Russian Post has launched distance trading of flowers and seeds. "Mail Market", first impressions (with comments from "Mail" itself) Mail Market place an order

May 23rd, 2017

Russian Post has released two additional seasonal catalogs in addition to the main Pochtamarket catalog for ordering garden flowers, as well as for ordering plant seeds and herbs.

We often receive questions from you about why order something from a catalog when there are many shops and hypermarkets around. Let’s answer: about 30 thousand post offices in our country are located in rural areas.
In many remote settlements there are no shops or it is difficult to get to them, but there is a post office, so people buy the necessary goods from catalogs.

You can place an order using paper catalogs at post offices, by calling 8-800-775-2-555 or on the website market.pochta.ru. The delivery amount does not depend on the number of goods ordered and is 279 rubles to any region of Russia.

Flowers can be ordered until September 15th. Flower bulbs will be specially grown by farmers during the summer and sent to customers between September 1 and September 20 for planting in winter - as is known, this is the best period for planting bulbs of tulips, daffodils, buttercups, hyacinths, crocuses and other flowers presented in the catalogue. All planting material will be thoroughly checked before shipment. In addition, if you prepay your order in full before August 1st, you will receive a set of 3 terry tulip bulbs as a gift!

You can pay for your order online with a bank card (payment transfer is carried out by Post Bank), as well as in cash - when placing an order at the post office or upon receipt - cash on delivery. Each order has a unique number by which it can be tracked on the website.

Full text of the news: https://www.pochta.ru/news-list/item/1126495146

July 14th, 2016

How to prepare your child for September 1 without exhausting shopping, relaxing in the country or at the seaside? It's very simple - order everything for school in advance and continue to enjoy the summer. Russian Post has released the autumn catalog "Mail Market", where you can find everything you need to prepare your child for school: stationery, backpacks, sets for creative activities, sets for first-graders, primers, school reference books, as well as new exclusive postcards for the Day of Knowledge and Teacher's Day and much more. In addition, the catalog presents a wide range of seasonal goods for the home and garden, toys, household appliances, accessories, perfumes, home textiles, leisure goods and, for the first time, winter preparation products.

You can place an order at any of the Russian Post branches, on the website

Internet, March 28, 2017. Yandex.Market and Russian Post will help stores organize prompt delivery of goods to customers. Now the store can plan the shipment of goods in their personal account and transfer it to the client in one day using the “EMS optimal” service. Moscow stores that accept payment for goods on Yandex.Market can use the service.

To send an order to the buyer, just download the accompanying documents from your personal account, print them and take them along with the goods to the nearest center for issuing and receiving parcels (CVPP) of Russian Post. There the parcel will be accepted without queuing and filling out unnecessary paperwork. If the store delivers the parcel to the center before 20:00, the buyer will be able to receive the order at any Moscow delivery center on the next business day. The cost of the service starts from 160 rubles, and the maximum weight of the parcel that can be transferred is 20 kg.

For the buyer, delivery of goods to the Russian Post distribution center is free. Unlike post offices, the centers specialize only in parcels, so there is no general queue and the order can be received quite quickly. The buyer selects a suitable distribution center when placing an order on Yandex.Market. If necessary, he can check his work schedule and phone number on the Russian Post website.

Stores will be able to start working with Russian Post on March 30. At the first stage, parcels can be sent to 87 delivery centers in Moscow. In the future, all 523 distribution centers in 210 Russian cities will begin accepting orders.

“The online trading market continues to grow, and Russian Post, the largest domestic logistics operator, has recently launched several new products and services to optimize work with online platforms and their clients. Cooperation with Yandex.Market will enable online stores to use the services of Russian Post directly on the service. We hope that simple integration and attractive tariffs for our services will allow many stores to join the project and offer customers convenient and free delivery,” said Sergey Malyshev, Deputy General Director for parcel business and express delivery of Russian Post.

“Yandex.Market has become the first trading platform to launch a similar project with Russian Post. Together we will help stores organize delivery in the most popular way in Russia - to the point of delivery of orders. According to data conducted last fall by Yandex.Market and the company GfK Rus, over the year 66% of online buyers used delivery to the pick-up point, and 38% of study participants named it the most convenient,” says Dmitry Mamonov, head of the Yandex.Delivery service.

Yandex.Market is a service for selecting goods and places to buy them. More than 20 million people visit it every month. About 20 thousand Russian and foreign online stores offer their products to customers on the service and attract new customers. Yandex.Market is available on the market.site and in applications for Android, iOS and Windows 10 Mobile.

Russian Post is a federal postal operator and is included in the list of strategic enterprises of the Russian Federation. The organization unites 42 thousand branches throughout the country and one of the largest workforces - about 350 thousand postal workers. Every year, Russian Post receives more than 2.5 billion letters, about 296 million parcels and delivers 1 billion copies of printed publications per year to almost 20 million subscribers in Russia. The annual volume of transactions that go through Russian Post is 3.5 trillion rubles.

Contacts
Yandex.Market press service
Ekaterina Lebedeva
+7 906 065-34-09

Retail news

Test of online ordering and pickup from the post office

Russian Post has finally solved many years of problems with queues, long delivery times for correspondence, damage to parcels during delivery... Now that all this is a thing of the past, it is time to expand the business. Visitors to post offices have already become accustomed to the fact that they offer the most necessary goods: tear-off calendars, collections of jokes, DVDs with retro films, magnets with views of Russian cities, canned food, cheap cosmetics - you can’t count it all. The next step was the opening of an online store, the pick-up points of which were all more than 40 thousand Russian Post branches throughout the country.

Now I'm absolutely serious. Firstly, certain achievements in terms of speed of correspondence delivery and level of service in branches have been noted by many users, in particular, active buyers of Western and Chinese online stores. Secondly, it’s funny for us to see canned food and hand cream in the Moscow post office, but somewhere in the village all this can again be very appropriate.

And finally, organizing online trading based on a network of post offices is certainly a great idea. Many online stores use mail as a delivery channel, why not the mail itself. It is unlikely that this service will be in great demand in large cities with developed retail, but for small towns and villages it may be extremely relevant. But a good idea is not even half the battle. As they say, “the devil is in the details.” These are the details we will talk about today.

The site of the company

Not long ago, Russian Post launched a new version of its website, located at https://pochta.ru. We cannot help but notice that this domain has a fairly rich history and is well known to many users - it has been used for many years by one of the services offering free email. The sale of the domain to Russian Post in the summer of 2015 became one of the most striking events in this market.

But let’s not get distracted, let’s return to the store’s website, which is located on the subdomain https://market.pochta.ru. The design of the site can be called simple, even template. But this has its advantages - the resource is clearly designed for buyers who do not have much experience in online shopping: all the key elements are quite large and clearly visible, while the number of auxiliary modules is kept to a minimum - no news, SEO texts and the like.

Traditionally, we will take a detailed look at the design of the main page, which contains:

• In the “header” of the page there is a logo, a contact center phone number, a shopping cart module, as well as buttons that open forms for searching for a product and tracking the status of an order.
• Below is the catalog menu, where each section is presented as a separate button.
• Next is a large dynamic banner, below it is a “grid” of mini-cards of a number of products.
• Next you can find the “View all products” button - the store’s assortment is so small that they all fit on just 16 pages. But we will return to this issue a little later.
• The footer of the site contains copyrights and links to the main information pages.

As mentioned above, the range of goods is extremely small - at the time of our visit it consisted of only 255 items. At the same time, in the store you can find cell phones, soft toys, bed linen, books, food, tools... The emphasis is clearly on the affordability of purchases - mainly, inexpensive Russian goods are presented, or even cheaper solutions from Chinese manufacturers. As a result, the assortment resembles something between a “shop on the couch” and a station kiosk. The only exception was the section with cell phones - Russian Post agreed with three fairly well-known vendors, whose products are presented in the catalog.

The design of the catalog sections is done in the same minimalistic manner - the “header” remains unchanged, underneath it there is a “tile” of illustrated links to products with name and price. There are no filters or options for switching sorting - given today’s assortment volumes, they are clearly not needed, and PochtaMarket apparently has no plans to expand it.

The product card is moderately informative and contains the necessary minimum information - several images, technical data, sizes, color, and so on. When looking at the cards, you sometimes get the feeling that they were made personally by the Grand Master of the Jedi Order, Yoda: “A classic model keypad mobile phone,” one of the descriptions begins.

Among the “advanced” functions, there are only buttons for publishing a link to a product on social networks. At the bottom of the card there is a section “Buy with this product,” however, with such a limited assortment, its usefulness tends to negative values ​​- for example, in the screenshot below, along with a cell phone, we were asked to buy a set of dolls, a sweet gift, a stuffed monkey and a letter from Santa Claus.

Telephone consultation

Choosing a topic to contact the consultants of the hero of our today's testing turned out to be difficult due to the same meager assortment. The section with cell phones is the most extensive, so we decided to talk to consultants about choosing a phone, and at the same time clarify delivery times. As a guide for choosing, we have prepared the following “legend” - the phone is sent as a gift to an elderly person who will use it for talking and sending SMS.

By the way, the store provides a really great opportunity to send a gift to another city - to do this, you just need to pay for the purchase on the website and enter the address of the person to whom the gift is intended. As a result, a person will receive a prepaid item at the nearest post office - in some cases this can be extremely convenient. We will mention this a little further below.

For now, let's talk about our call to the store's call center. We spent literally a couple of seconds dialing the operator - only one long beep sounded. Unfortunately, this is where the positive memories of the consultation end. As soon as we said that we were choosing a cell phone, the consultant suddenly asked us if we had confused the store - since such products were not represented in their store. Having barely managed to cope with surprise, we insisted that we saw the phone on the PochtaMarket website - an error was excluded.

In response, the consultant asked us to name the model number that interests us. We tried to lead the conversation in at least somewhat the right direction and again talked about the fact that we had not yet decided on a specific model. It didn’t help; in response, the operator suggested “saying at least something.” We opened the first product card we came across and dictated its article number, after which the store manager finally acknowledged the presence of phones in the catalogue. We once again timidly asked for help with our choice, but the consultant did not even try to do this, suggesting that we read the descriptions and decide on the choice ourselves.

The only question that the store employee was able to more or less answer was the delivery time. But even here there are absolutely no specifics - from a week to two, but you need to take into account the pre-holiday days... In general, everything is as usual with our mail - as it comes, so it will come. Even when we decided to clarify whether it was possible to pay for the goods online and send it to another person, the operator could not answer succinctly and unambiguously, but instead began to tell us that we would need to enter a series of data...

To be honest, I don’t really want to comment on the conversation that took place - we wouldn’t dare call it a consultation. If we start listing everything that allowed us to give the work of the call center from the PochtaMarket store almost the minimum possible rating, this paragraph will turn out to be unnecessarily long. Let's just say that in the entire history of our project, for the first time we encountered a consultant who did not know about the existence of a relatively large section in his own catalog and was not able to answer the simplest questions.

Place an order online

Fortunately, we decided on the purchase in advance, and therefore, as soon as the surprise from the conversation with the consultant subsided, we were able to move on to online ordering. It starts in the standard way - by clicking the “Buy” button in the product card.

We are presented with an extremely detailed form of contact information, where, in addition to the usual fields with full name and address, there is also a question about gender and date of birth - I wonder why Russian Post needs this data and how it helps deliver the parcel. But I was pleased with the search by index - if you know the index of the desired post office, you won’t have to fill out some of the data, you will only need to enter the recipient’s address. We chose cash on delivery as a payment method - there is a suspicion that it will be most in demand among store customers. More details about this in the next chapter of our testing.

After placing the order, we immediately received a confirmation email by email, all we have to do is wait for an SMS about the arrival of the purchase at the selected post office.

Shipping and payment

First, let's talk about payment. The buyer has three options to choose from: a plastic card online, through the Yandex.Money system, or cash on delivery upon receipt at the post office. Moreover, for the first two there is no commission, but for the last one, for some reason, 2 percent of the purchase price is charged. We periodically encounter commissions when paying by bank transfer, but here the situation is the opposite - paying in cash makes the purchase more expensive. Moreover, it turns out that Russian Post takes an additional percentage for paying for goods in its own branch - there is probably some formal explanation for this, but it looks very strange and incomprehensible.

And, finally, delivery is what Russian Post specializes in and what should become a competitive advantage of the new store. First, the good news: the cost of delivery of any product to any post office is fixed - 299 rubles. That is, a resident of the most remote corner of the country can actually make a purchase with delivery for quite reasonable money - this is really great. True, this is possible provided there is access to the Internet, and only if the client can select something from 255 products.

This is where the positive aspects end. As we already mentioned in the story about the telephone consultation, delivery time can vary extremely widely: from a week to two or more. On the corresponding page of the site we found the following phrase: “Assembling, completing, packaging and transferring orders to the Russian Post delivery service takes no more than 4 days.”

Most retailers can process an order, pack the product and deliver it to the customer’s door within 24 hours. At the same time, PochtaMarket takes 4 days (!) simply to pack the parcel and transport it to a warehouse, a stronghold or a central office - in general, a kind of “launching pad” for parcels. Further, as follows from the information on the same page, purchases “are delivered within a time frame that complies with Russian Post delivery standards.” In general, the speed of work has never been a strong point of the mail, and it is not so now.

And even within such an “extended” deadline, PochtaMarket was unable to meet the deadline - we received an SMS stating that the order had been sent 6 days after placing it - a kind of anti-record that it is unlikely that any of the heroes of our reviews will ever be able to beat. But we never received the promised message that the purchase had been delivered to the post office - we learned about this only after two more days later we found a notice in the mailbox. As a result, the total delivery time was 8 days.

The atmosphere in post offices across the country is little different: queues, sluggish exchanges between customers tired of waiting, employees always overworked... And our branch is no exception. By the way, let’s immediately note that all the criticism below applies exclusively to the system as a whole, and not to the employees - they should be given free milk for working in such conditions, and not criticized.

We arrived at the post office in the middle of the day, hoping that at this time the number of other customers would be minimal. But that was not the case - it turned out that it was at this time that one of the two employees had a lunch break. Accordingly, all visitors lined up in a fairly substantial queue at one window.

We stood in line for about 25 minutes, after which we managed to pass a notice of the parcel’s arrival through the window. In response, we received two papers - one for receiving the parcel, one for payment. And in each one you had to enter your full passport details and address. Apparently, they haven’t heard about optimizing document flow at Russian Post.
It took us about 7 more minutes to fill out the paperwork and pay in cash, bringing the total pickup time to 32 minutes. It’s a lot, and when we think that for this “pleasure” we also paid 2 percent of the purchase price, it becomes completely uneasy. If we ever decide to repeat the experience of testing this store, we will choose online payment.

Having received the box in our hands, we were somewhat surprised by its size, which significantly exceeded the dimensions of the phone we ordered. The employees of Russian Post were unable to find a package of the right size within 6 days... Having heard that the phone with a characteristic sound was dangling inside, we moved from surprise to fears that our purchase did not stand the test of delivery via mail, and from testing the order we will immediately move on to warranty claims.

First, let's look at the box. The store decided to do without branding or at least some packaging design. Well, except for the design of the red tape with the name.

Under them was our phone, as well as a carelessly crumpled piece of paper - apparently, it was supposed to act as a seal. But packaging paper is in short supply at PochtaMarket. We cannot explain otherwise the clearly insufficient amount of it. Well, except, perhaps, for the assumption that the employee who packed the goods was simply negligent in his duties and performed them formally.

Let us say a few words about the subjective impressions of the purchase. We have never waited so impatiently and excitedly for the end of testing. When we took the last photo you see above, we didn’t even feel joy, but a feeling of relief. And this is clearly not the emotion that a client of any store should experience.

Guarantee

The “Russian Post” store is not a member of ours, it has been operating only recently - we have not received any reviews on the work of its warranty department from our readers. The warranty section on the store's website states that goods can be returned within 14 days and only if there are quality problems. Each parcel includes a return application, which must be filled out and sent along with the goods to a post office box in Tver. We haven’t had a chance to try it yet, but if any of the readers already have such experience, we’ll be glad to see your feedback in the comments to this review.

Price level

It is a bad idea to seriously analyze the price level with an assortment of 255 products, and in the current economic conditions we have temporarily abandoned any serious comparisons. Therefore, today we will not raise this issue - we will wait for the expansion of the range, if it ever happens.

Final table

To summarize, we put the main parameters into a single table (in the case when the assessment is in points, 1 is the minimum score, 10 is the maximum):

We liked

1. A simple and easy-to-use website (taking into account the store’s target audience).
2. Delivery throughout Russia for a fixed cost.
3. Quick dialing to an operator.

We didn't like it

1. Extremely poor assortment.
2. Unprecedentedly low quality of remote consultation.
3. Commission for paying for a purchase by cash on delivery at the branch.
4. Very long delivery time.
5. Lack of the promised SMS about the arrival of the purchase at the post office.
6. Lengthy pickup process.
7. Poor quality of parcel packaging.

• Let's get acquainted with the service of the Euroset company: study the site and test the store in St. Petersburg

Pochta Market product catalog autumn 2019 - school goods and stationery, interesting gadgets, clothing and textiles in new collections and a large assortment. This fall, Russian Post relied on school accessories in its popular catalog, although, given the speed of delivery and the relevance of events, it would be more appropriate to release this catalog in the summer or even spring. The delivery cost is the same for all goods, it is still 250 rubles, to any region and regardless of weight. Perhaps the most ideal option is if the student chooses a gift for himself - it should arrive by the autumn holidays, or even by the New Year. But specifically from the school section, the choice is not so big - a few backpacks, encyclopedias and an ABC book, pencil cases, that’s probably all. But in toys there really is a larger selection; there are products for boys and girls, as well as general educational games.

In the toy section of the Pochta-Market product catalog for the fall of 2019, the emphasis on tanks and military equipment is amusing; this is probably an attempt to contribute to military hysteria and make children love war from childhood.

Of course, postal catalogs themselves are gradually becoming outdated; this legacy from the 90s is now taking the form of an online store. This project, taking into account the capabilities of Russian Post, could be turned into a very profitable platform. It would be enough to prioritize the delivery of goods using this service, as well as involve marketers and expand the range. After all, if you look at it this way, then the post office has enormous capabilities to study the needs of the market. Needs research and proper trading could also have a positive impact on increasing sales of domestic products. However, the online store of the Pochta-Market autumn catalog features mainly foreign brands. All this indicates a great decline in both the postal service and the entire manufacturing industry. But Pochta-Market could also sell Russian goods abroad - all the logistics opportunities for this are available.

To be fair, it should be noted that the 2019 catalog also contains useful products. Knives, adjustable wrenches, some textiles - it’s quite possible to order something for the household. Another thing is that almost all of these items are available on construction markets.

Therefore, we can say with confidence that the Pochta Market product catalog autumn 2019 may only be of interest to residents of the outback and remote villages, to whom it will be delivered in printed form. On the other hand, it’s always nice to receive a package by mail, especially since 250 rubles for a modern Russian is a pittance. So - order for your health!

The state postal operator launched its own online store "Mail Market". About it Head of the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications Nikolai Nikiforov and invited users to test the new project.

The first reviews about this site in the media are ambivalent. Editorial website she decided to take advantage of the minister’s invitation.

New store assortment

The site presents popular product categories: electronics, household appliances, cosmetics, bed linen, dishes, goods for children. There are even paper books and stamp sets. The site also has a “Food” category with non-perishable goods: chocolate, tea, oils, balms.

The assortment is very unique. But, according to one of the experts interviewed by the site, “The advantage of Pochta, of course, is that they evaluate their audience soberly; customers will like the product.” The goods in the store are inexpensive, they are selected so that the order amount does not exceed 15,000 rubles.

The site's creators did not struggle with product descriptions. For example, the description of the “Lemon Teapot” was copied from the product card of the Maggie-Mall online store. But the price for it at Maggie Mall is significantly lower.

UPD: As Russian Post told us, Meggie-Mall is a division of their partner, the OTTO company. “Of course, the description of the goods corresponds to the description on partner resources,” commented the FSUE press service.

There is no sorting of goods on the site yet, perhaps due to the small number of SKUs.

Prices and promotions

Prices for goods at Pochta Market differ significantly from competitors. For example, smartphones here are more expensive than in almost all stores presented on Yandex.Market. Price for the above LG H522Y titan gold, for example, more than 5 thousand higher than the market average.

Promotions in the store also raise questions. The "EcoWoo" frying pan is sold on the "Pochta Market" at a "special price" of 1399 rubles...

...and on OZON without any discount for 1199 rubles.

Errors

Just when we started testing the site, we found several errors. Some products simply cannot be ordered. For example, when you try to buy the same LG H522Y titan gold phone, the online store warns you that the order cost has been exceeded.

It also didn’t work out with buying a children’s book for a lower price. The system notified that the purchase limit was exceeded. It is also worth noting that the purchase button sometimes freezes, so there may be 2-3 copies of the product in the cart.

(UPD:After the publication of the article, representatives of Russian Post announced that the restriction on the order amount had been removed. We confirm that this has been done.

The limit on the number of purchases remains. As we understand, this is not a bug, but a feature of the store. Also, the “View” button, which appears when you add an item to your cart, has stopped working)

Shipping and payment

At first, a fixed price was set for delivery of orders up to five units, regardless of weight - 229 rubles to any post office in the country. The state operator warns that delivery to the most remote corners of Russia may take longer. Russian Post will notify the buyer of the receipt of the postal item by SMS notification or notification to the address specified in the receipt.

The actual assembly, packaging, packaging and transfer of orders to the Russian Post delivery service takes up to 4 days. Buyers have the opportunity to track the fulfillment process and the path of their order on the website. To do this, you need to enter the order number and the recipient's last name into the system.

To facilitate returns, Pochta Market promises to include an application form in each parcel. All returns are sent to a sorting center in Tver. Pochta Market promises to consider applications within 10 days from the date of their receipt.

The money is returned by postal order. Moreover, all costs associated with the execution of the order (cost of processing, packaging and delivery) are reimbursed only when returning low-quality goods. If the user returned a quality product, this cost will be deducted from the refund amount.

The order can be made both on the website and through catalogs at Russian Post offices. Methods of payment for purchases on the site - upon receipt by cash on delivery or by credit card through the site. When ordering from a catalog at a branch, you can also pay in cash or by card on the spot.

conclusions

The new project "Pochta Market" cannot yet be called a "marketplace similar to eBay", as it was before. But the federal postal operator is not going to stop there. Deputy General Director"Russian Post" Inessa Galaktionova warned in June that the technological solution for its own trading platform would be implemented before the end of this year, and other companies would begin to connect only in the first quarter of 2016.

During the test period from February 2016 to February 2017, the first five suppliers will connect to the site. During this time, Russian Post plans to assess the demand for various categories of goods and the price preferences of Russians.

Previously, Pochta has already conducted pilot launches of its online store. In November 2014, with a partnership Biglion products for children, electronics and household appliances, goods for home and family, cosmetics and New Year's souvenirs. During 44 days of sales, 200 thousand purchases were made with an average cost of 500 rubles. Moreover, printed catalogs accounted for 95% of orders. From June 1, the second pilot project.

How ComNews, analysts are confident that due to its developed infrastructure, Russian Post has a huge competitive advantage. However, it will take a lot of time for the company to reach the same level as the leading players in the online trading market.