Royal Mail discussion

[Mcr Warrior]

Just a 'heads up' for fellow forum members that the price of stamps for UK first class letters (i.e. up to 100g) goes up from 95p to £1.10 next Monday (3rd April 2023).

Second class stamps up from 68p to 75p.

 

[43096]

Just a 'heads up' for fellow forum members that the price of stamps for UK first class letters (i.e. up to 100g) goes up from 95p to £1.10 next Monday (3rd April 2023).

Second class stamps up from 68p to 75p.

So a 15% price rise for a service that is frankly diabolical. It's a company that doesn't deserve to be trading.

 

[tigerroar]

Still great value for money.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

So a 15% price rise for a service that is frankly diabolical. It's a company that doesn't deserve to be trading.

Don't shoot the messenger!

Probably the media won't mention these latest planned price increases until the day they've already gone up!

 

[gswindale]

So a 15% price rise for a service that is frankly diabolical. It's a company that doesn't deserve to be trading.

And one which may not be trading for too much longer - Guardian reporting a possible step towards insolvency for Royal Mail.

Royal Mail bosses threaten to declare insolvency as pay talks near collapse

Talks with union over pay and working practices are on brink of collapse and special administration has been explored

www.theguardian.com

 

[Gloster]

Note that they are only putting the letter mail business into administration. They are hanging on to Parcelforce, which just happens to be profitable.

A difficult decision for the government, it must be admitted, but even so they are bound to make a hash of it. Perhaps they’ll just be indecisive and call on everyone to come to an agreement in the interest of Sunak’s pension pot.

 

[johncrossley]

Still great value for money.

How do you judge value for money? I would compare against the alternatives over time. In the 80s, it was expensive to make a long distance call and so sending a letter was reasonable value by comparison. Now email is free and phone calls are more or less free if you use mobile apps or have unlimited UK minutes on your phone plan.

 

[Lucan]

phone calls are more or less free if you use mobile apps or have unlimited UK minutes on your phone plan.

Do tell me what your more or less free phone plan is.

 

[A0]

So a 15% price rise for a service that is frankly diabolical. It's a company that doesn't deserve to be trading.

Second class stamp prices are regulated, so RM are told what they can charge for that - it's not a commercial decision.

Who decides the price of a stamp?

Currently, first-class and second-class stamps are 85p and 66p respectively. But who actually sets the price of a stamp in the UK?

www.fool.co.uk

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 27 Mar 2023 ==

Do tell me what your more or less free phone plan is.

I would say when you either get unlimited free minutes or a number such as 3000 minutes per month - which equates to 50 hours a month. A number an "average" user is unlikely to ever reach.

 

[johncrossley]

Do tell me what your more or less free phone plan is.

A phone isn't much use without data, and the best value data plans have unlimited UK minutes and texts. For example with Lebara you can currently get 3 GB of data with unlimited UK minutes and data for 99p for the first 6 months, £4.90 afterwards. Obviously you can make audio and video calls using your computer or phone using Wi-Fi if you don't want to pay that. Of course, you have to pay for the internet access, but in 2023 you aren't likely to go without internet.

 

[A0]

Note that they are only putting the letter mail business into administration. They are hanging on to Parcelforce, which just happens to be profitable.

A difficult decision for the government, it must be admitted, but even so they are bound to make a hash of it. Perhaps they’ll just be indecisive and call on everyone to come to an agreement in the interest of Sunak’s pension pot.

The problem is the letters business is also the Royal Mail parcels business - Parcelforce only handles something like 10% of the group's parcel volumes. All the "small" parcels go via Royal Mail.

What they really need to do is separate Royal Mail parcels from letters and then scale back letters massively. Interestingly France has recently reduced its daily letter delivery to 3 days a week and other European countries are also doing the same, so there really isn't a case for a 6 day a week letter delivery any longer.

The administration threat is an interesting move - but the CWU need to start being a bit realistic. They've been blocking changes in that business for the last 10 years, despite signing up to an agreement with a previous CEO to work towards delivering productivity changes in return for pay improvements - they got the pay improvements then blocked the productivity improvements which was never going to be sustainable. And a high %age of the employees are shareholders - including many CWU members, so if they do push the company into administration they've just lost a load more money, in addition to the money they've lost through striking.

 

[zero]

I would be happy to receive letters 3 days a week (in practice, that has been the case for the past 6 months even though I should be receiving letters/small parcels most days every week), but the law needs to be changed so that it isn't assumed a letter has been delivered two days after sending by 1st class with proof of postage.

 

[Tazi Hupefi]

I would be happy to receive letters 3 days a week (in practice, that has been the case for the past 6 months even though I should be receiving letters/small parcels most days every week), but the law needs to be changed so that it isn't assumed a letter has been delivered two days after sending by 1st class with proof of postage.

Section 7 Interpretations Act 1978

References to service by post.

Where an Act authorises or requires any document to be served by post (whether the expression “serve” or the expression “give” or “send” or any other expression is used) then, unless the contrary intention appears, the service is deemed to be effected by properly addressing, pre-paying and posting a letter containing the document and, unless the contrary is proved, to have been effected at the time at which the letter would be delivered in the ordinary course of post.

Interestingly, "ordinary course of post" doesn't actually have a statutory definition. The two days is something of a myth that has "kind of" been viewed as reasonable in most legal settings, developed through case law precedent.

However...

Removing regular daily letter deliveries has all sort of other legislative consequences, mainly concerning road traffic enforcement, including private parking, but also things like Penalty Fare appeals, for the (very) rare person who elects to appeal by post rather than electronically.

There's probably a whole raft of other ancient statutes or practice directions that need abolishing, simplifying or replacing too concerning service by post.

There's not sufficient time in this Parliament to have such a review and get the legislation changed and implemented - so I doubt regular letter deliveries are going any time soon.

 

[43096]

What they really need to do is separate Royal Mail parcels from letters and then scale back letters massively. Interestingly France has recently reduced its daily letter delivery to 3 days a week and other European countries are also doing the same, so there really isn't a case for a 6 day a week letter delivery any longer.

Any day of the week would be a start. I’m still waiting for delivery if an item that was posted first class over a month ago.

 

[johncrossley]

Removing regular daily letter deliveries has all sort of other legislative consequences, mainly concerning road traffic enforcement, including private parking, but also things like Penalty Fare appeals, for the (very) rare person who elects to appeal by post rather than electronically.

These kinds of things shouldn't be delivered by post anyway, given the level of importance and consequences for not replying in a timely manner.

 

[Trainbike46]

These kinds of things shouldn't be delivered by post anyway, given the level of importance and consequences for not replying in a timely manner.

Then how should they be delivered?

email isn't suitable, mostly because of the high volumes of phishing emails, which have trained most people (including myself) to be really doubtful of anything suggesting serious consequences to not reacting

 

[johncrossley]

Then how should they be delivered?

email isn't suitable, mostly because of the high volumes of phishing emails, which have trained most people (including myself) to be really doubtful of anything suggesting serious consequences to not reacting

You would have secure message accounts with each organisation and you would get an email or text to let you know that there is a new secure message waiting to be read. Similar to how you correspond with banks. Royal Mail is unsuitable because other people in your household can see that you have received a letter from, say, a court or DVLA.

 

[A0]

Removing regular daily letter deliveries has all sort of other legislative consequences, mainly concerning road traffic enforcement, including private parking, but also things like Penalty Fare appeals, for the (very) rare person who elects to appeal by post rather than electronically.

There would still be 'special delivery' for such documents - at a cost naturally. But the issue of speeding tickets and parking tickets doesn't justify a 6 day a week letter delivery to every address.

 

[najaB]

You would have secure message accounts with each organisation and you would get an email or text to let you know that there is a new secure message waiting to be read. Similar to how you correspond with banks. Royal Mail is unsuitable because other people in your household can see that you have received a letter from, say, a court or DVLA.

That doesn't solve the problem of spam/scam messages and people's reluctance to open and take action on unexpected emails or texts.

 

[gswindale]

You would have secure message accounts with each organisation and you would get an email or text to let you know that there is a new secure message waiting to be read. Similar to how you correspond with banks. Royal Mail is unsuitable because other people in your household can see that you have received a letter from, say, a court or DVLA.

I correspond with the bank via mail. They may well have my statements available online, but any important correspondence comes through in the post.

Given the difficulties my parents recently had with one online portal where the password reset function failed and the suggestion was to register a new account which they couldn't because the email address was already in use, I'm not convinced that this is the way forward.

And how do we set the secure accounts up? Do I need, as an innocent, law abiding person, need to set accounts up with each organisation that could potentially send me a Speeding fine/PCN - I'm not sure I want to set accounts up with the likes of Horizon Parking and ECP just on the off-chance that I may at some point break their parking restrictions??

 

[johncrossley]

That doesn't solve the problem of spam/scam messages and people's reluctance to open and take action on unexpected emails or texts.

Some people ignore post as well.

 

[najaB]

Some people ignore post as well.

Indeed they do. I've personally fallen victim to ignoring post that turned out to be quite important!

However, there needs to be a point at which responsibility for transmission of the message needs to shift from the sender to the recipient. There are numerous technical reasons why an electronic message may not have been delivered (eg. spam/junk filtering), but if a physical piece of paper has been put through your letterbox then it really is up to you to explain how or why you never read it.

 

[johncrossley]

And how do we set the secure accounts up? Do I need, as an innocent, law abiding person, need to set accounts up with each organisation that could potentially send me a Speeding fine/PCN - I'm not sure I want to set accounts up with the likes of Horizon Parking and ECP just on the off-chance that I may at some point break their parking restrictions??

Everyone would have an account with the DVLA, and they would send a message to you informing that they have given your details to the relevant parking firm or whoever. That message would have details of how you would correspond with the relevant organisation. Alternatively, all messages simply go through the DVLA mailbox.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 28 Mar 2023 ==

However, there needs to be a point at which responsibility for transmission of the message needs to shift from the sender to the recipient. There are numerous technical reasons why an electronic message may not have been delivered (eg. spam/junk filtering), but if a physical piece of paper has been put through your letterbox then it really is up to you to explain how or why you never read it.

Using an agency to manually post paper through the letterbox can also go wrong.

 

[gswindale]

Everyone would have an account with the DVLA, and they would send a message to you informing that they have given your details to the relevant parking firm or whoever. That message would have details of how you would correspond with the relevant organisation. Alternatively, all messages simply go through the DVLA mailbox.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 28 Mar 2023 ==



Using an agency to manually post paper through the letterbox can also go wrong.

So how do I set up my secure account with the DVLA?

I'm pretty certain that when I set an account up with NS&I so I could deal with that online that they insisted on sending something through in the post. Same with HMRC when we set MTD up at work.

I believe also, that it is harder to move house than it is to move email provider. I could well setup a "secure account" with whichever organisation, but then forget and change email accounts a while later - leaving the old one to rot away. At some point that would stop receiving emails - how do they then contact me? Particularly if I'd forgotten the password...

Whilst I'm generally in favour of electronic communications rather than snail mail, I do think that for some things, it is making it more complicated than it needs to be.

 

[johncrossley]

So how do I set up my secure account with the DVLA?

The same way that you set up a secure account with all the organisations that you already have a secure account with, such as banks, ISA and pension providers etc. If you set up paperless correspondence with them you won't get letters through the post.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 28 Mar 2023 ==

I believe also, that it is harder to move house than it is to move email provider. I could well setup a "secure account" with whichever organisation, but then forget and change email accounts a while later - leaving the old one to rot away. At some point that would stop receiving emails - how do they then contact me? Particularly if I'd forgotten the password...

You have to keep your address with DVLA up-to-date by law, so you would have to keep your email address up-to-date with them, just like you would with your bank.

 

[najaB]

You have to keep your address with DVLA up-to-date by law, so you would have to keep your email address up-to-date with them, just like you would with your bank.

Not sure I'm comfortable with everything moving "online only" like this - you can be 100% certain that some people will share a single password across all services, making the effect of a credentials breach potentially catastrophic.

 

[gswindale]

The same way that you set up a secure account with all the organisations that you already have a secure account with, such as banks, ISA and pension providers etc. If you set up paperless correspondence with them you won't get letters through the post.

So basically by getting a code through the post then.

Might as well keep it as it is.

 

[johncrossley]

So basically by getting a code through the post then.

Might as well keep it as it is.

But that is just the one time, not every time, and you will be expecting that letter so you can complain if you don't get it. Whereas you might not be expecting something to do with camera enforcement. You would have to ring each police force and every parking firm on a regular basis to check whether they have sent you something.

Also, you don't always have to set up online accounts using codes through the post. For example, the Chase account is verified by showing them your ID using the phone's camera. The only post you ever get with them is when they send you the debit card. And that is arguably superfluous nowadays because of Google and Apple Pay.

 

[najaB]

And that is arguably superfluous nowadays because of Google and Apple Pay.

Not even close. There are still numerous places/situations where contactless payments aren't accepted or appropriate.

 

[Tazi Hupefi]

There would still be 'special delivery' for such documents - at a cost naturally. But the issue of speeding tickets and parking tickets doesn't justify a 6 day a week letter delivery to every address.

The cost (and time) of reviewing, consulting on, rewriting, pushing through and enacting the legislation is likely to be substantial - it's not simple. Probably would need a commission. It would also likely be highly controversial and likely to have rile up huge parts of society, and unions, even if the writing appears to be on the wall. No political party is stupid enough to embark on such folly until they've got a guaranteed parliamentary win in the bag, and plenty of time for it to be forgotten about and normalised for the election after that!

See also closure of bank branches, posf offices, ticket offices etc, even people that don't use them are happy to kick off for mainly nostalgic reasons rather than practical concerns - even if there are valid reasons for opposing these sorts of cuts. Emotion wins out over logic in politics.