| Junk
Mail |
PRICE RISE
The price of first class stamps will
rise by 2p to 32p and second class will go up 1p
to 22p from April 2006. The higher prices mean
£1.2billion for Royal Mail to modernise and
£320million a year to cut their pension fund
deficit. Royal Mail chief executive Adam Crozier
said the change was to "reflect the true
cost" of handling mail as it prepares for
full liberalisation.
"Customers should pay prices that are
related to the cost of the postal services we are
providing," Mr Crozier said. Mr Crozier
added that Royal Mail lost 5p for every first
class letter and 9p for every second class letter
posted in 2003.
The news comes just weeks after the Royal Mail
revealed it was now making profits of £1m a day,
with its letters business posting a profit of
£26m for the six months to October 2004, £89m
up on the same period the previous year. |
NOT
HAPPY
Royal Mail called in lawyers to demand
Postwatch withdraw advice that people send
Christmas cards by second class post. Royal Mail
believes the advice could cost them £60million
and said, "First class mail gets priority.
It is sorted and delivered more quickly than
second class." But if everyone sent mail by
second class, there would BE no first class! |
ROYAL
MAIL RIP-OFF
Royal Mail chief Adam Crozier was paid
nearly £3million in 2004 while postal staff were
awarded a bonus of around £1,000. He picked up
bonuses on top of his £500,000 salary for
hitting profit targets but customer complaints
rocketed 300% as Post Office closures were
announced and details of fraud by postal workers
were revealed. |
PRICE
RISE BLOCKED
Royal Mail was blocked from putting the
price of a first-class stamp up by 60% to 48p.
Instead industry regulator Postcomm wants a price
cap guaranteeing the stamps will have risen from
30p to no more than 34p by 2010. Mail boss Allan
Leighton said, "These proposals will
literally starve Royal Mail of investment. We
cannot accept them." |
FINE
Royal Mail has been hit with its second
multi-million pound fine in a week. Regulator
Postcomm proposed the £2.16m fine because the
company had failed to take adequate steps to
ensure it did not gain "unfair commercial
advantage".
Private post companies Express, TNT Mail and UK
Mail complained about Royal Mail's competitive
behaviour in the newly-liberalised market last
year. (Source: BBC News, Feb/06) |
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2nd CLASS MAIL SERVICE
Page 1 | 2 | 3
Royal Mail to start leaving packages with
neighbours. The company also wants to end compensation
for loss or damage for business customers using
'untracked' services. Royal Mail has signalled an end to
the inconvenience of arriving home to find a note saying
your parcel with an online order or long-awaited gift
must be retrieved from the local sorting office. It
proposes that its delivery workers will in future be
allowed to leave an undeliverable item with a neighbour
if the householder is not at home.
The move will be welcomed by those who dread the
time-consuming trip to the sorting office and a queue to
collect their packet, but perhaps less so by those on
frosty terms with their neighbours. Royal Mail is the
only major delivery company which as standard practice
does not deliver to a neighbouring address those items
that will not fit through the letterbox. In a recent
survey, leaving mail with a neighbour was the most
popular option when no one was at home.
Royal Mail also wants to end compensation for loss or
damage for business customers using "untracked"
services, and to reduce the claim time-limit from 12 to
two months. Stephen Agar, Royal Mail's director of
regulated products, said, "The way we all use the
post is changing rapidly. We are seeking approval to make
some changes to the services we provide which better
reflect today's postal market."
But Robert Hammond of Consumer Focus said the changes
would cut customer rights and see their costs rise. While
it was "sensible" to make the delivery change,
he did not back cutting the compensation period to two
months: He said, "We do not support reducing
compensation claim times from a year to two months, as
Royal Mail admits that almost a third of customers take
more than two months to claim. As you can't claim in the
first 15 working days after posting, this would
effectively leave only six weeks to claim."
He also said there was no opt-out on leaving parcels next
door: changes in business compensation could also see
costs increase for cash-strapped customers. He added,
"Some consumers will like the idea of being able to
have mail left with a neighbour. However, worryingly
there is no opt-out option and with many people having a
neighbour they do not know, or might not trust, this
could open the door to problems." (Source: The Guardian, Jul/11)
Royal Mail has told postmen they do not have
to deliver to homes on cobbled streets in bad weather,
because rain makes them too "dangerous". Sally
Bellamy complained that deliveries to her street, the
last cobbled road in Bideford, north Devon, had been
erratic for three years. She claimed that her regular
postman refuses to walk less than 20 yards along the path
to her home even in good weather, and instead dumps mail
with a neighbour at the top of the road. She described
the situation as ridiculous and said although she
suffered from arthritis in her ankles and other joints,
she had no problem crossing the cobbles.
She said, "I've been told it's my path that's
dangerous, but the slates have been there for 280 years
without a problem. Courier parcels get delivered and
fruit and veg gets delivered. They don't have problems. I
don't believe my postman is endangering his life."
Michael Dalton, of Royal Mail, said the company was
making deliveries to the terrace, except when it was
considered unsafe. He said, "The road is in a poor
state of repair and when wet or icy it can become
dangerous. There are occasions when we have not been able
to make deliveries and alternative arrangements have been
made. We are in contact with residents and continue to
seek a solution with them." (Source: Daily Telegraph, Feb/10)
Royal Mail has been fined £11.7million for
the amount of post that is lost, stolen or damaged.
Postcomm, the official regulator, said it was issuing the
penalty because of the Royal Mail's failure to meet its
obligations to protect letters and parcels and for its
poor performance in parts of London. Postcomm said it had
uncovered some "serious" shortcomings during
2004/05, when 14.6 million letters, packets and parcels
were lost, stolen, damaged or interfered with. (Source: The Sun, Feb/06)
Royal Mail is in danger of going bust
because the Treasury refuses to bail it out to the tune
of £2 billion. The money is required to help stem a
pension deficit which is expected to rise to more than
£6 billion by the end of 2006. A senior executive said,
"We make about £600 million a year but we are going
to have to put £800 million into the scheme because
people are living longer. We are a commercial company and
we can't sustain the losses. We'll go bust." If the
Treasury does not provide the money, Royal Mail will go
to the Competition Commission to ask for an increase in
the price of stamps. Regulator Postcomm gave Royal Mail
permission to raise stamp by 6p in the four years from
April 2006 but Royal Mail argue that the real price
should be 46p if it is to cover its losses. (Source: Mail
on Sunday, Jan/06)
Royal Mail moved a postbox from outside the
former St Dunstan's Post Office, Osmaston Road, a place
it has stood for over 100 years, to the opposite side of
the road, where there are no homes. The postbox was moved
because it was on private property after the post office
was transformed into a shop. It was one of 13 branches in
the city to close as part of Post Office Limited's
restructure of urban branches. A Royal Mail spokesman
said, "We've had this on a couple of occasions when
the box has been on private property and we've been asked
to move it. We've been very careful where we've moved it
to, we moved it across the road because we wanted to try
and minimise any disruption to customers." (Source: Derby Evening Telegraph)
Figures released by the Royal Mail show the
organisation failed to meet its targets for delivering
first-class letters sent from Derby. The new figures
cover the first quarter of the financial year 2004, from
April to June, and show that 88.2% of first-class post
sent from the DE postcode to the rest of the country
arrived on time.
The target is 92.5%, and the service also failed to hit
its target with second-class postal deliveries, the
target is 98.5% of letters sent from Derby to be
delivered on time, but this figure achieved was 96.1%.
However, Royal Mail also said that the figure for July
showed that there has been a marked increase in
performance, with 93.8% of post sent from Derby to other
areas being delivered on time.
A spokeswoman said, "This July figure shows quite a
significant improvement. There has been a period of
immense change for our organisation, such as the move to
single daily deliveries, and changes our workforce has to
get used to. There's a settling in period and the fruits
of that are coming through in the latest results that we
are able to show."
The figures also showed that the Royal Mail missed all of
its national targets in the first quarter. Just 88.3% of
first-class letters were delivered on time across the
country, but the company insisted that reliability was
improving and said more than nine out of 10 first-class
letters were arriving the day after being posted.
However, it is still having to pay a record £50m in
compensation for late delivery of post. The compensation,
to business and individual customers, followed disruption
to the service in 2003, when deliveries were hit by
industrial action. (Source: Derby Evening Telegraph)
People should
send Christmas cards second class because of the slide in
first-class deliveries, the postal watchdog urged.
Postwatch said more than three in 10 first-class letters
posted over the past two years at Christmas time had
failed to arrive the next day. The group said "a
first-class stamp did not mean a first-class
service" at this time of year.
Chairman Peter Carr said, "The well-known cliche is
true, customers should post early for Christmas. While
the first-class service falls to below 70% delivered next
day, more than nine out of 10 second-class items are
delivered on time in the weeks before Christmas.
Customers should not only post early but use second-class
stamps to the last recommended posting date of December
18."
The Royal Mail accused Postwatch of giving customers the
wrong advice, saying, "First-class mail travels
significantly faster than second-class at Christmas, as
it does at all other times of the year. If customers want
their Christmas cards to travel faster they should use
first-class stamps. First-class mail gets priority and is
sorted before we handle second-class mail. Despite the
huge volumes of mail at Christmas, most first-class cards
and first-class mail still arrives the day after
posting." (Source: Daily Mirror)
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