From the 26th of March 2018, the price of a First Class stamp will increase by 2p to 67p and the price of a Second Class stamp will increase by 2p to 58p.
Royal Mail understands that many companies and households are finding it hard in the current economic environment. As a result, we have considered any pricing changes very carefully and in doing so have sought to minimise any impact on our customers. We are making these changes to help ensure the sustainability of the Universal Postal Service.
– Royal Mail
Whilst the headline news is the 2p rise in stamp prices, this is the cost to send a letter and other prices are also changing.
Royal Mail 1st Class and 2nd Class Price changes |
|||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Size |
Weight up to |
1st Class Price |
2nd Class Price |
||
2017 |
2018 |
2017 |
2018 |
||
Letter |
100g | 65p | 67p | 56p | 58p |
Large Letter |
100g | 98p | £1.01 | 76p | 79p |
| 250g | £1.30 | £1.40 | £1.22 | £1.26 | |
| 500g | £1.74 | £1.87 | £1.58 | £1.64 | |
| 750g | £2.52 | £2.60 | £2.14 | £2.22 | |
Small Parcel |
1kg | £3.40 | £3.45 | £2.90 | £2.95 |
| 2kg | £5.50 | £5.50 | £2.90 | £2.95 | |
Medium Parcel |
1kg | £5.70 | £5.75 | £5.00 | £5.05 |
| 2kg | £8.95 | £8.95 | £5.00 | £5.05 | |
| 5kg | £15.85 | £15.85 | £13.75 | £13.75 | |
| 10kg | £21.90 | £21.90 | £20.25 | £20.25 | |
| 20kg | £33.40 | £33.40 | £28.55 | £28.55 | |
You can see the full price schedule for all services including Signed For, Special Delivery and International on the Royal Mail 2018 Stamp Price document. Don’t forget that if you purchase your postage online there are savings to be made and online stamp prices from 26th March have also been published.
39 Responses
royal mail needs to reduce prices not increase them to survive,
the rest of the delivery community must be falling about with glee
I hate to think of what RM’s fuel bill is and I am sure it has gone up considerably in the last year.
We have a contract with RM and have not been told of any price increases yet.
5kg medium parcel 1st class (not guaranteed next day) £15.85
What a joke, I about choked on my lunch reading that.
No wonder the ship is sinking- I can have it fully tracked and collected from my door by a courier for half that price, guaranteed next day- and there are cheaper courier deals than that.
It would be better if RM ditched the schlock about “sustaining” the universal postal service, which is enshrined in legislation anyway.
At least they haven’t said it’s to fund improvements in services, because there won’t be any !!!
It’s just another price hike. RipOff Britain is back with a vengeance in the runup to Brexit. Presumably, “considered carefully” means they argued like **** for an even bigger rise, but were told by the regulator they could only have 2p.
Never mind though, Airmail has gone up by about 6% again following on from last year’s swingeing rises, so it’s not all bad news for RM shareholders.
Now costs nearly twice as much to send a letter to most EU countries than it does for them to send to us.
PS – When ARE they going to take the Queen’s head off the stamps as a privatised company ???
UK letter to Germany to be £1.25
Same letter from Germany to UK Euro 0.79 or 70p
How can UK small businesses compete with this unfair pricing?
If Deutsche Post can send it for 70p why does RM need to charge £1.25 ????
Are really they that much less efficient? Or are they just profiteering?
Someone needs to pay for all that Hong Kong post. Speak to any postie and he tell you he delivers tons of it. Sorting and delivering it all is a big burden and means it wasnt bought within the UK where postage may have been paid.
Royal Mail’s level of business today is way above what was expected. I used to do the Operational Planning and long-run manpower requirement forecasts at Post Office Headquarters decades ago, so I know 😉
Long-run decline was confidently expected. But against all expectations, the mail volume rose dramatically. Today’s Royal Mail Directors don’t know how fortunate they are.
The PO intention in the mid-70s was to increase the price of parcels until the loss-making parcel business became profitable, or it was priced into oblivion. The government wouldn’t allow it.
Unless you’ve worked at Headquarters and/or studied the revenue/cost structure in detail, you’ll never understand postal economics. Price increases are simply inescapable. Governments and critics have always talked, since the 1960s, of increasing efficiency so as to prevent or delay price rises. If it were possible to do that on any scale, it would have been done decades ago. Even the efficiency measures which have been introduced have seldom led to the expected gains.
Royal Mail faces unfair competition imo. It’s not a level playing field. But at least VAT isn’t charged on postage. If it were, the price would be 20% higher. That would undoubtedly reduce traffic volume, requiring further price increases to offset it. A First Class letter would surely be somewhere around one pound, if that were to happen.
If anyone thinks they have “the answer”, they’re mistaken. By all means write to the CEO. Set out the solutions, with costings, and post it to Headquarters. That will be another 67p in the Accountant General’s, er, General Accounts lol
Robert W, interesting, I have a very close friend high up in RM and they tell me it’s all the old wood been there for decades that won’t accept any major re-structuring of Work practices without massive prolonged arguments, till there is root & branch reform with a new generation of leaders brought in to change the dynamic we will continue to pay a premium instead of introducing more efficient models. Chap above hit the nail on its head with his reference to Deutcher Post.
“Royal Mail understands that many companies and households are finding it hard in the current economic environment. As a result, we have considered any pricing changes very carefully and in doing so have sought to minimise any impact on our customers. We are making these changes to help ensure the sustainability of the Universal Postal Service.”
Did they not use that one last year also, ever since I can remember we have been in a difficult economic environment. Anyway as there is no competition with the under 2K you are forced to use RMG. What Amazon do in the future may well have an effect on it, and am sure RMG will be caught fast asleep at the wheel. Anyway let’s see how they plan to profit out of biz in this hard current economic environment and how they plan to hit us again.
To be honest the price rises are tiny. All my couriers have gone up. As for the 5kg parcels etc… well it’s just not really their thing, it proberly isn’t cost effective for them to be sending out the posties with mixed loads of letters and 5kg+ parcels. You want to send them cheaply, go to a courier whos main line is bigger parcels. It’s not like there isn’t any choice!
Royal mail is coming out of a very long sleep in which it was under funded, denied any kind of modernisation and basically became a diniosaur that was only still in existance because the tax payer was keeping it afloat. Freed from those shackles it has a huge job of modernising and catching up with the rest of the world. Regratably as has been pointed out there are still people in power and with influence that are sure as hell going to do all they can to keep it nice and cosy like it used to be. Yes tech will take jobs. Sadly if you want lower prices you need to be more efficient and now days that means more tech. I have seen big improvements in the last 3 to 4 years, long may it continue to improve.
We can all complain about the price of a 1kg parcel….. but try getting your courier to deliver it to the highlands of Scotlands for the same price! As for no competition for under 2kg… well that is true, which tells you something about the price, others can’t match it. Where is the issue!?
ok so Royal mail have the under 2k market mostly cornered
its a stripped down service with little or no tracking , you need to make enough profit to cover and suffer the fraudulent and dishonest,
in addition
todays buyers want and expect tracking ,so were using couriers more and more rather than royal mail
We previously used Royal Mail for everything up to 3 years ago and now we use them for Large Letters up to 200grams and below only. Problem with Royal Mail is they think they have been around the longest and by right should be used instead of somebody else. They are like the Woolworths of the courier world, and look what happened to them. The last time a Sales Rep from Royal Mail rang me all she kept talking about was the I should be using them because of the Universal Service Agreement like it was my problem.
Until they realise what everybody is is doing a better job than them, offering more tracking than them ( like sack the person who introduced 2d barcodes. It’s plainly obvious that nobody else uses it for a reason) and actually paying compensation when it goes wrong instead of turning a blind eye when they lose something.
If these prices bother you, have a look at getting an account with them, start using click and drop, start sending your post Royal Mail 48 and 24. You don’t need to post that many items to qualify or make it worthwhile. 10 or 20 a day would easily cover it.
Aside from generally lower pricing and no small parcel / medium parcel price split, it works on an average weight basis for each posting category. If you sell a wide range of different weight items you can often send heavier items for the same price as lighter items.
I’ll give you a good example of this: Last week, an ebay buyer in the Orkneys wanted to buy an item that normally would go by courier, because it weighs 3.5kg. But of course, it’s too expensive to courier to the Orkneys so to avoid putting the buyer off, it was sent Royal Mail 24 Parcel and it ended up only costing £3.33. The other items being sent under Royal Mail 24 Parcel were lighter and meant the average weight was 1.75kg, so that parcel got pulled down from the 3.5kg price to the 1.75kg price of £3.33. Compare that with sending through the post office – £13.75 as a 2nd class medium parcel! No contest.
So, enough with the doom and gloom. Have a look at the business rates for Royal Mail 24 and 48. If you already send enough post, just get on with it, and switch. If you’re not quite selling enough, then do some research and see if you could increase your sales by basing your prices as if you were using RM 24 and 48 already.
Having switched from using the local post office to using DMO a few years ago, then onto click and drop, I can only say good things about it. It’s all been pros, no cons. You’ll save time and money. And you won’t care about stamps going up a few pennies every year.
@northumbrian said
“today’s buyers want and expect tracking ,so were using couriers more and more rather than royal mail”
Spot on northumbrian. 2B able to track your items, from both the point of view of the sender AND the recipient is a major plus for all concerned. Not only in terms of *security, but piece of mind* It also enables us (the recipients) to make arrangements for somebody to be around…AKA plan A. Plan B being where you have a LETTERbox the size of a soddin CAT flap
*Not that it, or even a signature is good enough for the jokers at eBay’s laughingly named Customer Service, or that even BIGGER contradiction “Trust & Safety” AKA the THREE WISE MONKEYS.
@Gav – I second everything that you said in the above.
@northumbrian & @Mr Magoo
“today’s buyers want and expect tracking ,so were using couriers more and more rather than royal mail”.
This is a complete myth, from my experience, I send out orders, customers receive them, I do not recall anybody ever asking for the tracking details UNLESS the item has not arrived or I give them the tracking number to show the item as being delivered, should they claim not to have received it.
if customers requiring tracking is a myth
we wonder why royal mail and every other courier company spends so much time on
administering & promoting tracking plus investing in equipment and software , to enable it
your being even sillier!
of its course its not every customer
but even though we send everything tracked with the details entered and emailed ,we still receive tracking requests regularly
the product value will also be a big factor
why not be extra silly and ship an expensive watch without tracking
to test your theory
The ability to track is a Win Win…IMHO…a No-Brainer.
Fewer calls to a couriers CS to enquire “where is it”, and (in my case) as with 1 carrier, we can track in REAL time (counting down , “you are delivery 5/4/3 etc…etc” with an icon of the van on the road, so we can see exactly where he is) THEN (if you wish) you can meet the driver at the entrance of your block, office or DOOR, again a win win.
With this particular courier , you will have been given the drivers name & mobile number. It would also reduce the issue of forged signatures, where the DRIVER makes as if you/we had signed for it 🙁 or simply reduce the need for a second delivery (a financial nightmare for some “paid peanuts per delivery” drivers, if nobody was around to take in a delivery that nobody knew WAS going to arrive…or if.
The tighter you keep it, the cheaper it will be in the long run (all things considered) especially when an item does go missing, since you will then be able to eliminate 99% of possibilities, AND reduce the chance of theft courier side, so again…Win Win.
regarding tracking, I’m with Tyler on this one, we’re in the same situation
On ebay and Amazon, our buyers go for the cheap delivery option 99% of the time. That option is Royal Mail 48. It’s untracked, but with a confirmation delivery scan at the end, though the customer doesn’t necessarily know that when they order.
The option for next day courier is there on all the items, but rarely used. Tracking and speed must not be an issue for our customers, or not one they’re prepared to pay more for.
Unless an item doesn’t turn up by the estimated delivery date (plus a couple of days after perhaps if the buyer is reasonable and savvy) we get no enquiries as to where it is.
When we do, the RM 48/24 scan on delivery has cut down INR claims to almost zero. So from our point of view, it’s fine and does the job.
Perhaps it is just a case of different items and different customers = different delivery expectations. Some items are urgent, some aren’t.
@ Gary, re prices
I looked these up on the last Royal Mail business prices PDF I had downloaded off their website. Should be up to date, though I forgot they add a small fuel surcharge, but also, if you order more than 20 of an item (eg 20+ RM48 parcel) in a single day/manifest, they knock off a similar percentage for those class of items.
RM 24 and 48 or a lot better than 1st and 2nd class
Prices we currently pay using RM for 2nd class is:
Large letter <100g – 65p + vat with 2d bar code delivery scan, no compensation and includes fuel surcharge.
Parcel (small/medium/large) <2,000g – £2.10 + vat with 2d bar code delivery scan, no compensation and includes fuel surcharge.
And as Gav explained above, these are average weights so larger than 2kg will usually go for the same cost.
Theses are GB postage costs as we do not post items outside the UK.