BeanBay Green Bean sales.

[GrahamK]

The only saving grace in our area is the parcel delivery contractor, he's a switched on type who goes over and above.

I have never had any problems with any of Andy's deliveries using AustPost to date, efficient and usually arrives before the original estimated date. Never had any problems with the tracking system either. Maybe the issues depend on location, or I've just been lucky

GrahamK

[Andy]

Yeah, they do but are pretty much 2 totally different companies with different methods of billing and accounting including redelivery fees.

I'm hoping that Star Track becomes less sneaky but considering that AusPost have just put a hidden fuel surcharge on (don't even declare the percentage, just a line buried in a multi-page invoice) it might go the other way instead.

[flynnaus]

We used them for years and had to stop as their $20 fee for re-delivery was killing us (as we don't have a margin to cover it). They also changed area boundaries on deliveries and regularly overcharged charged at the end of the month for something we had already shipped.
Nasty accounting, sneaky pricing. Happy to never use them again unless their new owners can fix it up.

oh? I thought Auspost owned Startrack?

[Andy]

I don't think Startrack is quite that bad (yet?)

We used them for years and had to stop as their $20 fee for re-delivery was killing us (as we don't have a margin to cover it). They also changed area boundaries on deliveries and regularly overcharged charged at the end of the month for something we had already shipped.
Nasty accounting, sneaky pricing. Happy to never use them again unless their new owners can fix it up.

Generally I'm not in a hurry for my order.

It's far less stressful if you order early, well done!

[Andy]

I suspect Australia Post is on the road to extinction.
Its an expensive, slow, inefficient service, don't get me started on their tracking system, what a joke.

Not 'that' expensive. To ship 30kg to you via eParcel was $57.25, via Sendle its $75 and some other courier options would be double.

AusPost deliver everywhere, most other options are selective on where they go and charge way more for non-metro deliveries.

The only saving grace in our area is the parcel delivery contractor, he's a switched on type who goes over and above.

Yeah, we have great people at this end, makes all the difference when something goes a little pear-shaped.

As far as mail delivery, our local post person is a moron, you can be standing by the letterbox and the SOB wont even make eye contact let alone speak, routinely delivers mail to wrong address, hopeless.

Yes, that happens too. We are lucky that all the people we deal with directly are great but we hear some horror stories at the destination sometimes.

Service must have dropped off ever since starting up

The gotcha I see with the Sendle model is zero ownership. They use other companies to do the work, those others will rarely treat the 3rd party items as well as their own and if push comes to shove on a busy day the sendle items will get bounced to another day.

We use a couple of similar services for one-off small international freight items (in and out of Australia) and prices are always good but grief is much higher than a relationship with the actual responsible people. For our container and pallet freight we only use our freight forwarder who we know will smooth-out the bumps but that comes at a higher price.

We need freight, but it's always a balance of value, service and reliability that's often hard to nail all three.

[flynnaus]

I suspect Australia Post is on the road to extinction. Its an expensive, slow, inefficient service, don't get me started on their tracking system, what a joke. The only saving grace in our area is the parcel delivery contractor, he's a switched on type who goes over and above.

I don't think Startrack is quite that bad (yet?) and I certainly hope it is around for some time. I agree its tracking isn't as good as it was but you can generally rely on it. My local Aupost contractor is reliable and can usually count on delivery between 4 and 5 pm. As for speed, gone are the next day deliveries that CS was reknown for (no fault of Andy's) and I guess we now have to pay more for express delivery. If you order on a Thursday or Friday, expect your standard delivery package is going to spend the weekend at some depot. Generally I'm not in a hurry for my order.

[tannyboy]

Roger that

Only been a recipient and no dramas after a few times and reading through over at the Pool, eeesh... really is a mixed bag. Service must have dropped off ever since starting up

[Yelta]

I suspect Australia Post is on the road to extinction.

Its an expensive, slow, inefficient service, don't get me started on their tracking system, what a joke.

The only saving grace in our area is the parcel delivery contractor, he's a switched on type who goes over and above.

As far as mail delivery, our local post person is a moron, you can be standing by the letterbox and the SOB wont even make eye contact let alone speak, routinely delivers mail to wrong address, hopeless.

[Andy]

Adding a freight method is complex and expensive to integrate into BeanBay. We've done it a few times over the years and is full of grief. It's a simple process for a home user to send a single parcel but if we had to cut and paste addresses into their system you would have to pay way more in freight and we could only send half the things we do so it needs to integrate cleanly.

* we might have too big a pile for random small van that might arrive (green beans are heavy!).
* metro pricing is good but their add-on remote zones are pretty extensive, 10,000 of them.
* Random pickup times - if orders are picked up in the morning then others will not ship till the follow day or week.
* Random delivery times - can you imagine the emails I'll get for a service that has rough tracking and no ETA?

WingePool users don't think very highly of them:
https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/2716718

...and product review have 25% horrible reviews
(ignore the 4 star as it's comprised of 75% 5 star - 25% nasty)
https://www.productreview.com.au/listings/sendle

The biggest gotcha adding a service like Sendle is that when they preform bad it costs us tons of time (that we should spend packing other orders) and we look bad (even though we packed and shipped on time)

We might look at it more closely but on the surface the Fastway flatrate of around $1/kg for up to 17.5kg is very hard to beat.
...and you are already getting eParcel freight to your address for about 1/3rd of the price of Sendle so I doubt you'll even use it!

[tannyboy]

Hey Andy,

Have you checked out the pricing of this mob?

https://try.sendle.com/pricing

I've received a few packages from here and seem pricing cost effective.

Something to throw into the mix for sub 25kg deliveries at least

[flynnaus]

We'll continue to battle the freight monsters to ensure you always get our best bulk pricing.

A new comparator for easiness: added to 'it's not rocket science ' or 'it's not brain surgery ', we can add 'it's not Beanbay freight calculation '

[Andy]

Australia Post price changes.
eParcel up - express down.

I wondered why none of our freight bills made sense this year, AustPost changed their pricing on the 1st Feb.

BeanBay now reflects their price increase and their new random monthly fuel surcharge.

Obviously prices have gone up, but in an odd twist, we have actually managed to get the prices on Express Post down by buying $10,000 worth of satchels over the counter and not paying the fuel surcharge and card surcharge on their invoice.

As always, BeanBay charges you under actual cost for all freight.

Freight companies love complicated pricing structures and it's a chore to keep on top of it. I understand why businesses just charge a price for freight and then pad it up to cover the "too hard to work out" fees or add it into the markup of the item.

For those interested, this is how eParcel works.

They give me a printed list of 38 zones, sorted in metro, then NSW, VIC, QLD, SA, WA, TAS, NT and Antarctica. Each zone has a base rate, a subsequent rate and a per kilo rate. These prices are inc GST but ex fuel surcharge and ex credit card surcharge. Confused? So were we. There is another table, not distributed with the pricing to work out what zone each post code is in too.

To get the pricing into something usable (comes as a printed sheet via carrier pigeon with 150 tiny cells on it) we need type the sheet into excel, remove the GST, add the fuel surcharge and sort alphabetical (because that makes sense). The pricing is then entered into BeanBay and it looks up your zone in the checkout, calculates the number of cartons based on weight and volume, applies the multiple carton rate on parcel 2,3, etc and adds the GST.

...this is why when someone asks "how much to send to me" I can't answer, no human could, only BeanBay could possibly manage the complex mess that is freight!

Express Post satchel prices have dropped by a little but most noticeable on the 5kg. Pricing will remain steady till we run out of stock at which point they will be replaced and checked.

eParcel cartons will move from month to month if AusPost change the fuel surcharge and once or twice a year when have a price review.

Fastway had a small increase a little while ago but tend to stay more constant.


We'll continue to battle the freight monsters to ensure you always get our best bulk pricing.

[topshot]

Received my BeanBay order today, ordered Sunday night.
Extra fast service as usual from Andy (a few companies can learn from Andy's service), I wasn't expecting delivery until tomorrow!

Part of my order (apart from 5kg bean beans), was 1kg "Surprise Me" ready to freight (would have been roasted last Wednesday I guess).
One of the 500gm bags was Espresso Wow, I haven't had this for a couple of years, but I was more than happy to receive it!

Just had an espresso ((18gm in/40gm out in 25sec) nailed it first pour, can be lucky at times), tasted just like I remember.
It's still the coffee blend I judge others by!

I know what I'll be drinking while the Panama Rati Hartmann Black Honey ages a little more that I roasted last Sunday!

If you have never tried Espresso Wow, do yourself a favour buy some and enjoy some great coffee, either as a straight espresso (as I like it) or with milk, it works so well both ways.

[Andy]

Yep, per the description in BeanBay.
Just waiting on customs clearance

[greenman]

Any Mt Ambra or Wahgi on the radar Andy?????