Should we be worried about Royal Mail possibly stopping Saturday deliveries?
Its been in the news recently that Ofcom have recommended that Royal Mail be allowed to stop Saturday deliveries. I know the Government have said they are against this - but the Government may change this year....
So this has raised several questions which the news articles I have seen do not explain.
1. Will this effect only letter post or parcel post as well? The news kept mentioning letters but then interviewed magazine publishers who said they were worried about the potential change - but they wouldn't be affected if it was only saturday letter post that may be stopped and not parcel post.
2. Other couriers manage to do parcel post at weekends (including sundays) so why should Royal Mail be exempted ?
3. If it did come to pass - do you think Amazon would start to insist we only use couriers that offered saturday delivery?
Should we be worried about Royal Mail possibly stopping Saturday deliveries?
Its been in the news recently that Ofcom have recommended that Royal Mail be allowed to stop Saturday deliveries. I know the Government have said they are against this - but the Government may change this year....
So this has raised several questions which the news articles I have seen do not explain.
1. Will this effect only letter post or parcel post as well? The news kept mentioning letters but then interviewed magazine publishers who said they were worried about the potential change - but they wouldn't be affected if it was only saturday letter post that may be stopped and not parcel post.
2. Other couriers manage to do parcel post at weekends (including sundays) so why should Royal Mail be exempted ?
3. If it did come to pass - do you think Amazon would start to insist we only use couriers that offered saturday delivery?
7 replies
Seller_ZJhFeE3tNKzfh
I'm only going on the BBC article - but that leads with "Royal Mail could reduce the number of days it delivers letters from six per week to five or even three"
But even if it was including parcels, Amazon you'd hope would work around this or at least allow you to present longer shipping times in your Shipping Templates.
Seller_tRuvBEHDedp4q
Yes that is what confused me when the news keeps mentioning letters - then on ITV they interviewed a person at Radio Times who said they needed Saturday deliveries to continue. But the Radio Times would be a parcel not a letter - or are magazines classed as letters through some exemption?
Seller_xU4h6ZbAduf0O
Royal Mail has been trying to drop the USO for many years since it was privatised and forced into downstream access by the regulator for other mailing houses to be able to use Royal Mail for the "last mile" deliveries at a highly reduced, unprofitable pittance.
What Royal Mail is trying to achieve is a way forward to be profitable with the decline in letter post from something like 20 billion letters a year to 3 billion but still expected to deliver to every single mail point in the country 6 days a week at a loss, on a regulation set up a very long time ago when it had a door to door monopoly.
They are proposing dropping delivering letters and large letters on a Saturday (which is why magazine mailing houses are up in arms as they want the items delivered traditionally on a Saturday) BTW most magazines dont pay Royal Mail for their mailing but use the cheaper downstream access mailing houses like TNT who then force Royal Mail under the USO to deliver the last mile at a pittance whilst they take the lion share just for pre-sorting it and dropping it off on Royal Mail.
Royal Mail are now turning from letter delivery service more into a parcel service and are concentrating on the stream that is in growth, not decline.
They will still collect/deliver parcels on Saturdays and are also working Sundays now as well for Tracked and Specials to take them into the 21st century and catch up with the competitors who are not strangled by the USO.
This is all about letters and cash.
The only way for them (which the regulator agrees) is to either drop delivering letters on Saturdays or to stagger the delivery days for letters to every other day so postmen aren't driving to a remote farm in the middle of nowhere to deliver just 1 letter every day for pence.
The other proposal(and the more likely one) is for Royal Mail to bring postage costs more in line with continental Europe's costs which will see the price of a stamp double, where under the current USO and regulator is capped for the amount they can raise the price, and removing this cap will allow Royal Mail to price these services more in line with the true cost of delivering a declining service.
The 3rd option is a Government bailout.
So in essence to the question.... at this point nobody knows, but i will be quite a while for it to happen either way as it has to be legislated in the Commons and Lords.
At worst, i believe that only letters and standard large letters would be affected but tracked LL and parcels wont be.
