Royal Mail Price Rises & 24/48

[joshgeake]

I noticed a sneaky change from Royal Mail that I thought I'd let people know about.

From 4th April 2022, Royal Mail will no longer charge for 24 parcel weights between 1.0kg and 2.0kg. See their new charging table below:

 

[Karimbo]

Is this a typo? Please tell me its a typo.

 

[joshgeake]

Is this a typo? Please tell me its a typo.

Nope, I asked my Royal Mail account manager yesterday and she confirmed that this will be the charging structure from 1st April.

 

[Paul Norman]

I think it is entirely reasonable that postage and courier charges will increase significantly over the next few months. How the companies structure that increase will be interesting, this is an industry facing massive upward pressure on its cost base.

 

[MikeCC]

Interesting as the 2kg RM24 price has actually come down (currently £3.94) albeit 5% up on RM48. It may not be as cynical as it might seem. If you are on the average weight system, it makes it easier to fit in a larger band, and less work for their Revenue Protection people in checking it. In other words, lower cost of compliance for both parties.

I just wish they would release Tracked 24/48 in to Click and Drop as an ad hoc service rather than a volume contract. Crazy when you can buy it as a consumer on Royal Mail website.

 

[Karimbo]

Interesting as the 2kg RM24 price has actually come down (currently £3.94) albeit 5% up on RM48. It may not be as cynical as it might seem. If you are on the average weight system, it makes it easier to fit in a larger band, and less work for their Revenue Protection people in checking it. In other words, lower cost of compliance for both parties.

har har har

we all thought they were mad when they introduced the difference sizing. Rather than just weight. How much more is pricing by size going to cost them? If they can price bu size LL, letter, 3x different parcel dimension then I'm sure they can easily weigh a parcel and tell the difference from .99kg and 1.01kg

I wish hermes was more reliable.

I was actually working towards getting my 20 parcels a week so I could join OBA but it seems like small discount isn't worth the random surcharges and other things?

Someone on ebay forums was complaining that their 45g LL got surcharged because apparantly it was >750g. The sender had all the proof including their ebay listing of the item they sent and packing slip. But RM refuse to budge. Other users chimed in saying perhaps their item got stuck with another item and the computer misweighed it.

I just wish they would release Tracked 24/48 in to Click and Drop as an ad hoc service rather than a volume contract. Crazy when you can buy it as a consumer on Royal Mail website.

What do you mean by that? I have a non-OBA click and drop account and I can buy it on the online account.

 

[MikeCC]

What do you mean by that? I have a non-OBA click and drop account and I can buy it on the online account.

Exactly - non-OBA, so you have to fiddle around with payment for every batch. If they had a pre-pay option for non-OBA Click and Drop it would be OK for accessing Tracked 24/48 when we needed it.

 

[Karimbo]

Exactly - non-OBA, so you have to fiddle around with payment for every batch. If they had a pre-pay option for non-OBA Click and Drop it would be OK for accessing Tracked 24/48 when we needed it.

It is a little bit of a nuisance but not that bad. I dont understand why they dont save card details for future and why I have to enter it every time. I dont want to use google pay because I could accidently pay using my personal card and complicate things for myself.

I also hate why click and drop doesn't save my preferences. I want to send first class only and no I don't want to pay you to collect a day later when I have a letterbox at the end of my road. But c&D will always make me expand options to get 1st class signed for instead of 2nd class signed for. It will also select collect from me, rather than me drop off to them.

 

[TCHCo_NE]

Found this thread as I needed to moan about RM price increase on its Tracked 24/48. I just literally received the letter now saying they'll be increasing the rate by 97p from 3.65 previously. Plus VAT and surcharges.

The only advantage for me having an OBA is the collection as it's a schlep to go to the DO. I'm now considering getting out of the contract, but with the increase in petrol prices, is it worth driving the 6miles, twice weekly to save on a few pennies.

 

[Karimbo]

Omg just realised I was doing click and drop all wrong.

Was chatting to a mate who has an online store and we were talking about click and drop.

He mentioned features that I was adamant don't exist. And I use click and drop on a regular basis so I know I'm correct.

Well turns out, I was using https://send.royalmail.com instead of https://parcel.royalmail.com

Both have click & drop logo on it, but one of them is a lite version and the other is a full commercial version.

I was wasting so much time manually copying and pasting the address each time.

Now it does it automatically.

Here's the kicker. When i was manually entering the postcode I was able to detect invalid addresses. I've had 300 orders so far in my store and two times people put an incorrect postcode (from an old address) in the new address.

I just had one today. Wales postcode with London address. It's a very simple function for click and drop to automatically detect unusual addresses and flag it up. HERMES does it!

I Googled to see if there was a feature and it turns out, there isn't. On royal mails feature request side, someone asked for that back in 2018. Staff said it's pending. Its now 2022 and it's still not implemented.

Of course there are bootlickers on the website saying its not royal mails job to validate addresses.

 

[Karimbo]

Here's the thread

Validate Postcode and Address Match

The system automatically downloads the address from our website but without validating that the postcode matches the address. We get many addresses entered incorrectly by the customer and using the billing address with the different delivery postcode. The postcode and address do not match but...

clickanddrop.uservoice.com

Please upvote this feature request.

Look at the numpty Royal mail admin reply 6 months after the post "we'll look into this as soon as possible". In September 2018. I guess 3.5 years is ASAP for them.

Never mind the feature doesn't go far enough. The postcode has to match the first line of the address, the town match is pointless. If the postcode matches the town but the first line is completely wrong then I'm the whole address is still invalid.