Royal Mail new prices released

soolin

marking_bad wrote: »

I genuinely laughed out loud at that

Sadly, it's not a laughing matter. Prices are going up and the service is getting worse. Having trouble claiming compensation, and things being delivered to wrong addresses (a neighbour brought round a dvd the other day). Some may argue it's not, but the one thing they can't deny, is that it's getting more complicated. Some people have a pathological need to defend the RM. It must be getting harder and harder.

In all seriousness my colleague won't be using the 6 inch cube boxes as someone will try and split the packing tape with a knife or scissors and cut through the tightly compressed item inside, so there is a high possibility of damage to soft material goods .

Another one who will have to use a courier as these items are sub £15 and weigh around 200g and buyers will not pay over £5 for a RM packet.

epm-84

The new prices are valid from Tuesday 2nd April. Expect long queues in Post Offices on Monday 1st!

soolin

epm-84 wrote: »

The new prices are valid from Tuesday 2nd April. Expect long queues in Post Offices on Monday 1st!

I suspect the vast majority of people, even ebayers will be blissfully unaware of the changes. It will be the days after the implementation that will be chaos with people telling PO staff that they are wrong and item only cost £2.20. I also suspect that we will have endless threads on here, and on the warnings and vent board about being 'overcharged' by the PO and how they never announced any of this.

martindow

epm-84 wrote: »

Expect long queues in Post Offices on Monday 1st!

You might have a long wait - that's Easter Monday.

paulofessex

I am in shock. One item l post 60x23x23cm currently costs £5.30 (Standard Parcel 1250g) will now cost me £8.00 (Medium Parcel)

Will cost me £9.59 via ParcelMonkey / City Link
£8.98 via ipostparcels / UK Mail

Looks like l will no longer be selling that item. In fact looks like l will be closing down, its hard enough to compete with other sellers/retailers let alone these new increases by royal mail.

ballisticbrian

I agree with all the afforesaid, but the real scandal is this:

The government aren't borthered because they blame internet selling for all the ills in the high street - and they will say about increased competition from other services just as a lame way of saying it's fair when it's clearly more time consuming and difficult to use couriers than say, a franking machine.
THere is no going back now to the old days pre-internet - it's here to stay.
Secondly, I'm not quite clear how China Post and India Post work, but the sellers seem to buy a license which allows them to send unlimited post, and we seem to have items being sent to the UK that are worth under a pound with free postage, and UK sellers have not got a chance.
I had some junk mail from Royal Mail a few weeks ago which said "we want to help you export" and I didn't know whether to laugh or cry at their ignorance.
To all the hard working sellers like the previous poster who was going to give up, I will say keep positive and like all business does, treat this as an opportunity.

macfly

marking_bad wrote: »

. Prices are going up and the service is getting worse. Having trouble claiming compensation, and things being delivered to wrong addresses (a neighbour brought round a dvd the other day).

Translation - it's happening to me and a couple of other people, therefore it applies countrywide.
Prices are being increased to reflect true costs as a prelude to privatising RM. At the moment, according to Royal Mails biggest critic and watchdog, the service is improving year on year.
Once privatised, you will find that the "universal" service will no longer exist. Prices will maybe reduce locally, but shoot up for distance.
Welcome to the real world.

ballisticbrian

macfly, Royal Mail did make an operating profit of £211 million last year and that's with the universal service you describe.

epm-84

martindow wrote: »

You might have a long wait - that's Easter Monday.

Not if it's one of the 166 Post Offices located in Tesco managed One Stop stores. An agreement between Tesco and The Post Office means these 166 Post Offices are open the same hours as the shop they are located within is open. This means some towns have a small post office with long opening hours, including weekday evenings, Saturday afternoon/evenings, Sundays and Bank Holidays.

ballisticbrian

epm-84 in that case you may get your parcels in the system at the old rate, but they will just sit there until they are collected the next day by RM.