If you got one from us last year … keep it, it will probably be the last one you’ll get!
There was a time, back in the days when Paddy MacDee was a boy, that the ‘Royal Mail’ delivered letters three times a day, morning, noon and evening. The Evening delivery was abandoned decades ago but lunch time deliveries continued until they were also discontinued, in most places, in 2004. In most places, but not here in Northumberland. No, we still get a lunchtime delivery, unfortunately we no longer get a morning delivery. Our mail, which used to arrive between 7.00 and 8.00 every morning now arrives, as it did today, at 12.25 pm, that’s in the afternoon, after lunch. The service provided by the ‘Royal Mail’ seems to be directly proportionate to their profits, i.e. really terrible and getting worse.
But the ‘Royal Mail’ are putting up the price of delivering mail to 50p for second class and 60p for first class. I am not paying 60p for a letter that ‘Royal Mail’ will not be bothered to deliver until the following afternoon. This is a massive increase in price. ‘Royal Mail’ seem to be employing the same mentality used by Spanish restaurant owners, who apparently think that as they have struggled recently with fewer customers, that the way to return to profitability is to hugely increase prices to make more profit from those who still frequent their dining rooms. This does not work.
There is a lovely little Spanish restaurant that we like, tucked away behind the square in Cabopino near Marbella. Nice rustic home cooked Spanish food, swimming in olive oil. I like the owner, nice bloke, always has a cheery ‘buenas noches’ for us when we arrive, but we went in last summer to find that the portion sizes, never generous before, had got even smaller and the prices, reasonable before, had gone up by about 35%. Not a good move. People, us included, will vote with our feet and instead head for the cheap Chinese in La Cala de Mijas. The Spanish don’t seem to understand that you can not make the same money by charging a dwindling clientele more, you simply lose more of them. Better to put your prices down a little and greatly improve your marketing.
But back to the stamps. If I were the Queen, I’d be round ‘Royal Mail’ HQ tomorrow morning demanding they drop the word ‘Royal’ from the name on the grounds that the standard of service is now so low, even Fergie wouldn’t do their TV ads.
Increasing your charges by up to 33% will only drive your customers away. Even more of us will use email to send letters, information and documents. What about Christmas though, the time when the ‘Royal Mail’ make most of their money, there is no substitute for a nice Christmas card is there? Well, yes there is. We can all now send those nice on-line Christmas cards, already popular for sending to friends overseas, I think that will now be extended to friends overseas and friends more than half a mile away. These cards are free, animated, can be personalised to include your special Christmas message, and best of all, arrive in the recipients in box almost immediately.
So if you got a Christmas card from us last year, keep it as we are unlikely to post any at all this year. This will save us a fortune, which is good as we are hoping to be able to buy a couple of litres of diesel. We will need them to drive to the ‘Royal Mail’ sorting office on the Prudhoe industrial estate to pick up that parcel that ‘Royal Mail’ couldn’t deliver, as we had all gone out about six hours earlier.
It is a hell of a rise Dave, as was your 35% in your Spanish restaurant! However, it is largely standard accounting practice to put prices UP in recessionary times I’m afraid. When you put up prices, the customers that stay with you do so on quality, friendliness, reliability, habit (and in the case of Royal Mail, monopoly!). Putting up prices means you sell less, but at a higher margin. If you have a 30% gross margin and you put up prices by 10% then you can afford to lose 25% of your sales unit volume and still have the same amount of money in your back pocket. Whereas if you have a 30% gross margin and lower prices by 10% you have to sell 50% more units just to make the same. So its usually a risk worth taking. And in the partial monopoly situation Royal Mail has they are not going to lose many customers to competitors – more likely to changing practices, which are happening anyway I guess.
I suspect the massive cost of the Royal Mail delivery is largely in line with this philosophy and to ultimately make it more sellable!
Here’s a closing thought…..
Q. What do you call Postman Pat when he has been made redundant?
A. Pat.
Yes Jim, but there is only so much you can squeeze out of your existing customers. You always run the risk that you lose them. Better to attract new customer if you can. ‘Royal Mail’ don’t have a monopoly on parcel delivery and are up against many companies who are better, cheaper and more efficient.
Hi Dave,
I have been reading your blogs with great interest. Here are a few interesting facts about our Canada Post.
1. Postage rates (for letters) are as follows 61 cents to anywhere in Canada, $1.05 to the US and $1.80 to anywhere else in the world.
2. Mail is delivered Monday through Friday. We don’t remember mail being delivered more than once a day.
3. As of 20 years ago, door to door delivery was terminated to all new homes. The older neighbourhoods retained their home delivery. Mail is now being delivered to a “mailbox pod” that serves approximately 25 home owners. There are pods on most streets in the new neighbourhooods.
4. Our letter carriers no longer wear uniforms and drive their cars from mailbox to mailbox.
5. Our “home” delivery is currently between 11 am and 1 pm.
No wonder email is so popular.
My limited experience with Royal Mail has been very positive. The few items we ordered from the UK (through eBay) have always arrived within seven days or less, after being ordered. Our daughter ordered decals for her son’s bedroom and they arrived within days! We were impressed. We ordered something from the US four weeks ago, and we have not yet received it!
Norm Routhier
Wow Norm, it seems your service is worse than ours! The fact remains, our service is much worse than it used to be, mainly because of incompetence. Years ago the ‘Royal Mail’ were able to make a profit and provide a service, now they can’t do either. They used to be efficient, now that are not. That is the difference.