Frequently Asked Questions about Royal Mail PUDO (Pick Up & Drop Off) Locations
General:
- Do service enhancement codes have anything to do with if we can use Local Collect?
Service enhancements 22 (Local Collect) and 14 (E-mail Notification) are required if you want to use PUDO. Without them it is not possible to get a label.
- Which service codes accepts Local Collect in the destination address?
Please see the Royal Mail Service Matrix where you can see what services Local Collect can be used for. - Do all offices accept collections and returns?
All of the offices accept returns, but only some of them accept Local Collect. - Do all offices accept paperless returns with QR code?
Most probably yes, however this is something that Royal Mail are still investigating. Potentially even offices who do offer the service might not be able to on any given occasion when a customer turns up.
This may be one the additional information included in the files in the future. - It seems that that latitude and longitude are mixed up and some of the locations are showing incorrectly on a map.
After a little investigation we discovered that it is the settings within Google Maps that cause the locations to show incorrectly on a map. Please see below steps that we followed:
STEP 1 - Checking the Royal Mail file and the spec – Longitude is first in the file (with the negative value), followed by Latitude (50+ value)
So, the Altens Delivery Office in Aberdeen longitude = 2.09493500 and latitude = 57.11202110
STEP 2 – Checking the API PUDO response and the values looks the same (please ignore that it is a different address to the csv file) - Longitude is the negative value, Latitude is the 50+ value.
STEP 3 - Pasting the bare coordinates -2.09493500, 57.11202110 into Google Maps and the search result is in the middle of the Indian Ocean:
It seems that the wrong cardinal directions have been added against my coordinates, because the UK cardinal directions are W for the longitude and N for the latitude.
It looks like google is defaulting them to the wrong side of the Earth.
STEP 4 – Adding the right cardinal directions to the coordinates (in the Google format) and the search result is close to the Royal Mail Delivery Office in Aberdeen
PUDO Locations via SFTP:
- Does the PUDO file contain all available locations?
The PUDO file contains all current offices where Local Collect services are available for parcel collection. Those are locations, where a parcel can be delivered by Royal Mail to be collected by the receiver.
All of the offices accept returns.
Royal Mail are in the process of updating the output to include all offices and have an additional filed to indicate if Local Collect services are available. The changes to content will be shared once available. - We noticed that some of the records do not include geolocation data. Is there a reason for this?
There may be individual instances where the geolocation is not provided. That would need to be reported to Onboarding Team - onboarding@intersoft.co.uk, so they can pass it to Royal Mail. - What time is the new file placed in the PUDO SFTP location?
The new file is placed in the PUDO location at 2am. It is available to the customers at 2.30am. The timestamp is 1am as the server from which it is shared is located in a different time zone. - Are all the location types included in the file?
The file includes only Post Offices and Customer Service Points Locations. There is an Office Type filed that includes either CSP (for RM Customer Service Points) or POL (for Post Offices)
It does not include Parcel Boxes – they are the locations that only accept returns but not Local Collect. Currently there is no plan to include those in the dataset.