Royal Mail October 2023 Price Changes

gt94sss2

Royal Mail has announced it will increase the price of first class stamps by 15p to £1.25 from 2 October 2023.

Details of this and other price changes are at https://www.royalmail.com/prices2023

goodfella66

Large letter second class less than 100g has gone up from £1.15 to £1.55. That's extortionate.

soolin

Oh good grief , that’s beginning to look a bit our of control. I know they are struggling, I had a long conversation in my local mail centre yesterday (I shall post it on a different thread) but I’m going to have to seriously re think some of my lines .

Edit: Someone has worked out though what they can get away with , I note the services that can’t be duplicated for a lower price, like letters and large letters are being increased, but services that can be duplicated at a better price like parcels are remaining unchanged. 

It is doubtful whether any other courier will want to enter the letter market as I’m sure the costs outweigh any profit , so for those of us who predominantly use letter/LL we have no option other than to pay. 

victor2

It surely won't be too many years before the daily post delivery disappears.

I remember the regular coal delivery from my childhood. Nobody at the time could imagine that ceasing, but it did.

molerat

victor2 said:

It surely won't be too many years before the daily post delivery disappears. 

Pretty much already has here, only see a postie 2 or 3 times a week.  Our old regular postie was doing the round a couple of weeks ago and said this delivery was 3 days mail.  Showed a picture of the mail for their village just sitting in a massive pile in the delivery office and would be delivered in a couple of days time !

soolin

victor2 said:

It surely won't be too many years before the daily post delivery disappears.

I remember the regular coal delivery from my childhood. Nobody at the time could imagine that ceasing, but it did.

molerat said:

victor2 said:

It surely won't be too many years before the daily post delivery disappears. 

Pretty much already has here, only see a postie 2 or 3 times a week.  Our old regular postie was doing the round a couple of weeks ago and said this delivery was 3 days mail.  Showed a picture of the mail for their village just sitting in a massive pile in the delivery office and would be delivered in a couple of days time !

And meanwhile eBay continue to tell buyers that 2nd class post is estimated in 1- 2 days max from day of posting. 

GaleSF63

victor2 said:

It surely won't be too many years before the daily post delivery disappears.

I remember the regular coal delivery from my childhood. Nobody at the time could imagine that ceasing, but it did.

It seems strange now to remember that there used to be a second post. It stopped about 20 years ago I think. And rather further back (at least a century) people would use the post - in their local area at least - to inform people they would be visiting later on that day! The post was needed for communication then - now there are so many other usually more efficient ways to do it, it's no wonder RM struggle to run a profitable letter delivery service whilst other couriers have no obligation to touch this unprofitable side.

steviebabes

I had confirmation from our regular postie that they now have tracked only days. This includes any collections but only Tracked 24/48 and SD deliveries. I have long suspected this, it's usually once or twice a week at the moment but may increase towards December.  Looking at the online prices for October the difference between Tracked 24/48 and 1st/2nd will be about 30p. If you still buy postage at the Post Office I suspect this will be zero.  Why people still use signed for I have no idea.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

goodfella66 said:

Large letter second class less than 100g has gone up from £1.15 to £1.55. That's extortionate.

Indeed it is! 

For any Large letters over 250g you might as well send Tracked as they will be £2.60 2nd Class or £2.70 Tracked 48.

They are clearly pushing Tracked and there isn't really anything wrong with that, if 1st and 2nd disappeared for parcels I doubt it would make much difference really, it would be a smallish price increase for a better service but as above they are hammering Large Letters due to the lack of competition. 

soolin

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:

goodfella66 said:

Large letter second class less than 100g has gone up from £1.15 to £1.55. That's extortionate.

Indeed it is! 

For any Large letters over 250g you might as well send Tracked as they will be £2.60 2nd Class or £2.70 Tracked 48.

They are clearly pushing Tracked and there isn't really anything wrong with that, if 1st and 2nd disappeared for parcels I doubt it would make much difference really, it would be a smallish price increase for a better service but as above they are hammering Large Letters due to the lack of competition. 

I did that the other day, I sold a book (not on eBay*) that was heavy but thin enough to be a LL. Buyer requested some sort of tracking as they insisted on using a bank transfer so I sent it RM48 as it was the cheapest option but had proper tracking.

* A facebook sale where they actually paid! I’m getting a lot of FB buyers insisting on using bank transfer as they’ve heard PayPal isn’t safe . 

victor2

Of course RM will probably strike over Christmas for more money. The words coffin, nail and last spring to mind.