Post-Switch urges charities to beat Royal Mail price rise

Price comparison agency Post-Switch is encouraging companies and charities to compare offerings to help them keep mailing costs down and beat the Royal Mail price hike.

On 7 April 2008 Royal Mail is putting up the cost of first class mail from 34p to 36p and second class by 3p from 24p to 27p. For commercial business users, including charities, Royal Mail will be raising its Mailsort tariff rates: for example, Mailsort 2 is typically going up by a unit cost of 1.5p and Mailsort 3 mailings by 0.8p.

At Christian relief and development agency Tearfund, Clive Mear, Production Director, has resized all the charity’s mailings including the Living gifts voucher scheme and the Fair Trade goods catalogue to keep the price of postage down. A member of the Charity Print Consortium, Mear uses Post-Switch to compare prices for all mailings over 10,000.

Dartford-based printing firm Howard Hunt sends out over 600 million direct mail packs a year for such household brands as British Gas and Vodaphone as well as charities including Oxfam. Lucy Edwards at Howard Hunt says that comparing postal prices on every project is essential: she said: “Our clients trust us to keep the cost of their jobs down and often look to us for help in stretching the budget, so switching postal providers when we can to save money makes sense.”

Post-Switch recommends that direct mail managers should have a postal health check every quarter to ensure they are receiving the most competitive rates.