Royal Mail have announced July 2024 Price Update for businesses, due to come into effect on the 1st of July 2024.
The good news in the July 2024 Price Update is that there’s no change to the cost for Small and Medium parcels under the BPL tariffs. However, costs for letters and large letters are due to rise. A 1st class 100g letter will be £1.34 (up from £1.17) and a 500g 1st class large letter rises from £2.84 to £3.34. Signed For services see similar price increases.
Royal Mail 24 and Royal Mail 48 costs for account customers won’t be changing.
You can see the full business rates from the 1st of July in this PDF.
Service Changes
Stop and Return will be available for all Tracked 24, Tracked 48 and Special Delivery products
Royal Mail are making a change to our Specific Terms for Parcels for customers sending Tracked 24, Tracked 48, or Special Delivery Guaranteed items. This change will enable the sending customer to request that an item is intercepted and returned to the sender’s address. Royal Mail will aim to do this when requested but may not always be able to do so. Restrictions and limitations will apply.
Changes to Special Delivery, Tracked, and Standard services, where the photo on delivery feature is available
From 30 June 2024 Royal Mail will be updating our terms and conditions to clarify that there may be instances, such as operational or privacy reasons, where a photo is not visible on the RM App and Track & Trace when using products with the Photo-on-Delivery feature.
Changes to delivery speed exclusions for Special Delivery Guaranteed by 9am
Royal Mail have updated the delivery speed exclusions in our terms and conditions for Special Delivery Guaranteed by 9am to include a number of new postcodes. The only product impacted is Special Delivery Guaranteed by 9am. For more information visit royalmail.com/special-delivery-guaranteed.
Surcharges
Royal Mail also say that they’ll be updating customers online regarding future surcharge updates rather than by email and suggest you check the surcharge page regularly
In the future we plan to advise customers of new surcharge rates via royalmail.com/business/mail/surcharges rather than by personal letter, in accordance with the General Terms and Conditions. So please make sure you visit this web page regularly to ensure that you are always completely up to date with our latest rates.
– Royal Mail
The current surcharge rates are:
Fuel surcharge
Fuel surcharge is applied on the product price after any discounts or commissions, and before VAT. We aim to keep this surcharge lower than other delivery companies.
As of 4 July 2022, the fuel surcharge is 8.0%.
Green Surcharge
The Green Surcharge is applied on the product price after any discounts or commissions or other surcharges, and before VAT.
As of 25 March 2024, the Green Surcharge is 4p per item, increased from 2p per item.
Peak Surcharge
The Peak Surcharge is applied on the product price after any discounts or commissions or other surcharges, and before VAT.
The Peak Surcharge will be introduced on 20 November 2023 and be effective through to 7 January 2024 (inclusive) and is 5p or 10p per item.
Admin Surcharge
If Royal Mail identify a discrepancy with your posting, they apply an Admin Charge per item as well as any further charges required to cover the additional handling costs in addition to any postage cost that may have been incurred already. The charge is a flat £1.00 per item, although correction charges are significantly higher.
3 Responses
Thanks Chris.
I always wait for your dissemination of the information.
When I look at RM’s multiple pricing PDF’s it’s like a minefield!
RE Surcharges
We had a £30 admin / surcharge recently.
After quizzing RM they told me it was a york / container return but could provide no evidence.
Eventually, after much quizzing, they gave me more information and it turns out that an order that an Australian customer had “Mistakenly” entered UK instead of Australia in country, but managed to type Australia in to the last part of the address, was to blame.
So a UK address that went nowhere except back to me RM charged me £30 + second LL class postage.
I won’t be making that mistake again!
This is what I sent to our RM account manager: “Even if your terms and conditions say you can, it is wrong not to send an email to inform us of surcharges changes. You cannot expect your customers to visit the surcharge website page daily on the off chance you have changed something!”
Small businesses that use BPL letters will now be paying 85p to post a 2nd Class letter which is the same price as a stamp for the general public. What is the point of having a business account that is supposed to over discounts on volume when we will be forced to pay the same price as the general public.