UK Royal Mail accused of licence breach

Royal Mail has been accused of offering a cut-price service to catalogue companies in an attempt to win more business, a potential breach of its licence punishable by a fine.

Postcomm, the postal regulator, announced that it had received information suggesting Royal Mail was offering undisclosed discounts to attract catalogue mail.

The regulator said it had served Royal Mail with an enforcement order to provide detailed information about the alleged discounts, and that the postal company had agreed to comply. Postcomm said the inquiry would take “a few weeks”. The Office of Fair Trading might also get involved, Postcomm warned, but the OFT “has agreed that Postcomm will for the moment take the lead”. Royal Mail said it was “very surprised” at Postcomm’s statement and insisted it had “behaved properly and fairly at all times”. Royal Mail said there had been a misunderstanding involving some recent market research, a scheme “to grow the mail market by getting mail order companies to post more”.