Ofcom are considering allowing Royal Mail to cut 2nd Class Saturday deliveries while maintaining a next-day First Class service six days a week. They will decide if cutting the services would still meet postal users’ needs, ahead of consulting on proposals early next year.
Another option is to only delivery 2nd Class on three days per week which would not include Saturdays. You’ll probably end up getting 2nd Class letters on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday one week then Tuesdays and Thursdays the following week.
The reality is that, at least in my personal experience, over the past few years post has been very hit or miss, often will a bundle of letters all being delivered on one day instead of drip feeding into my letter box as they arrive. Indeed, Royal Mail’s own Quality of Service reports suggest this experience is widespread across the country. Cutting 2nd Class Saturday post plus missing a couple of days in the week would in reality probably be a better service than many have received in reality of late.
In recent years, people have been sending far fewer letters, and Royal Mail has been losing hundreds of millions of pounds. If the universal postal service does not evolve to align with customer needs, it risks becoming unsustainable, and people could end up paying higher prices than necessary.
– Ofcom
The evidence Ofcom have gathered so far suggests people want a next-day service available six days a week for when they need to send the occasional urgent letter or card. However, people acknowledge that most letters are not urgent.
If Second Class letters continued to be delivered within three working days but not on Saturdays – and First Class remained unchanged at six days a week – Ofcom say that it would enable Royal Mail to improve reliability, make substantial efficiency savings, and redeploy its existing resources to growth areas such as parcels.
Ofcom will carry out further in-depth research among postal users to explore whether this option – which broadly aligns with one of the options we set out earlier this year – meets their needs.
The problem with the supposition that consumers don’t really care about letters is somewhat misleading however. So many small packets are posted as letters or large letters, and while consumers won’t worry if their AA membership reminder letter arrive a day or too later, they will care if their ecommerce parcels masquerading as letters aren’t delivered promptly.
The impact of cutting 2nd Class Saturday delivery and only delivering on three out of the remaining five days may mean that some ecommerce businesses will be forced to upgrade to 1st Class post – not a bad thing on the face of it but it will add additional costs into these businesses which will undoubtedly be passed on to customers.
2 Responses
Routinely seeing letter / large letter items taking 10 days to be delivered. This is no longer isolated.
1st Class and international letters were hiked today by about 30% and this is simply intolerable.
RM needs to be renationalised. The company running it just ignores its mandatory service obligations.
We need a reliable letter service in the UK for business letter / large letter items, for important mail such as hospital appointments, tax notices and other important official correspondence.
Businesses should lobby their newly elected MPs hard to renationalise before the disastrous takeover goes ahead.
Certainly, RM gives the impression it has no interest in ordinary people. Only a few years ago – in 2019, IIRC – it cost 70p to send a First Class Letter. That will, from 7 October, be £165p – Up over 125% in 5 years. And Ofcom has noticed that “In recent years, people have been sending far fewer letters” – well done Sherlock!
Now – £5 for three letters. And a Starmer left over.