Increased benefits for UK business mail customers from 2007 postage prices
Two new products and enhancements to existing services, aimed at UK business customers and large volume mailers, will be introduced on 2 April 2007, Royal Mail announced today. These are part of the changes to postage prices that will come into effect next year in line with the four-year price control set by postal regulator Postcomm in March 2006.
One of the new products is Automated Standard Tariff Large Letter. This offers business customers sending a minimum of 250 large letter-sized items that can be machine sorted discounts of between six to nine per cent.
Another new product – Cleanmail Advance – will offer easier access to discounts for customers sending more than 1,000 items with correct and machine readable addresses.
Lorna Clarkson, Royal Mail’s Director of Commercial Policy and Pricing, said: “Now that the UK mail market is open to full competition, it is essential that Royal Mail tailors its products more closely to its customers’ needs. We have developed these new products to appeal to government, financial services, and medium sized business customers to make communication with their customers easier, flexible and competitively priced.
“As Royal Mail’s prices need to more closely reflect the true cost of collecting, sorting and delivering around 80 million items of mail a day to 27 million addresses, we are committed to offering discounts to customers who give us mail that can be sorted by our machines, rather than by hand. These items cost us less to handle so it’s right that we reflect this in the prices we charge those customers.”
Royal Mail is also introducing enhanced volume-related discounts for some of its Mailsort business mail services. These include more volume-related thresholds that attract a discount, and a lowering of the minimum threshold, to enable a larger number of smaller mailers to qualify for a discount.
Prices will continue to decrease for heavier weight items, which will support the growth of the online retail market.
Ends
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NOTES TO EDITORS
• Business mail (business to business, business to consumer and consumer to business) makes up around 90% of Royal Mail’s daily mailbag. Mail sent by customers (such as personal letters and birthday cards) accounts for the remaining 10%.
• Full details of Royal Mail’s new prices can be found on Royal Mail’s website www.royalmail.com, through the customer service helplines – general enquiries: 08457 740 740 or for business enquiries: 08457 950 950 – or from Post Office branches.
