Tag: Mail Services

Second anniversary of the liberalisation of the UK postal market

Posted by | Dec 28, 2007 | |

Postcomm has found competition in its second year is starting to benefit more and more mail users, but has urged all operators to rise to the challenges posed by the digital age.

Research commissioned by Postcomm in 2007 found the benefits that large mailers have been experiencing since the market was opened have now started to slowly spread to smaller businesses. However, much more progress is needed and the challenge posed by the growing number of alternatives to mail confirms the need for mail operators to continue to pursue greater innovation.

The market research, which formed part of Postcomm’s annual Business Customer Survey, revealed that although Royal Mail remains the dominant operator, one in five small and medium mailers and more than a third of large mailers are using more than one mail provider.

Postcomm’s annual Competitive Market Review (CMR), found that mail volumes were 2 per cent down on last year, but there are indications that direct mail is growing in sectors such as building societies, charity, and health.

End-to-end competition has declined by four million items and stands at less than one per cent of total mail volume, but mail volumes collected by ‘access’ operators and delivered by Royal Mail have more than doubled and now represent 19 per cent of revenue-derived mail volumes.

The research shows that a larger number of small businesses are beginning to benefit from competition, but much more needs to be done before small firms can experience the full benefits of competition that larger mailers have seen since the market was opened.

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Spanish Correos to increase stamp prices in 2008

Posted by | Dec 28, 2007 | |

Correos has increased its stamp prices by 1 cent for domestic standard letters in 2008 with effect 1 January 2008.

Letters and post cards up to 20 grams sent within the country will now have to be stamped with EUR 0.31 instead of EUR 0.30, while items between 20 and 50 grams will cost EUR 0.43 instead of EUR 0.42.

The prices for international letters and postcards will stay the same for letters up to 50 grams within Europe and the rest of the world. The prices for international shipments surpassing 1 kg as well as international parcel products and business parcels destined to main European countries will be reduced in 2008.

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PostEurop call Council of the European Union to resume negotiations on VAT legislation for postal services

Posted by | Dec 27, 2007 | |

The postal industry needs a reliable VAT legislation. The 6th VAT Directive no longer provides for legal certainty as demonstrated by the infringement procedures most recently launched by the European Commission. Moreover, taking into account the changes that the industry has undergone in the past 10 years, modernizing VAT regulations seems reasonable.
On May 5th 2003, the European Commission issued a “proposal for a directive amending directive 77/388/EEC as regards VAT on services provided in the postal sector” (COM/2003/234).
It provides for equal treatment of postal services in term of taxation. It also introduces an option to apply reduced VAT rates for certain postal services with the intention to limit any increase in postal prices due to the introduction of VAT.
On March 11th 2004, the European Parliament agreed to the introduction of VAT in public postal services. The European Parliament has proposed to make the application of a reduced rate mandatory.
The deliberations (2 July 2003 to 15 June 2004) within the Council failed in the absence of the required unanimity and negotiations have been suspended for about 3 years now.
On 23rd March 2006, the European Commission launched infringement proceedings by sending letters of formal notice to the UK, Sweden and Germany on the VAT application of postal services.
The rules governing the application of VAT should not be left to finally decisions by the ECJ based on an interpretation of the 6th VAT Directive (dating back to 1977). The decision how to apply VAT on postal services is essentially a political one and therefore needs to be agreed upon by the Council.

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Postal charges to be raised from Jan 1

Posted by | Dec 27, 2007 | |

The government has decided to raise postal charges from January 1.

The decision was made at a meeting of the council of advisers chaired by the chief adviser, Fakhruddin Ahmed, at his office on Wednesday.

From January 1, Bangladesh Postal Department will sell a post card at Tk 1.50 instead of Tk 1 and envelop at Tk 3 instead of Tk 2.

Besides, an additional 20 per cent service charge will be added to the actual cost of all foreign mails. The meeting approved a proposal for the signing of an additional protocol between Bangladesh and Qatar to facilitate more manpower export to Qatar. One of the key objectives of signing the protocol is to upgrade a treaty to this effect signed in January 1988 between the two countries.

The additional protocol will be signed in Dhaka in the first week of next month during the visit of a high-level delegation led by the labour and social affairs minister of Qatar.

1 USD = 68.3000 BDT

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Royal Mail loses 2 million presents

Posted by | Dec 23, 2007 | |

Royal Mail faces an angry consumer backlash this weekend over more than 2 million parcels and letters lost or delayed in the Christmas post.

Customers across the country are in danger of being left without their presents as postal workers are overwhelmed by the GBP 10 billion boom in online shopping. The backlog has allegedly been compounded by postal workers deliberately failing to deliver presents to save time on their rounds.

About 1.2m letters and parcels are already estimated to have been lost in the Christmas post. Hundreds of thousands of other items are delayed or awaiting collection at depots where queues of up to two hours have formed.

Postwatch, the independent watchdog, last week wrote to Adam Crozier, chief executive of Royal Mail, to demand that the recorded mail service be improved or scrapped, because so many customers who had paid extra for recorded mail complained that postal workers were routinely failing to get a signature on delivery.

The chaos managed to disrupt the last weekend before Christmas for thousands as they were forced to queue up to collect undelivered packages.

Royal Mail will handle about 120m parcels this Christmas, more than a 20 pct increase on last year. It says the vast majority will be delivered, but admits that it is recorded as a successful delivery even if a “you were out” card is dropped through the door.

Postwatch said Royal Mail’s most recently available figures indicated that it lost about 1m items of mail a month. Royal Mail said it was no longer publishing figures on the amount of mail it lost because the information was commercially confidential.

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