Royal Mail October 2023 Price Changes

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

victor2 said:

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

They've agreed pay so hopefully no strikes this year.

Royal Mail's service was actually good during the strikes as the big companies shifted their volume elsewhere but RM claim the strikes cost them £200 million.

They was making good money, a BBC article claimed they are down due to less Covid test kits being posted and a  general reduction in people purchasing stuff compared to the last few years. 

Tracked is their big thing to get volume with the larger retailers, I think from the point of view of the everyday person there's still a lot of people who think Royal Mail are terrible because they had a letter delivered 4 days late in 1972, they treat the parcels much better that the other couriers plus the workers tend to be regular as pay and conditions are better which means they have more of an incentive to do a decent job compared to some couriers who seem to have half a dozen new drivers on the round each year and they have a decent network for getting mail in the system, out here in the sticks parcel drop off points for the budget couriers are many miles away. 

MSE_Molly_G

Hi everyone. We've just published an article on this topic: Standard first-class stamp prices to rise by 14% from 2 October – here's how to beat the hike.

Thanks

martindow

MSE_Molly_G said:

Hi everyone. We've just published an article on this topic: Standard first-class stamp prices to rise by 14% from 2 October – here's how to beat the hike.

Thanks

Thank you for that, but especially for this board, it would be useful if you could add parcel price changes as well.

soolin

martindow said:

MSE_Molly_G said:

Hi everyone. We've just published an article on this topic: Standard first-class stamp prices to rise by 14% from 2 October – here's how to beat the hike.

Thanks

Thank you for that, but especially for this board, it would be useful if you could add parcel price changes as well.

As far as I can see the only parcels affected are special delivery, the standard parcels are not changing.

RFW

Amazon fulfillment announced last month that they are cancelling their small & light programme from late September.

Small & light was basically all letter and large letter items up to 250g, it was mostly all sent by Royal Mail. Presumably Amazon were given advanced notice about the price increases. I'm assuming they'll be losing a lot of Amazon trade.

So if you buy any smaller items on Amazon and elsewhere it's worth looking at stocking up this side of October. We sellers will have no choice but to increase those prices. I sell quite a lot of £2 and £3 items and they will have to go up by at least a third.

With increases coming at me from all angles I'm looking at options beyond online selling now, it's becoming unsustainable. I'm also in a partly seasonal industry and another round of strikes on top of price increases will end a big chunk of it.

km1500

it looks like the most cost effective way to stock up is by buying large letter stamps which are increasing the most

even if you don't send large letters presumably you can use them on parcels etc for part payment

soolin

km1500 said:

it looks like the most cost effective way to stock up is by buying large letter stamps which are increasing the most

even if you don't send large letters presumably you can use them on parcels etc for part payment

Be careful of using stamps on parcels. If you buy parcel post from RM online it is a considerable saving over paying via stamps or over the post office counter. With online postage or even PO labels you get delivery confirmation as standard on all parcels, which you don’t get with stamps. 

km1500

Thanks for the info. Agree about online being cheaper.

Re: post office.If you part pay by stamps at the PO and the rest by label you still get the 16 digit confirmation number. If you pay totally by stamps you don't

misterthrifty

This seems to be another step in RM squirming out of the Universal Service which they agreed to when it was privatised. Ofcom say that a 50% fall in letters may justify getting rid of Saturday deliveries but this was largely due to the disastrous RM management and the huge increase in stamp prices! They can't increase 2nd class as the prices have to be linked to inflation, otherwise they would be going up too. Soon we may lose 6 day deliveries so they can do a round only on selected days.
RM have been encouraging customers to not the the PO's which means smaller offices will close as they aren't cost effective. We once had a postal service that we could be proud of....

km1500

I would pay good money to avoid having to join a post office queue !