Tag: Postwatch

The super-complaint from postal watchdog Postwatch has been referred by the OFT to the industry regulatory body Postcomm. The complaint, made on 18 March, related to Royal Mail’s Mailsort service. This provides a discount for businesses that carry out their own initial mail sorting for large volumes of mail. The complaint alleged that Royal Mail was abusing its dominant position in the market for delivering letters to favour its own mail consolidation business over its Mailsort service.

Royal Mail will today be given the freedom to increase the price of a first class stamp by 3p to 30p over the next two years, consumer lobby Postwatch
claimed in an attack on the industry regulator last night. “Postwatch is not convinced that a correct balance has been struck between the interests of consumers and those of Royal Mail in the regulator’s current proposals,” it said. “Consumers are being asked to pay significantly more than the 1p:1p originally proposed, with little justification by way of hard evidence or sound logic.”

After receiving new information from Royal Mail, and details of a strengthened audit procedure, Postcomm has decided not to issue a Final Order in relation to Royal Mail’s quality of service within individual postcodes. Postcomm issued notice of its intent to make a Final Order on 7 February after figures provided by Royal Mail indicated that the company was not likely to achieve the targets which require all individual postcodes to deliver 90% of first class post next day in February/March 2003. New information provided by Royal Mail, and confirmed by Postwatch and its auditors, Deloitte and Touche, shows the Royal Mail’s service quality is significantly better than it originally reported.

Royal Mail has been accused of “abusing its dominant position in the market” for the delivery of letters by its consumer watchdog, which has filed a special complaint to competition authorities. Postwatch yesterday submitted a “super complaint” to the Office of Fair Trading on behalf of many of Royal Mail’s large customers, saying the mail operator had abused its position by preferring its own mail consolidation business.