Important Update:
Royal Mail discontinued return postage of liquid samples from machinery fluids in 2024. Going forward, all customers requiring return postage to the lab should use our LubeWear swift service or organise their own courier option.
Why has Royal Mail stopped liquid postage of samples?
Post privatisation of Royal Mail in 2013, the company reassessed what packages it wanted to handle, and they reviewed oil samples at the time. An initial ban in late 2013/2014 by Royal Mail on what was considered “waste oil”, and a ruling by Royal Mail found they wished to classify used lubricating oil as waste. This was disputed by every UK lab at the time as samples should not be classified as waste until the oil was disposed of by the lab. Royal Mail made a temporary agreement to allow postage to all labs providing the volume was under 400ml during this time. You may have noticed some lab packaging had “less than 400ml” on the packaging during this time, too, which equates to approximately 4 to 6 sample bottles, depending on the volume filled and which lab bottles you use. That temporary reprieve came to an end at the end of 2023 and Royal Mail re-reviewed the guidance and decided that they wished to ban all “used engine oil” samples and classified this as waste oil.
Why are engine oil samples considered so bad by Royal Mail?
It all comes from studies of mechanics many decades ago, where they found an increase in testicular cancer in mechanics with the proverbial dirty oil rag in the pocket. This is because constant exposure to used diesel engine oil is carcinogenic because of the soot particles, but equally, so are many everyday chemicals and foodstuffs you come across. The risk for end users is minimal as we expect you would be wearing appropriate PPE, such as gloves, to take your oil samples, dispose of paper towels with oil on appropriately and correctly package your samples so there is no oil on the outside of packaging for postal workers.
What about non-engine oil samples?
Good question. We were originally told all products were classified under waste engine oil. We appealed the decision, as e.g., hydraulic oils do not carry the same risk, and equally, many products are food grade, meaning they are safe for low-level human consumption anyway. Royal Mail made a ruling that “ANY” of these liquid lubricating oils, including food-grade products, would be banned on all services and on return services, i.e. where the lab pays for return postage back to the lab like a business reply or Freepost any liquid is banned now even water.
What about other labs who are still using Royal Mail?
The guidance is pretty clear in that any business return postage options, including business reply, Freepost and other “response services,” all liquids are banned. On their special delivery options there are hearsay accounts that Royal Mail have allowed some labs a 25ml limit, which would not be enough sample to perform a thorough test on any suite. Hence any lab offering this is either offering an inferior test suite with <25ml sample volume or is not aware of the guidance from Royal Mail has changed. The liability of what is sent in the post is on the sender not the receiver, so if a customer does send something banned in the post to one of these labs it would be the sender that would face action from Royal Mail not the lab. For ourselves, we don’t want our customers to get into trouble and hence we have taken the guidance in its entirety to ensure our customers remain protected.
Can I still use Royal Mail if I want to?
For non-liquid samples then freepost and business reply can be used. Equally, you can if you wish take samples to your local post office as a member of the public and pay yourself for Royal Mail postage. Whether a package is taken is still at the discretion of the post office staff.
What is the alternative?
Royal Mail before this ban were getting very poor in terms of service even after all the strikes parcels were often misdelivered or late by 3 weeks plus and we would end up with other Freepost customers post such as dental impressions, glasses and collagen filling packaging because the packages are not barcode sorted like other couriers systems and the staff do go address blind sorting parcels. Equally even between labs the post office would confuse labs addresses even many hours drive away and we would end up with other labs samples, hospital samples and many other post and this often happened with our post going to other locations including residential addresses on occasion in the months leading up to the ban. Hence we had already begun moving our customer base over to our own courier collection service LubeWear swift during this time.
LubeWear swift is where you simply call up and the lab collect samples from you and take to the lab next day all tracked. Get in touch to find out the benefits of LubeWear swift.
I need your full lab address to ship a parcel on my own courier.
Please see our lab address details below.
