DX Services breaks UK Royal Mail’s pillar box monopoly
Royal Mail’s 150-year monopoly on pillar box deliveries is to be broken by a new rival in the partially deregulated postal market.
DX Services, the only other UK postal business to run an end-to-end delivery network, has installed blue pillar boxes to take business-to-business letters and packages in 96 outlets of retailer Mail Boxes Etc.
Items posted in the boxes will be delivered to company addresses overnight, with the option of bar-code tracking and a customer signature on delivery.
However, customers will only be able to post items during office hours since the DX pillar boxes will remain inside the Mail Boxes Etc outlets.
Peter Brougham, DX chief executive, said his company’s new service would offer small to medium-sized companies “a real alternative” to the existing postal service.
It is the latest of what is hoped will be many innovations as a result of opening up the UK postal market to competition.
Other new ideas to come from Royal Mail’s rivals include a guaranteed two-day delivery service for business customers who need to know when their post arrives but do not want to pay for the existing overnight first class service.
Postcomm, the industry regulator, has awarded eight companies with licences to operate in the UK, including the national postal carriers of the Netherlands and Germany and Express Dairies, which now delivers parcels as well as milk.
Royal Mail still has exclusive rights to deliver non-bulk mailings of letters weighing under 100g, where fewer than 4,000 items are sent at once.
However, Postcomm is preparing to open the UK postal market to full competition from January 1 2006.
The new entrants to the UK postal delivery market have so far cherry picked Royal Mail’s best business customers. Tesco, Vodafone and BSkyB are among those that have already moved all or part of their postal business to Royal Mail’s rivals.
Several new entrants have signed contracts with Royal Mail, paying the national carrier to cover the so-called “final mile” of delivery.
