DSF

Has anyone else worked them out yet. We are just going through them and it is quite substantial.

Robbing bastards

TM

Yep, its quite hefty indeed. The RM have looked at things and said "exactly how much do we think we can get away with....." - You are looking at 20-30% increases across the board. Parcels are the worst hit IMO with no level beneath 750g. So if its a 100g packet you are sending... its not in the same bracket as two mugs. Also my local postmaster said they are reducing the number of collections from each post office, coupled with a reduction in deliveries (a letter I got from RM) which essentially said - oh by the way we are no longer delivering in the morning, it will be a full day thing 9-5.

go get stamps while you can, and use them to help keep costs down - some post offices are keeping the numbers down you can buy

phoenixalpha;44399 wrote:So if its a 100g packet you are sending... its not in the same bracket as two mugs.

On the plus side, you can now send two mugs for the price of one. I'll be pointing that out on my website, to encourage customers to buy two mugs instead of one. Alternatively, you could offer a special deal on the second mug knowing that the postage cost won't be any higher than it would for one.

phoenixalpha;44399 wrote:which essentially said - oh by the way we are no longer delivering in the morning, it will be a full day thing 9-5.

We've had that for ages now. I can't recall the last time we had a delivery before midday, and it's typically closer to 1pm - and often later. No change there, then.

If they are saying 9-5 I bet it will be mainly late in the afternoon now.

It used to be that anything over 2Kg was better sent by courier. Now it's anything over 1Kg is better sent by courier.

Of course couriers will soon put up their prices, too, but at least they pick up the item and give full tracking for the price. What do Royal Mail do? Put their prices up, give no tracking data, and expect you to take your items to them. We do half the job for them, they provide an inferior service, yet they put their prices up. Seems a backwards way of doing it if you ask me.

Royal Mail at the moment though is the only way to go for small packages. RM expect everyone to swallow the costs and just live to bear with it and to be honest theyre pretty much right. We dont have much option just now to accept it.

JSR;44410 wrote:It used to be that anything over 2Kg was better sent by courier. Now it's anything over 1Kg is better sent by courier.

Of course couriers will soon put up their prices, too, but at least they pick up the item and give full tracking for the price. What do Royal Mail do? Put their prices up, give no tracking data, and expect you to take your items to them. We do half the job for them, they provide an inferior service, yet they put their prices up. Seems a backwards way of doing it if you ask me.

agreed above.....

but this will NOT be the end of the price hikes guys......there will be more to come over the next 2/3 yrs...wait n see :rolleyes:.

in short...royal mail have us ALL with the short n curlys and there aint nowt you can do about it...saddly

phoenixalpha;44412 wrote:Royal Mail at the moment though is the only way to go for small packages. RM expect everyone to swallow the costs and just live to bear with it and to be honest theyre pretty much right. We dont have much option just now to accept it.

Yes, but what I'm saying is the gap is diminishing. It used to be that anything over 2Kg cost the same to go courier than to go Royal Mail, with the advantage of the courier picking up and tracking. Now, that's down to 1.5Kg.

There are some couriers that will do "under 1Kg" parcels for £3.30 - which is cheaper than Royal Mail. It's getting to the stage where there is less and less incentive to go with Royal Mail.

It's been discussed before that the only reason for these price increases by the Royal Mail right now is to make it more of a going concern for when it's sold off to some private company. All the more reason to start looking elsewhere before that happens.