A year ago Tamebay reader Mark bemoaned the lack of large letter pricing for Royal Mail Interational postage. Now it appears someone at Royal Mail was listening and his wish has been granted.
From the 30th March 2015, a new category of International Large Letter is being introduced with four weight bands from 100g to 750g. This offers an alternative to the International Small Parcels pricing if you’re selling items which fit within the Large Letter format.
Well spotted Mark and thanks for the heads up!
Royal Mail International Large Letters vs Small Parcel Pricing |
||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Weight |
Large Letters |
Small Parcels |
||||
Europe |
World Zone 1 |
World Zone 2 |
Europe |
World Zone 1 |
World Zone 2 |
|
| 100g | £2.45 | £3.15 | £3.30 | £3.45 | £4.10 | £4.45 |
| 250g | £3.70 | £4.75 | £5.05 | £3.95 | £5.00 | £5.45 |
| 500g | £5.15 | £7.45 | £7.90 | £5.50 | £7.70 | £8.45 |
| 750g | £6.60 | £10.15 | £10.75 | £6.85 | £10.30 | £11.15 |
11 Responses
Well Spotted – thanks, I missed this.. now off hunting for the booklet to see if this also applies to Destination Sort as well.. as that would be really good
Points to ponder…
1) This is a price increase for any item over 25mm thick from £3.20 to £3.45 (for Europe)
2) The International Large Letter rate of £2.45 is still a huge increase over the previous rate. I used to post 50 gm of headphones for less than half this new price.
3) Royal Mail published the consultation doc on 14/01/15 and they publicised it so widely that almost no-one even heard about it.
Submissions were due in by 13/02/15 and the decision doc published on 26/02/15 noted that RM had a grant total of 2 responses (that is “Two” and is not a typo).
So, while acknowledging that the introduction of the International Large Letter is a good thing, RM should have introduced this last year when they made the larger scale changes and they clearly did nothing to ensure sufficiently wide circulation of the consultation.
Mark
About time. Was ridiculous that international large letter and small packets were previously the same price despite being sorted differently and obviously with large letters being.
This is a not wholly serious but also not wholly whimsical…..
Article 34 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU (TFEU) relates to import restrictions or Measures Having Equivalent Effect to a Quantitive Restriction (MEQR). You cannot do anything that has the effect of impending trade between Member States unless the reason falls under Art 36, that is, public health, national artistic treasures etc.
Much less common is Article 35 which imposes the same rules on exports.
What RM did has clearly affected the quantity of exports. If the regime before last year’s changes was allowed under Universal Postal Union rules and by the UK government, as it must have been, then there was no internal or external powers which forced RM to introduce a system which affected only part of the outgoing postal stream to this degree therefore, the measures taken (raising the price that much) were disproportionate to the goal of streamlining the RM postal operations.
Good grief, over half of my items are sold overseas (mostly US) – and usually LL. Finally a piece of quite good news? Surely not. I expect a big Butt to loom.
This has been available on OBA for some time, and much more competitive on pricing. If you have the volume get yourself an OBA.
Lovely!!!
i mentioned this on the other general post in the latest increases.
i send LL sized items have have also been puzzled by why they are parcels when abroad but if uk buyer bought exact same item would be LL.
a saving for my worldwide buyers, and hopefully ill score some more sales from it.
although in general i have been the ONLY seller of specialist items, so buyers have had no choice, but hopefully this will up-sell my order sizes, as the items are the type that cost the same to send 5-6+ as it does to send 1.
will monitor the outcome for sure.
I wonder when Paypal postage will be updated to show the new options – they are still the old prices
I just printed post for 4 items that would have cost £3.80 each if I stuck to paypal – instead I used Royal Mail and paid £3.15.
That is a £2.60 saving for me just today – let’s hope that the PayPal postage system is updated soon