Royal Mail to increase fees for PO Box customers

The DM industry is facing a bill for millions of pounds after Royal Mail’s move to introduce additional charges for its PO Box system, which it currently offers for a nominal fee.

Companies use PO Box numbers to separate mail into batches for different departments or clients. This is important for DM agencies, which use the boxes to receive responses across a variety of campaigns or brands.

For an annual fee, Royal Mail allocates each client a PO Box number, so that post related to different campaigns is delivered separately.

But Royal Mail has decided to scrap this system and deliver mail across PO Box addresses in a single mixed batch, meaning clients will have to sort their own post. Royal Mail has said customers can opt to pay for an additional service called Selectapost, under which PO Box mail will continue to be sorted, but according to industry insiders, this will cost significantly more.

Royal Mail said the system was being changed as a result of unacceptably high sorting costs.

The new system coincides with Royal Mail’s latest ad campaign, which is intended to spread the message that it offers the best postal delivery service for businesses.