Royal Mail Safeplace

[Shipster]

As of the end of September, Royal Mail changed their terms so they they are allowed to leave a parcel in a safe place at their discretion. In practice their postmen were already doing this frequently so the main effect of this change was to shift liability in the event of theft from Royal Mail to the shipper. We've just had our first customer complaint which we can't get compensation for.

In the long run I am sure this will result in many more parcels going missing entirely as Royal Mail personnel know there will be no comeback. This will result in more complaints and more cost for us, as well as an incentive to use other carriers instead.

But this makes it all the more important for customers to be able to specify a safeplace location and this is something we have to copy manually from a custom field into the Royal Mail safeplace field. I would very much like this to be possible automatically.

I am probably going to trial reverse safeplace messages like "There is no safeplace. Do not leave unattended!" if the customer does not specify one.