post office prices wow they got expensive

shoemaker666

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just sent a small parcel 2nd class recorded had a light switch in it £3.15 !!! i couldnt belive it

rant over
 
Ordered something from the USA, got a customs charge. £4.31. Reasonable.

Royal Mail's handling fee? £8.
 
Christmas is coming soon.

A 2nd Class Stamp costs £0.50

A cheap Christmas Card costs......, Say £0.25

Hmmm?

I forecast an absolutely massive crash in Christmas Card numbers this year.

I reckon 'down by 25% on last year'. What do you think?
 
I'm on a training course all week in London this week. I first got the train to London from my local station back in dec 2004 and it was ~£14 for a Travelcard, today its £23! :eek:

I stopped commuting in 2009 due to the high costs, but we were told the high prices were to pay for station improvement, new rolling stock, etc

Well, my station is still a dump, and the rolling stock still from yesteryear, AND there are less services coming back in rush hour :mad:
 
Christmas is coming soon.

A 2nd Class Stamp costs £0.50

A cheap Christmas Card costs......, Say £0.25

Hmmm?

I forecast an absolutely massive crash in Christmas Card numbers this year.

I reckon 'down by 25% on last year'. What do you think?

Not a chance, I doubt it will have much effect at all. Plus, for this christmas anyone claiming a benefit can buy a certain amount of stamps (24 or 36, I can't remember which) at 2011 prices.

I guess it's worth pointing out that a 1st class stamp in the UK is one of the cheapest in the EU, plus we have a cheaper 2nd class option that many countries do not.

Just wait until RM is privatised. We heard from a manager last week that the business is now making a nice profit, and will soon be seeking 'outside investment'. That will at some point mean the end of a daily delivery all over the UK.
 
shoestring25 said:
just sent a small parcel 2nd class recorded had a light switch in it £3.15 !!! i couldnt belive it

rant over

It'd be cheaper to send a cheque and a bus ticket to B&Q

I took a parcel in to the PO recently , they wanted £11 to send it standard parcels untracked

I sent it collect+ tracked for £4.99

I don't send anything over 1kg with Royal Mail now

Don't get me started on special delivery

2000g £9.75

2100g £23.50

That must be the most expensive 100g in the world
 
Fingers crossed they get privatised and that stupid government rule will be abolished allowing some competition.
 
going on past experiences of other services being privatised - I can't possibly see how they will get better.. :(
 
I just received some eye ointment for my dog from the vet. 3g tube in a small jiffy envelope. £2.36 first class. Wouldn't have cost me much more than that in diesel had I gone to pick it up myself.

I shudder to think how much postage for my wife's business would cost now if she had not retired. Our average spend on postage was £100 a week 10 years ago.
 
Not a chance, I doubt it will have much effect at all. Plus, for this christmas anyone claiming a benefit can buy a certain amount of stamps (24 or 36, I can't remember which) at 2011 prices.

I guess it's worth pointing out that a 1st class stamp in the UK is one of the cheapest in the EU, plus we have a cheaper 2nd class option that many countries do not.

Just wait until RM is privatised. We heard from a manager last week that the business is now making a nice profit, and will soon be seeking 'outside investment'. That will at some point mean the end of a daily delivery all over the UK.


Subsidised no doubt. No wonder we're broke. Paying for someone to buy an over-priced card that doesn't need to be sent in the first place and which the recipient will chuck in the bin at the first opportunity after Christmas.
 
Begonia said:
Christmas is coming soon.

A 2nd Class Stamp costs £0.50

A cheap Christmas Card costs......, Say £0.25

Hmmm?

I forecast an absolutely massive crash in Christmas Card numbers this year.

I reckon 'down by 25% on last year'. What do you think?

Glad i have no friends to send cards too. lol
 
My wife paid £200 for 225 Euros on monday!!!! :eek::eek::eek:
 
:laugh: i hate christmas cards. so that job goes to my wife to write them all out.

Im not a big fan of christmas full stop, well i do enjoy receiving presents I'm just not very fond of giving them to people unless its something new and shiny i brought for myself lol
 
reiteration said:
going on past experiences of other services being privatised - I can't possibly see how they will get better.. :(

Certainly can't get any worse.
 
Fingers crossed they get privatised and that stupid government rule will be abolished allowing some competition.

Do you realise the government opened up the UK postal service to competition before any other country in the EU? And do you know that any company can apply for a license to deliver mail, and that TNT have actually trialled this in parts of the UK?

The thing is, Royal Mail cannot possibly compete on a level playing field with it's competitors because it has an obligation to deliver 6 days per week to every address in the UK. (the USO).

In many many areas it is simply not profitable to do this, and that's why RM HAS to have some protection because it delivers to everywhere regardless of making a loss - no other company will ever provide this service because it makes no sense to lose money. They will simply cherry pick the most profitable parts of the business (they're already doing it, look at your 'junk' mail, banks statements etc and you'll see TNT, UK Mail etc etc in the top corner, this is bulk business RM has lost yet still has to deliver at a reduced rate).

Put simply, privatisation and a full, open postal market will 100% mean the end of daily deliveries if you live anywhere but a heavily populated City area. And I guarantee you prices won't go down, and the service won't get better either. In fact it's the opposite, the reason the service has gone downhill is because there has been a huge push to cut costs and ripen the company for privatisation.

In the last 10 years the number of addresses in the UK has risen from 27m to 29m, but the number of RM employees has dropped from 240,000 to 160,000.

As for the 60p 1st class stamp price - before the rise RM was delivering all stamped mail at a loss. This was traditionally subsidised by profitable business mail, but as I mentioned above other companies are picking off this business meaning it simply wasn't sustainable for RM to carry on. The USO was at real risk which is why prices had to rise.
 
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Apart from Parcels and My council Tax bill once a year I can't think what post we get now ?

All the utility bills are online as are banking etc.

If Competition eats up the Parcel side then RM will not get cheaper.
 
We get through a lot of post at work and it costs us a bomb. And to top it off, RM want to charge £205 for 12 months business redirect per trading name. When you have 5 trading names that's a lot of money to redirect your post. It only costs £40 odd if it's a personal redirect.
 

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