The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Community => Coffee Lounge => Topic started by: ellisr on March 27, 2012, 01:36:00 pm
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Royal Mail are putting there prices up as from the 30th of April, first class will rise 30% and second class 39%.
This is outrageous in the current economic climate, if like me people trade online and post goods this is going to make a huge difference and customers may decide not to buy.
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I no longer post letters but use e-mail, they are pricing themselves out of the market and as you say in such hard times its just plain stupid. My Oh has not had a pay rise in 5 years but everything just keeps going up :(
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Documents can be sent by email in one form or another, hard goods can be sent by Courier - there are plenty of them ready to take up the slack from Royal Mail - but don't forget that Royal Mail and the Post Office are completely different entities. Post Offices are in the main privately owned businesses and should be supported if possible
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Parcels taken to the post office go Royal Mail, so, the the post office may loose trade too!!! I understand that a lot of mail order stuff will now be more costly due to the price of postage, I dabbled a bit but there is a limit to what people will pay postage, especialy on small items, that is bad, with all the shops now empty due to lack of business and now small mail order businesses will be worse off...not forgetting fuel costs in general....we just got our whopppping heating bill and to ANYONE, with a B&B saving money is just impossible, unless you have a good other income!!
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I think the post office make there money on parcels, so there deliberately
pricing letters out of the market. I know its there market - just not enough profit.
I believe its soon to be privatised anyway - so letters with tescos stamps could soon be the
in thing ;D
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Let Richard Branson run it , this bloody government is getting too greedy.
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Tizzala,
can you stop mincing your words and give us your straight opinion? :D
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I have just had a hike in packaging costs which I have absorbed for a few months and now this is going to nearly double the cost of P&P and couriers are not cheaper so I actually have no choice but I can see our online business spiralling downwards just when we have built it up
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It is already disgusting,for parcels nowadays I always use www.interparcel.com (http://www.interparcel.com) a worthwhile link for you all, it is not worht the hassle anymore,I just book them in and the couriers collect,rather than having to use up all my fuel in going to my nearest main post office 8 miles away,seems to make sense to me though you do have to wait in for the courier to collect.
I sometimes leave them with the neighbours if I am out but I am rarely far away from home!
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I'm not generally in favour of privatisation for the sake of it but I think it can only be a good thing for Royal Mail.
The one that annoys me is the new way of dealing with letters that don't have enough postage (easy to do with the different sizes). At one time it would be delivered and ther post man/woman would knock and ask if you want it. You could look (I once read a postcard without a stamp) and give it back if you weren't interested. If you want it you paid the difference. Now you have to go to collect it from the sorting office and pay £1 on top of the difference, you're not allowed to look at it first so could end up paying more than a pound for a begging letter or other junk mail.
On the other hand, I once didn't bother to collect a letter because I wasn't expecting anything, only to have my daughter ask )about three weeks later) "Did you like the card the chldren made you?"
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Absolutely disgusted with the price hike of the stamp increase. I will be choosing very carefully to either post, email or call from now on, greedy bas...ds ???, is wages going up to the same increase level, no there are not >:( The companies of today think were are all stupid and pay the price they ask for items, yes we have got used to letters 6 days a week but how many of us get junk mail on these days, Mondays for us is junk mail and no letters, :o our poatman comes at around 2pm and this is him starting at 6am at xmas it is 3pm before we even see him sometimes later.
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My nephew, now in his forties, sent my mother a letter when he was about six. This was off his own bat, no help from parents. The address was" Grane Mord(Maud), Ruin Minerd (Ruan Minor) Cornwel." He'd put a green shield stamp on the envelope. It got to Ma, no problem! Would it nowadays though? :-\
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As someone who works indirectly for Royal Mail can i ask one of YOU to deliver a letter from one end of the country to the other for 60p.... No didn't think anyone would want to so stop griping we still have the best and cheapest postal service in the world. Royal mail and the companies who supply it with goods and services will not survive without a significant increase in the cost of postage, before long it will be like all the other once great companies in this country and be owned by foreigners and then just wait and see what happens to prices.
Use it or lose it.
Mandy :pig:
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and just why are all these once great company's owned by foreign money
because we Brits just suffer any price increases the water co and telephone co charge for sending a bill out you charge for sending bills out you will be told where to go and lose that customer
far to long we have suffered price increases extra taxes while the government creams of even more money to sit on there arse and say yes the taxpayer will pay for everything
iceland had a people revolt it is time for the UK to revolt
12 bob to post a letter there was outcry when petrol went to 50pence a gallon because of speculators
and Mandy they are not taking one letter at a time but artic and plane loads of them at thesame time
the peasants of France brought down there government it could happen here as well :farmer:
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Well said Mandy the only person who speaks common sence. Yes its a big increase but still the cheapest in europe and as Mandy says can you deliver a letter anywhere in the country next day for 60p NO exactly.
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Done think I've every got anything next day when I was in Perthshire - 6 miles from Perth and now it Aberdeenshire it's more like 3 days!!
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Ah well that's Scotland, even so bet you couldn't deliver it for 60p in 3 days.
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Not saying I could Berkshire Boy or would wished to - but if it says next day it should be next day - if it said next day to Edinburgh and Glasgow and 4 days to the rest of Scotland I accept that is how long it was going to take - in my business if I say something I'd expected to do it or loose clients.
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Common sense says you couldn't deliver a single letter for 60p but I don't know of any post office vans that carry a single letter. 1.6 billion letters per annum @ 60p now I bet I could manage to deliver for that and make a profit
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1.6 bil x .60 is a hell of a lot of money, and they say they don't make money, it does not all go for wages, bet they get their big fat bonuses at the top of the tree and the wee men and women are the ones that are paying, as Robert says they are not transporting just 1 letter in a van, lorry or aeroplane, just my thoughts on the price hike.
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i reckon that theyve just increased the price to make the buisness appear profitable to justify a good share price when its floated on the market next year.
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i reckon that theyve just increased the price to make the buisness appear profitable to justify a good share price when its floated on the market next year.
Exactly right. And then it will be ripe for selling.
The company i work for has to tender for its contract with RM every two years, we are constantly threatened with them taking the business abroad. Our prices have been screwed back again this time around. The orange dots you see on your letters are made with ink made by where i work we ship it to all the main RM sorting offices for their printers/leter sorters. It is worth a great deal of money to us. If RM goes where will a small company employing 6 people like us be?
As for the price increase look at the hike in feue prices in comparision over the last few years,now that is daylight robbery and i don't see any of you giving up your motors!
Its like i said use it or lose it.
Mandy :pig:
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Use it or loose it is right and we have supported our local rural post office, but we are having to look at other ways to get things delivered now as parcel prices will be so expensive it will not be viable to our little business.
Mandy you may be worried for your job but what about mine that needs the service to deliver our goods. Our company is very small and not able to take such increases for too long.
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You'll be lucky to find anyone cheaper than RM for small items. The big couriers don't want small parcels they're too cumbersome to manage thro their sorting hubs and have to be manualy sorted which is why they leave and regularly sub out that size to RM! (had a TNT stamped letter but del by RM!)
On larger items the couriers will be cheaper but not if you're in the highlands,islands and way out places of our glorious nation, if you're near a major city you may be ok.
Hope you find a way Ellisr.
Mandy :pig:
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I have to say that I disagree with RM being the cheapest in the World though I cannot speak for general letters,I send parcels all the time and one example of using standard parcels only this week was I would have been charged £11.00 for a parcel whereas using the courier services I have I had it done for under £6.00.
When running a business in the south a few years ago,we always used our local post office for all small items which seemed fine then,but with the price increases since then it was not viable to use them for anything other than letters and these were few and far between.
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I remember my hubby buying a birthday card after mid day in Lanark to send to his mum the next day...she got it in the morning and I was sooo impressed, thats some going!!!
With the thought of E Mails being looked at we all will be posting more letters, do not get many but they are nice...not the brown ones though!
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How many will be sending Christmas Cards I wonder, I no longer write letters all emails now, a parcel cost me £12.50 the other day. When the rest of us have to do without pay rises but everything keeps going up something has to give . No wonder family's are falling apart, its too much stress of trying to make ends meet. Does not make sense to me.