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MSE News: MPs back stamp price rises
Former_MSE_Helen
Posts: 2,382 Forumite
This is the discussion thread for the following MSE News Story:
"The Business Select Committee says it is "appropriate" for stamp prices to increase ..."
"The Business Select Committee says it is "appropriate" for stamp prices to increase ..."
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Comments
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Royal Mail is still one of the cheapest in Europe,although we have the highest fuel prices,it must cost them a fortune to deliver to every address , and a stamp is still cheaper than a chocolate bar, very good service and good value.0
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MPs don't care as they claim their postage costs back on expenses
I can see First & Second class disappearing in years to come to be replaced by a "standard" service0 -
When Stamp prices rise again it will be another nail in the coffin of the Royal Mail. They're well into the death spiral now. Increasing prices and decreasing demand.0
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Regulator Ofcom says without an increase, Royal Mail may no longer be able to afford to offer its Universal Service Obligation (USO), which requires it to collect and deliver letters six days a week, to the same standard.
That's strange as I never receive any post on a SaturdayI use multimatcher lazza which has the tab "bonus if 0-0"0 -
Regulator Ofcom says without an increase, Royal Mail may no longer be able to afford to offer its Universal Service Obligation (USO), which requires it to collect and deliver letters six days a week, to the same standard.
That's strange as I never receive any post on a Saturday
Really? We do.Everything will be alright in the end so, if it’s not yet alright, it means it’s not yet the endQuidquid Latine dictum sit altum videtur0 -
Regulator Ofcom says without an increase, Royal Mail may no longer be able to afford to offer its Universal Service Obligation (USO), which requires it to collect and deliver letters six days a week, to the same standard.
That's strange as I never receive any post on a Saturday
Perhaps the more pertinent question is whether we still need delivery 6 days per week? Assuming that urgent one of items could still be sent via some form of special delivery, how much of what most of us receive through the post would hurt for being a day later? Businesses that work on incoming post could perhaps pay a small fee to have every day delivery, whilst for the rest of us, halving the delivery frequency would make for lower costs and would also reduce the need for junk mail to be carried at very low prices in a vain attempt to make the daily trudge to everyones house worthwhile.
I suspect long term the USO is a dead duck anyway - its currently just surviving due to a lack of political backbone to get rid of it!Adventure before Dementia!0 -
So if one of their services is priced too high then consumers will switch to, wait for it, another of their services. Doesn't sound like much of a market to me! It's not a free market, so market forces won't work.Ofcom proposed in October last year to give Royal Mail freedom to set its own prices for products including First class deliveries
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The price of first class stamps is expected to be pegged back by market forces. If the price of first class stamps is set too high, consumers could switch to second class deliveries, the cost of which will still be regulated.
Trying to turn it into a market (e.g. having various different post companies competing against each other) would be a disaster, so why try to make it a market at all? Just set the prices at what people (people living in the real world, not MPs) think is reasonable and be done with it.0 -
I agree that Royal Mail is well on its way to stamping itself out of business. First Class post no longer guarantees to deliver next day, with the result that anything urgent has to be sent "Special Delivery", now over £5 a time, a simply ludicrous fee for a service that not so long ago cost 26p.
This level of exploitation of our decreasing need for a postal system is outrageous and its increasing cost and unreliability will force users to turn even more fully to other means of dispatch, such as ordering goods and scanning and attaching important documents online.
I am, in any case, heartily sick of having to take every single letter and card to the actual Post Office to be weighed and checked, just in case it's too big, too wide, too long, too fat, too heavy, and so on. Royal Mail has become a farce. I am using it less and less and my postbox, with the exception of junk mail, would tend to suggest that others are doing the same.0 -
JimmyTheWig wrote: »So if one of their services is priced too high then consumers will switch to, wait for it, another of their services. Doesn't sound like much of a market to me! It's not a free market, so market forces won't work.
Trying to turn it into a market (e.g. having various different post companies competing against each other) would be a disaster, so why try to make it a market at all? Just set the prices at what people (people living in the real world, not MPs) think is reasonable and be done with it.
well you should have raised that 10 years ago
are you saying RM has no competitors?0
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