Royal Mail stamp increases and your business

[DanMartin]

Royal Mail has today (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7985185.stm) increased the price of standard first and second class stamps by 3p, while the cost of stamps for large first and second class letter have risen by 9p and 5p respectively.

I've putting together a news piece on the impact of the rises on small businesses so am interested in the views of UKBF members. Will the increases affect your operations and if so, how much extra will it cost you? I'll include the best quotes in my article.

[websnail]

This comparison sheet (http://www.octoinkjet.co.uk/_dlds/docs/rm-chg-08-09.pdf) I put together should help folks sending small packets to do a comparison to see how things have changed...

It doesn't include letter prices unfortunately as I've not needed that information but it should still be useful for those selling and dispatching goods rather than just letters.

The main points that are worth noting include:


International Airmail gets incrementally more expensive with a 4p increase rising to £2.19 extra @ 2Kg
Sending small packets to Europe by airmail is actually cheaper up to 620g as Royal Mail have combined their printed paper & small packets rates into one. It gets more expensive after that though.
Special Delivery jumps between 35p and 95p while other recorded service (including international) are between 20 and 30p increases

[Fuzzy]

It does have an impact of ours I'm afraid. We offer free delivery and won't be putting our prices up so therefore have to brunt the price increase ourselves. Too big a jump imo:eek:

[UKSEOAgency]

It affects us as well :(

we send out backup cd's to all clients who take up that service - we cant put the pricing up either :(

[Mister B]

Well, it obviously affects all those who currently use RM.

In our case, for the time being we will absorb the costs as well and monitor the action of our competition. However, because of the rate of increase, along with other factors, I can actually foresee us having to increase our postage charges.

Mister B

[Christiane]

I already subsidise quite a bit the special delivery for my customers so I am thinking of increasing it by 50p. Same for international signed for.

But no change for standard mail (mostly packets on PPI) unless I see a huge increase in the average of this weeks mail (maybe not as it's a 4 day week!!!! Doh).

[Gavin Harris]

I now send all letters and invoices out via TNT-it and ViaPost. I keep a book of about stamps nearby for the rare times I need to phyically post something - but I'm saving a lot of time and money using the above services.

[Printing&Postage]

Hi,

I'd like to second Gavin's suggestion, but add our service to the list:
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From 25p plus VAT with no minimum order value/qty.

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Visit our website above, or Google for DocMail.

Cheers.
Will