Britains first fully privatised door-to-door post service to rival the Royal Mail is to be trialled in Scotland.
Glasgow and Edinburgh have been chosen, along with Manchester, for an experiment which will give customers the choice of having collection, sorting and delivery carried out entirely in private hands.
Read MoreChanges to postage prices could cause confusion at Post Office branches, customers and consumer groups have warned.
Royal Mail is bringing in a new system called Pricing in Proportion, which it claims will make the cost of posting a letter fairer.
The changes, which come into effect on August 21, mean charges will be based on size and thickness as well as weight.
The cost of posting an A4 envelope will go up – with a new 44p stamp introduced.
Royal Mail says the new system better reflects the cost of collecting, sorting and delivering mail.
But some people are worried it could cause frustration at the Post Office counter.
Read MoreUnion leaders are set to hold a strike ballot among 12,000 Royal Mail managers and supervisors in the dispute over pay.
Officials at Amicus argued that an informal offer means 4 out of 10 senior staff would receive less than the inflation rate and would in effect suffer a drop in income.
Read MoreChanges to the way people pay for postage will cause utter confusion and lead to longer queues at post offices.
From August 21, letters and packages will be charged according to a complicated combination of size, width and weight.
And consumer groups predict that Royal Mail’s new Pricing in Proportion system will cause a flood of queries to counter staff.
Read MoreRoyal Mail is planning a pre-emptive strike to prevent competitors from cherry-picking major business clients, by bringing in a pricing structure that offers major discounts for city deliveries.
Called ‘zonal pricing’, the scheme will charge various rates according to the destination, and is to affect all mail sent through Mailsort 3 – the most popular service for direct mail. It will include magazine- delivery scheme Presstream.
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