REQUEST BY POSTMASTERCADRE WEBSITE TO GIVE DUE CARE FOR COD ARTICLES

Dear Postmaster Cadre friends,

                 COD revenues are growing in our department day by day and Our entire good future is lying on e-Commerce. But in some offices delay is noticed by the shopping zone company and email request was given to our hon'ble communication minister to dispose the COD parcels with due care as per the norms of our department. The same has been submitted below for your kind information Postmaster cadre association is requesting necessary action in this regard please. 

Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad

Honourable Union Minister

Ministry of Communications & Information Technology

Government of India

NEW DELHI

Respected Sir,

Sub: India Post - TN & AP Circles -Business Parcel-COD - undue    delay in remittances

We request reference to our earlier letter dated 21st November 2015 addressed to your goodself.

We once again introduce ourselves as Shopping Zone India TV Pvt. Ltd., a home shopping TV channel company based in Chennai,catering to around 3 crore households in the four southern states. We are one of the first customers of India Post in South India, using the premium product of India Post viz., BP-COD. In Tamilnadu Circle our bookings are through Mylapore BPC, Chennai & RS Puram  BPC, Coimbatore & in A.P. Circle through Krishna Lanka BPC, Vijayawada. 

Currently, we dispatch about 1500 parcels everyday on BP-COD basis through India Post, to buyers in the four southern states. Theaverage daily COD value of parcels dispatched through India Post is about Rs. 30 lakhs per day or nearly Rs. 110 crores per year.   For the year 2014-15, we shipped a total of over 4 lakh articles  through IP BP-COD. Our total payment to India Post for its services in 2014-15 is about Rs. 7 Crores towards shipment charges and COD commission.

Further to our previous letter referred above, we regret to inform that we continue to face undue delay in receiving our COD proceeds for our bookings in Tamilnadu and A.P. Circles. This is seriously hurting our operations. We once again crave the urgent intervention of your goodself to resolve this issue. As on date, the total value of COD overdues for the parcels dispatched till 30^th November '15 is Rs. 1.79 Crores. The break-up booking office-wise is as under: -

For shipments made during -	Chennai Mylapore BPC	Coimbatore RS Puram BPC	Vijayawada Krishna Lanka BPC	Total (Rs. Lakhs)
Dec 13 to Dec '14	26.48	14.10	18.16	58.74
Jan' 15 to Nov '15	5.97	66.90	47.36	120.23
Overdues-till Nov'15	32.45	81.00	65.52	178.97

As may be noted from above, the COD amounts pending from December 2013 up to December 2014 alone is Rs. 0.59 Crores. The amounts due for shipments from Jan '15 to November '15, which also ought to have been cleared by date, is Rs. 1.20 Crores. The aggregate amount pending up to November '15 is hence Rs. 1.79 crores.Since maximum returns invariably occur within 1 month, this is equivalent to the amount pending remittance by India Post or in other words COD overdues.

As mentioned in our previous letter, we have been making repeated complaints to all the concerned authorities. However we regret to inform that the situation is not much different today, even after our previous communication to your goodself. Our grievances remain unresolved.

The overdues are still nearly Rs. 2 crores. Further there continues to be an addition of about Rs. 20 lakhs every month, to unresolved pending deliveries or COD overdues. Monthwise and destination circle-wise details are attached.

We once again submit the following for your kind consideration: -

           

1.    Our parcels are normally delivered by India Post within a week from date of shipment. This means that our COD proceeds should be remitted to us at least within 15 days of shipment (where the customer has taken delivery) or in the case of returns, we should get back the items within 15 days. But this has never been the case. We still have outstanding dating back to December 2013.

2.    We are told that these delays are mainly due to technical issues arising out of change in system from December 2013. However your goodself will appreciate that this should not result in affecting our entire business operation and should also not remain unsolved now for nearly 2 years.

3.    The overdues of nearly Rs. 2 crores is crippling our business.  The delay in receiving the COD proceeds has forced us to delay/stop payments to vendors and services. This has starting affecting our business including stoppage of goods from vendors.

The overdues are huge and we find the progress from the respective circles very slow. In order to continue the business and to overcome the cash crunch created due to non receipt of COD amounts, we request your goodself to personally intervene and issue appropriate instructions for remittance of the above COD overdues to us by the respective Circles on an urgent basis. The concerned CPMG/PMG of the booking circles/region may kindly be instructed to remit the pending COD proceeds to us and then subsequently reconcile internally the same with the destination post offices.

As earlier submitted, one year ago, we were despatching about 2000 articles in a day and our entire dispatch was through India Post. Currently, in spite of our total business increasing to nearly 5,000 articles per day, we have been forced to reduce dispatch through India Post to only about 1/3rd or about 1,500 articles. In other words we have been forced to make our own delivery arrangements for 2/3rd of our total business.

Your goodself may kindly note that we were one of the first in this sector to utilise the services of India Post for delivery of parcels to customers three years ago. Now, at a time when your Honorable Ministry has stepped up its initiative for India Post to partner with the E-commerce & Teleshopping industry for customer deliveries, we are saddened to look for other delivery alternatives.

We respectfully submit our above representation in the earnest hope that your goodself will look in to the matter and issue appropriate instructions for urgently resolving the pending COD remittance issue detailed above.

Thanking you

Yours faithfully

B.D. Ramesh Babu

Managing Director

Shopping Zone India TV Private Limited

Srinivasa Nagar, Kottivakkam (off OMR)

Chennai 600 096

Landline :  +91 44 4360 7300

H/P          :  +91 98400 25211

Email      :  rameshbabu@shoppingzoneindia.com