Tweet
Brexit practically killed our EU sales, but incoming legislation is going to go ahead and make them effectively impossible. GPSR means we'll be stopping all sales to EU countries and Northern Ireland as we don't have the time or money to meet the demands of the new rules. Just wondered how other folk are dealing with it.
-
Last edited by tomtomg; 04-12-2024, 15:39. -
I’m going to carry on sending a couple…. See if they get thru….Regards
Neil. -
I wasn’t aware of it until I saw your post. We don’t send many outside UK and we’re going to carry on as normal too!Comment
-
We only found out about it due to competitors Instagram posts, it's just ridiculous. Brexit has already practically destroyed our European sales but we do have a fair number of customers in Northern Ireland who I imagine are going to be a bit pissed off next week when they suddenly find nobody is willing to ship to them.
A little reading of the info below seems to indicate it doesn't apply to anything that was established on the market before December 13th 2024.
The GPSR includes transitional arrangements for products that are already on the market. Article 51 of the GPSR ensures that products already on the market that are compliant with the 2005 UK GPSR as it applies or applied before 13 December 2024 shall continue to be made available. This includes existing stock of product lines that are already on the market. MSAs therefore cannot impede supply of these products if they continue to comply with the 2005 UK GPSR unless they are dangerous products.Comment
-
That wil be all of our products then!!
We only found out about it due to competitors Instagram posts, it's just ridiculous. Brexit has already practically destroyed our European sales but we do have a fair number of customers in Northern Ireland who I imagine are going to be a bit pissed off next week when they suddenly find nobody is willing to ship to them.
A little reading of the info below seems to indicate it doesn't apply to anything that was established on the market before December 13th 2024.
Comment
-
Same here. While we might make different variations in colour or design these seem to be covered as one product, so not "new" even if we bring out a new colour scheme next year.
The issue we will have is if we do add anything to the product range. It might be we need BP to make "Not Available In Your Region" as an option to apply to products.Comment
-
As we don't want to be dealing with annoyed European customers over the Christmas period we're going to halt orders to EU and NI from now until the New Year. The countries are fine, but Northern Ireland is (understandably) grouped with United Kingdom in the shipping options. As such we've had to exclude NI postcodes manually. I've copied them in below if they might be of use to anybody.
We'll probably just turn them all back on in the New Year and see what happens.BT1, BT2, BT3, BT4, BT5, BT6, BT7, BT8, BT9, BT10, BT11, BT12, BT13, BT14, BT15, BT16, BT17, BT27, BT28, BT29, BT36, BT37, BT38, BT39, BT40, BT41, BT42, BT43, BT44, BT53, BT54, BT56, BT57, BT58, BT60, BT61, BT62, BT63, BT64, BT65, BT66, BT67, BT5, BT18, BT19, BT20, BT21, BT22, BT23, BT24, BT25, BT26, BT30, BT31, BT32, BT33, BT34, BT35, BT74, BT92, BT93, BT94, BT45, BT46, BT47, BT48, BT49, BT51, BT55, BT68, BT69, BT70, BT71, BT75, BT77, BT78, BT79, BT80, BT81, BT82Comment
-
I was thinking this too. It has been 2 months and I am not aware of BP making any changes to help with this and yes, some help would be nice.
My work around has been to make a new shipping code that excludes all NI postcodes and any products not GPSR compliant I will exclude from NI postage. The issue is that if a customer adds a non-compliant product to their basket, BP's cart doesn't make it clear to the customer why NI is missing from their postal options. I had a chap call me yesterday about an order he was trying to place. One item was non-compliant so NI was not an option for him for shipping. There was no mention to him of what product was the issue. I could have lost the entire order if he hasn't called me to ask. Carts like Amazon clearly say sorry, this product can't be delivered to your location. This kind of feature would be really good. I have added this to BPs 'suggested feature' section, if anyone wants to give it a vote.
The other GPSR issue was where to add the GPSR info (Safety info, Manufacturer / EU Rep etc). Making use of what BP has available already, I added it to the product page of any compliant product but also wanted it actually in the customer's parcel e.g. on the dispatch note but BP can't seem to cope very well with that request either, unfortunately. Options are to have it listed on every dispatch note regardless (obviously pretty silly, especially if there is a mix) or to add the info as an attribute to certain products but now it will appear on dispatch notes and emails (not just dispatch notes) and will be there for everyone, whether the info is relevant to them or not. i.e. UK customers.
Comment
-
We're in exactly the same boat: We have various ranges of products, some of which are very basic and pose no risk and so we're in the process of setting up the Responsible Person to ship to the EU, while others are would require extensive paperwork so we're not going to bother. As you say there's no way to exclude certain items from being shipped to certain countries.
I appreciate it's not just a case of BP simply adding a button, there's a lot of coding work that has to be done to implement this, but as yet I've seen absolutely no mention of GPSR by them. At the same time I'm seeing every other eCommerce provider (eventually) implementing these kinds of options, or at the very least stating what they're planning on doing.
My opinion of the Suggested Features tool is that it's simply a way of BP pretending to take on board suggestions and shut us up while not actually implementing any of them. I'd love to be proven wrong on this.Comment
-
Hope not but give my suggestions an upvote just in case.Comment
-
BP is a relatively small software company compared to others. This is what makes their software & support so good compared to the competition. In terms of updates they have to decide what's best for their software based on customer feedback and what the competition offers. Whilst I agree feedback from them could be better they are not going to implement changes based on a few votes if they feel it doesn't benefit users.
As for not implementing any of the suggestions I believe features such as Bulk Product Delete, Apple Pay and Google Pay are currently in progress. Also changes to the Returns System are planned, all of which were requested by users using the Feature Suggestions tool.
V2 of the software was also a massive update which took a lot of time and was virtually a full re-write of the system.
BP never rush updates and release them until they are 100% bulletproof. Unlike other providers I have had experience of over the years.
Just my opinion.
Regards,
DaveComment
-
I have no criticism of Blueparks core site or support, it's always been quick and helpful whenever needed. I'm aware that they're a small company and work in-house rather than allowing dodgy third party modules and am happy to accept that changes take time to develop and most requests simply wont happen. We've invested a lot of time developing our own tools and workarounds for this (some of which we're very grateful for your help with!) which is fine.
GPSR is quite a major thing for eCommerce sellers and developers and not something I feel workarounds such as in this thread should be needed, it should be a core feature. Maybe they're beavering away behind the scenes to get this going, perhaps it's on the cards for the next major update. Maybe they're not doing anything. I would have liked at least some recognition from BP that they're even aware. A notification in the back office. A blog post. Anything.Comment
-
I do feel like in this case the onus appears to be on us to make this work ourselves when BP need to be on the case for this. It is not a feature suggestion we just fancy because we think it would be nice. It is quite important for the running of our stores in light of new laws / regs.
I have personally spent way to many hours on it now and my best solution (attributes) it is awfully messy. Some of my dispatch notes that would have previously been half a page long are now over a page long with the same GPRS info repeated over and over again. I showed BP but am told that there is no better work around than what I have cobbled together.
We need something that can be added at a brand level, I think.... but that can't be done by us :-(Comment
Comment