I hope Dale does'nt mind me posting the following message as off subject . But indirectly it could affect us all in the future!
Last Tuesday at my third attempt to post a pair of rims to the USA , my parcel was at last accepted by our local Post Office . Today only three days later it was returned to me from London's Heath Row Airport stating it was oversize. Not having a clue what this oversizing meant with a parcel within the weight limit I returned to the GPO to inquire why this should have happened. They said the situation was getting worse and to their knowledge many other customers had the same problem. Since the the new pricing change in August to include size the indivdual post offices check , accept and send the goods on their way. Only later to discover its the large sorting centres are returning these items they consider wrongly sent. In my particular case the parcel was well within its weight but some few centimetres too large. I intend to follow up this incident and attempt to reclaim the buyers shipping costs. The reason given Parcel Force did'nt fulfill the task they paid to do.
So folks the situation with our shipping costs soaring every few months along with the new changes which appears not to be working at all smoothly your USD's are going to be mighty stretched! Its worth noting the items such as complete bikes , wheels, rims will be the most affected especially in the normal type of cardboard box method.
Doug Smith
North Dorset
UK