Bank Statements/Bank Mail/Royal Mail

GTR_King

Royal Mail are looking to cut down 2nd class letters to 3 days a week if that maybe scrap it! 

So will banks still send letters/statements 2nd class or will they change it to 1st class and charge us for Bank statements E.G £0.50 or £1 per page up to £10 max or set price per month e.g £5-£10 like package bank accounts then for example £5 per month extra orders of copy statements! 

Will they do it for letters & card orders? 

what do you lot think will happen 

TheBanker

Most banks use other suppliers to distribute their mail these days. The Royal Mail postman brings it to your door but the earlier steps are handled by other companies. So the bank is not really using second class postage, they'll be using a different service with a different contracted delivery time.

What I think will happen is no real change. They won't switch to First Class. They'll just tell customers who need their statements sooner to use online banking. Even card deliveries are less urgent these days given you can add the card to your Google/Apple wallet (depending on the bank). 

Section62

GTR_King said:

Royal Mail are looking to cut down 2nd class letters to 3 days a week if that maybe scrap it! 

So will banks still send letters/statements 2nd class or will they change it to 1st class and charge us for Bank statements E.G £0.50 or £1 per page up to £10 max or set price per month e.g £5-£10 like package bank accounts then for example £5 per month extra orders of copy statements! 

Will they do it for letters & card orders? 

what do you lot think will happen 

I don't think it will make any difference - in most cases whether a statement arrives today or tomorrow makes no difference.  For some people the postal system seems to be more a case of next week or the week after, though.

Rob5342

I don't think it will make any difference really. Everyone can see their balance online, there isn't much they have to send by post, and what there is isn't time critical.

DullGreyGuy

GTR_King said:

Royal Mail are looking to cut down 2nd class letters to 3 days a week if that maybe scrap it! 

So will banks still send letters/statements 2nd class or will they change it to 1st class and charge us for Bank statements E.G £0.50 or £1 per page up to £10 max or set price per month e.g £5-£10 like package bank accounts then for example £5 per month extra orders of copy statements! 

Will they do it for letters & card orders? 

what do you lot think will happen 

Which bank is using RM 2nd class? Corporates have many more options available to them, even RM offers an economy option in addition to 1st and 2nd plus if your sending enough you can use companies like UK Mail who take the pre-sorted bags to the relevant RM site for them to just do the final leg of the delivery. If you see C9 10002 where the stamp would be (eg Barclays) then RM have only done the last leg of delivery.

Neil49

I receive all my statements online via my bank account website and have done so for years. I check them over then download them and back up offline regularly. 

Zanderman

Neil49 said:

I receive all my statements online via my bank account website and have done so for years. I check them over then download them and back up offline regularly. 

Very sensible - so do many people (including me) but that's not relevant to the thread.

The thread is about bank communications and items that are physically delivered.

Which is important to many people (also including me) and, probably, to you too (as there are always some items, debit cards for example, that come by post).

But as others have replied I doubt RM's proposal, even if implemented, will affect bank comms deliveries in any noticeable way. 

boingy

Our mail is already sporadic. Us and our neighbours sometimes go for a week without a delivery then we all get a bundle of letters together (with a free elastic band...). The regular postie says it's lack of cover for his holidays and illness, and sometimes it's that he is covering another round and can't get everything done in one day.

It's not normally a problem but I have had two instances where a debit card and the PIN for that card have both arrived together - no harm done but not ideal. 

Nasqueron

The banks will save money, fewer and fewer people, quite rightly, want paper statements as they are unnecessary and a security risk, as well as a vastly slower and more risky way of monitoring transactions so banks aren't likely to pay for faster dead tree shipping any more than they do now. A paper statement is not needed to pay bills any way as the info is available almost instantly online

WillPS

boingy said:
It's not normally a problem but I have had two instances where a debit card and the PIN for that card have both arrived together - no harm done but not ideal. 

This happens quite a bit to me now, even though we rarely miss a day's post unless there's a strike. It doesn't bother me but I do wish I wasn't sent quite so much stuff to almost immediately recycle/shred when they have my email, mobile number and an app which I'm signed in to.

boingy

WillPS said:

boingy said:
It's not normally a problem but I have had two instances where a debit card and the PIN for that card have both arrived together - no harm done but not ideal. 

This happens quite a bit to me now, even though we rarely miss a day's post unless there's a strike. It doesn't bother me but I do wish I wasn't sent quite so much stuff to almost immediately recycle/shred when they have my email, mobile number and an app which I'm signed in to.

Yep, we can agree on that. Having made quite a few bank switches last year I was amused at the amount of paper some of them generated. Head and shoulders above the rest were Barclays and the Co-op. Both accounts were set to "paperless". I guess it makes sense for a bank to send a single letter to say "your account switch has started", just as a security thing, but Barclays sent me at least four more letters with status updates plus a final statement, all of which were duplicated electronically in the app plus the updates were texted to my phone. Most of the letters arrived after the switch was complete!