Royal Mail Retracts Fee for Early Delivery

The Royal Mail yesterday staged an embarrassing climbdown over its plan to charge small businesses and householders £14 a week for early delivery of their post after its chairman said he had not been told about the scheme. Allan Leighton, chairman of Consignia, which is to revert to its Royal Mail name by the end of the year, said the postal service would now widen pilot projects to see if it could economically deliver small volumes of mail before 9am at £5 and £10, as well as £14, a week. The charges would have hit relatively small users of the mail. Anyone receiving an average of more than 20 letters a day would not be charged. Speaking on BBC television, Mr Leighton, Royal Mail’s part-time chairman, acknowledged he had not been briefed on the postal service’s plan to charge £14 a week for early delivery before it was leaked and stirred an angry reaction, especially from small business.” Financial Times: “A Royal Mail official explained that the postal service needed to experiment with different prices to find out the price point at which it could cover its costs and yet provide a service that customers wanted. ‘On the basis of the reaction, we’ve said maybe £14 was too much,’ said the official, who also pointed out that the greater the demand for early delivery, the cheaper it could become. The Royal Mail plans to decide its charges by the end of October and then to implement a single delivery over the following year.