged in to your eBay account, and this way quickly revisit the ones you want to for all new listings.

A final useful function to be aware of in the results page for any search is the ability to sort the results in an order you specify. This is accessed from a tab towards the top of the page, over to the far right just above the number of results. The default, ‘Best Match’, uses eBay’s own algorithmically based assessment of which results are most important, but this is unlikely to be at all reliable as a guide to what you actually want. The most useful option is probably ‘newly listed’ if you check a certain search on a frequent basis, since this way you can see all new listings since you last checked. ‘Ending soonest’ is generally less useful unless it is a one-off search you are unlikely to save or repeat or if you are only interested in auctions about to finish, since different auctions are listed with different timespans, making it very difficult to keep track of what is new since your last visit with this search method. ‘Distance: nearest first’ may be useful when searching for antiques that require collection or courier delivery; while ‘Price: lowest first’ is one for bargain hunters, and ‘Price: highest first’ a good place to start if you are looking only for the highest-quality, rarest or most valuable items, whether or not you can afford them!

You will also notice that to the far left of this row, you can toggle the filtering of results between ‘All listings’, ‘Auction’ and ‘Buy it now’ at any time, no matter what you may previously have selected under ‘Advanced’ or elsewhere.

Continue to Part 3: How to Set eBay options for How and Where you want to Buy

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How to buy antiques and collectibles on eBay: Introduction

gwsadmin — Mon, 13 Jan 2020 03:37:31 +0000

Part One: Introduction

The long-established online marketplace website called eBay continues to attract one of the highest volumes of second-hand product listings of all websites operating in the UK.

Are you an eBay past master who is nonetheless curious enough to want to compare tips with another experienced user of the platform?

Or perhaps you have only limited experience using it and want to know how to improve your bidding strategy or to find the things you want before others get to them?

Even if you have never used eBay before, this article should give you plenty of ideas for how to go about buying antiques and collectibles on the site once you’ve signed up for an account. All instructions in this article will assume that you have created an eBay account and that you’re signed into it, because you might not find they work if you’re not!

It’s worth noting at this stage that the presentation of eBay will vary depending on which national site you’ve signed into. Having an eBay account generally allows you to sign in to any national version of eBay using the same account, including eBay.co.uk for the UK, eBay.com for the USA, eBay.fr for France and eBay.de for Germany. Please note however that eBay has recently begun to redirect people attempting to access eBay.com from UK-based IP addresses to eBay.co.uk, with the effect that it’s now much harder than it used to be to access US listings that ship only in the United States even if you have a US shipping address, although if you had previously saved searches using eBay.com, these may still be accessible.

Depending on what it is you are collecting and where it is most likely to be located, any and all of the different national eBay sites may be useful. Each national website has its own variant category structure; and some sellers only allow shipping within their country, in which case you will not be shown their items in search unless you are signed in to your account on their national website. There are various third-party services that allow you the use of a shipping address in other countries followed by the forwarding of goods internationally, and if you’re a serious collector or antiques buyer, these can be really useful!

But for the purposes of following most of the instructions in this article, please sign into eBay.co.uk. We also strongly recommend you sign in from a desktop or laptop-style device, since eBay can be much more limiting and difficult to navigate if you attempt to access it from a mobile device.

Continue to Part 2: How to Search for What You Want on eBay

The post How to buy antiques and collectibles on eBay: Introduction appeared first on Courier Services UK Collection & Delivery.