TOPIC:

UK Royal Mail are changing their pricing structure to make things "fairer" and "less complicated". Perhaps unsurprisingly, this will mean prices going up dramatically for some items, and an extra layer of complexity. Just to add insult to injury, compensation for lost items will be reduced too.

Your can read about the changes here and here ... as far as I can see, the main changes are that compensation will be reduced from a maximum of 46 GBP to 20 GBP (unless you pay extra for a signed for service (the price of which is going up), in which case it gos up to 50 GBP), and that parcels will be divided into "small" and "medium" classes.

That might sound fair enough, but the size limits are 45cm x 35cm x 8cm - that 8cm is a real kicker and prices for "medium" parcels "start from" 5.65 GBP. To put that in perspective, the bodyshell I got the other day cost the seller 2.85 GBP to send in a box, from 2nd April that would cost nearly twice as much - so either costs are going to up, or packing standards will drop to squeeze under that stupid 8cm limit.


I've bitched before about how closing local sorting offices & moving the work to regional hubs to "reduce costs" and "improve service" has added 3 days to the time it takes some incoming or outcoming post to arrive, apparently leases on post office vehicles have been extended from 3 years to 5 to save money ... so with prices constantly going up and services going down, where's the money going? I can only assume that the heating systems that allow management to sit around on their fat asses must be fueled by bundles of 50 GBP notes

I share your frustration Jonny. I think this will lead to more people using courier services (much to Eddrick's disgust ), especially for that £5.65 band. Royal Mail seem to be doing everything they can to make local Post Offices non-viable. Services like Hermes will pick up from your house and deliver to anywhere in the UK for less than that.

I run a small business that relies on sending items around the UK (mainly) so I am constantly searching for ways to reduce shipping costs. Fortunately the items are relatively high value, so the shipping costs are small in relation and the volumes are low. Unfortunately this means I cannot get the best deals from the couriers. I have an account with UPS with 30% discount (there is no minimum level for this discount rate, you just have to ask for it). Despite this, shipping a small parcel from a supplier in Crawley to a UK address costs nearly £50 (!). If I book through Interparcel, the same consignment with the same carrier costs just £8.49 +VAT. How can this make sense? If UPS would give me a sensible rate, I would use my account and they would make more money.
Sorry - slightly off-topic, but I needed a rant

Ha, yes Martin!
Might be worth looking into paying taxi drivers to deliver stuff instead, I've done that in the past.
Is it any cheaper in fuel to pick local stuff up?

I've been put off myhermes due to the slow delivery, but they're looking a whole lot more attractive now

You can get cream for that

I still don't understand why, in this age of technology, mail isn't calculated per package, based on specific size and weight of that package.

Instead, parcels still have to fall into huge, demented "brackets" of size. So being just 1 gram over some special limit means the price suddenly leaps up awkwardly, like a drunk kangaroo.

In Australia, I was posting 3 Tamiya body sets the other day. As we all know, they are lightweight, at 200-300grams each.

Sending each one in a box on it's own was....
$6.60each if the weight was 500grams or less
$15.70each if the weight was 501grams or more

?!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

Also, since all 3 body sets were going to the same person, I tried doing combined postage.
So I got the smallest box into which all 3 would fit.
The cost of this? $48!!

It happens because Australia Post has special rules about parcels over 500 and over 1kg. Once you pass some magical numbers, they employ a magical 'cubic' size algorithm to artificially inflate your price, thus ensuring you're dutifully bent over the counter and given a good rogering.

It's been a while since my OP & the big thing to happen to Royal Mail since then is that it has been successfully partially privatised, or fraudulently sold off at a fraction of its value so some toffs that members of the government went to school with can shovel even more filthy lucre into their back pockets, depending on how you look at it

Anyway ... apparently the small/medium parcel demarcations and/or prices are changing because of competition from the likes of myHermes.

Looking deeper into it, that's not quite true ... what's happening is that the "small parcel exception", which allowed cube shaped parcels of up to 160mm per side will be amended to 350 x 250 x 160mm.

Prices won't change, but it does mean that for certain sizes/weights, what would have been a "medium parcel" sent without tracking & minimum insurance, costing 5.65 GBP to send, will now be a "small parcel" & cost 3 GBP.

Meh

Royal Mail lost a package.
Four new Madcap wheels.
I'm very *******Y for this.

Max

I got an email this morning confirming the changes referring to the small parcel sizes as "WIDE" and "DEEP". I assume these changes are now live as the RM website as has info on them: www.royalmail.c...mallparcel

I'm posting this here as it seems appropriate (although perhaps I need to rename the thread to "Royal Mail is pants" ) ...

A while back, rules were introduced (or tightened, or began to be enforced, depending) further restricting what could be sent by Royal Mail for "health and safety reasons" (and hasn't that turned out to be the second greatest excuse ever?); for our purposes the items involved are paints and lithium batteries, but given the general lack of training (I'm being positive there and allowing for that possibility, though my first choice would be cluelessness and/or obstructiveness) of the average counter staff any mention of a battery will cause your parcel to be rejected - I tried to send a charger recently & that had to be referred to a supervisor

Anecdotal evidence suggests any suspicious packages (I guess they sound like they have a rattle can in?) are routed to Northern Ireland (because they suddenly _become_ safe to transport by road or air that way ) and "disposed" of - destroyed or sold, officially, but I'm not convinced.

For clarity, again let me say that I'm not hatin' on postmen for the sake of it - the staff that actually do the delivering are overwhelmingly honest and hardworking, counter staff are merely erratic - it's the management that need to be put up against a wall.


Anyway, the reason for the rant is that some enterprising eBay sellers have found a way round the issue - I had two cans of deodorant arrive in the post yesterday - and not for the first time