Postage for Posters

ruthber

I have recently sold some posters which are 30 x 40 inches, approximately 'A0' size. These are mailed in tubes approx 3 ft long and 2-3 inches wide. The weight is negligible. It is very clear from the Royal Mail website that this is a 'Medium Parcel'; there is even a picture of a tube. The cheapest UK postage for a medium parcel of this weight is £5.00. I went to two post offices today and in both I was told that these posters would count as a large parcel ; with the second one luckily I had previously been quoted the cheaper price by another worker in the same P.O, so, unusually, the front line member of staff called the manager. He passed one of my tubes through a metal plate with slots of various sizes, and agreed it was a Medium Parcel. So the £5 postage was mine.
I wonder how many other people are over paying for sending posters?

soolin

At 'about' 3 ft long = 91 cms plus twice the diameter not being able to exceed 104 cms it probably all hinges on the exact length and how tightly the poster is rolled.


https://business.help.royalmail.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/89/~/size-and-weight-formats-for-uk-mail

z1a

soolin wrote: »

At 'about' 3 ft long = 91 cms plus twice the diameter not being able to exceed 104 cms it probably all hinges on the exact length and how tightly the poster is rolled.


https://business.help.royalmail.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/89/~/size-and-weight-formats-for-uk-mail

How? The tubes are a fixed diameter, rigid cardboard.

soolin

z1a wrote: »

How? The tubes are a fixed diameter, rigid cardboard.

Bad wording on my part, sorry, I realise the OP is using a certain size but not all posters fit into the same size tube so perhaps other sellers are being correctly charged. There is no standard size and anything even marginally bigger than the tube used by the Op is likely to exceed the size limit.

The ones used by the OP might be a fixed size but we don't actually have fixed measurements. About 3 ft long and about 2-3 inches across could well exceed the size limit.

3 ft = 91 cms
3inches = 7.62 cms

those measurements exceeed the 104 cms allowed.

It all hinges on exactly how long and how wide the outer tubes are, perhaps some POs are a little more lenient with tubes, especially if they don't have a tape measure to hand.

ballisticbrian

"For rolled and cylinder shaped parcels, the length of the item plus twice the diameter must not exceed 104cm, with the greatest dimension being no more than 90cm."

ruthber

I gave approx measurements in 'old money' but the centimetre sizes are definitely well with within the medium parcel criteria. The Royal Mail's website is informative, more so than the people who work in the post offices!