Private post operators clean up as customers switch from RM

[POSTMAN]

Royal Mail's pre-Christmas postal strikes saw many companies send merchandise by TNT and other private companies.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jan/0 ... -mail-post" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Britain's private postal operators have made substantial inroads into Royal Mail's customer base as a result of the strikes at the end of the year, and any further upheaval will accelerate the process, warns a significant player in the industry.

London-based Post-Switch, a business that specialises in providing customers with the cheapest and most efficient mail options, says it helped about 45 companies change from state-owned Royal Mail to rivals over the past month.

"We are seeing a lot of people inviting us in to tender for the first time and only one of those that we help moved away to private operators has gone back to Royal Mail, despite the end of the industrial action," said James Campbell-Clause, Post-Switch sales and marketing director.

Clothes catalogue company Lands' End is one of the companies that has transferred its 10m items-a-year business to DHL and TNT. Managing director Tim Curtis said he felt compelled to safeguard his employees and cannot see himself going back. "It [the private alternative] is slightly cheaper and a good service. We would like to stay with Royal Mail, but cannot as long as this uncertainty remains," he added.

The shake-up follows a series of days of industrial action by members of the Communication Workers Union in recent months in protest at the way modernisation was being introduced into the state-owned postal operation. The strikes were called off in the run-up to Christmas while further talks between management and unions take place to try to find a permanent peace settlement.

Those talks are ongoing and many heavy users of the postal system, such as mail-order firms, continue to be nervous, fearing a second bout of disputes after the holiday period is over.

Royal Mail said it could not quantify at this stage what level of business had been lost as a result of the disputes and many private operators, such as TNT, have played down any advantages they've gained, given they use the state system to deliver the "final mile" under access agreements which continue with Royal Mail.

Private companies are also keen not to be seen to be benefiting from the upheaval at Royal Mail, which recently reported a first-half operating profit of £184m, but admitted it had a pension deficit of more than £10bn. A spokeswoman for the CWU said there were no hard figures on what post volumes had been lost by Royal Mail, adding: "There have been a lot of stories about customers such as Amazon moving away, but some of this has been incorrect. It is obviously all unhelpful [to us] but there is no firm, empirical evidence yet."

DX Group said it had won some extra volumes but expected much of it to migrate back gradually. "We were not in favour of the strike because we do not want the trend of e-substitution (customers moving from physical mail to email) to accelerate," said John Coghlan, chief executive of DX.

Post-Switch says customers are moving from Royal Mail because they want greater certainty of service, but others want lower prices. Campbell-Clause claims a mailout of 50,000 items with a two-day delivery could cost 21p using Royal Mail, but only 17.4p using TNT, according to its calculations.

"We found savings of 23% for Jo Malone, an Estée Lauder brand," he added, arguing that changes in VAT payments and "zonal tariffs" at Royal Mail will further play into the hands of private rivals.

TNT took the government to the European court over the VAT payments that are levied on private operators, but not on the majority of Royal Mail postal operations.

The Dutch-owned company has been promising to launch a door-to-door letters business across Britain, following successful trials in Liverpool, if it can get the government to shelve VAT on its deliveries. The Conservative Party is understood to have considered doing this, should it win the next election.

Private companies are already looking at new ways of delivering post with DX offering customers the chance to pick up mail from their local post office under an agreement with Post Office Counters.

[DGP1]

FFS with the massive increase in packets I had over Christmas the competition must've been completely snowed under but then in the whole December I only saw a DHL van once and a DPD twice so they must've had so much work they couldn't even leave their depots

[steven100]

Its got nothing to do with efficency its all to do with ££££££, i'm going to assume rm have higher overheads, all those useless managers. This is the reason so many companies switch.

[POSTMAN]

This,sums this whole DSA charade up.

Campbell-Clause claims a mailout of 50,000 items with a two-day delivery could cost 21p using Royal Mail, but only 17.4p using TNT, according to its calculations.

[DGP1]

This,sums this whole DSA charade up.

Campbell-Clause claims a mailout of 50,000 items with a two-day delivery could cost 21p using Royal Mail, but only 17.4p using TNT, according to its calculations.

[Eric]

Time for the government to hit the DSA parasites with a Windfall Tax.

[bexhil palace]

Surely time for the press to get the facts into the public domain.
I've lost count how often i've had to explain DSA to my customers. :cfo

[ziko]

Yes private companies 'clean up' big time. They collect the cashand us poor Ba$tard posties deliver the goods over the extra golden mile.

[Big Daz]

This,sums this whole DSA charade up.

Campbell-Clause claims a mailout of 50,000 items with a two-day delivery could cost 21p using Royal Mail, but only 17.4p using TNT, according to its calculations.

To make matters worse if we were to offer a cheaper price, we would also have to offer a cheaper price to TNT thus allowing them to undercut us again.

[DGP1]

I've just noticed that the NHS are using DSA to send out their quit smoking packs

[TrueBlueTerrier]

http://www.dwfisher.com/watching/2010/0 ... again.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Here's a good bullshit story if ever there was one.
Disclaimer.
I use Royal Mail on a regular basis, daily, for personal and business activities. They are the most effective and cheapest courier company I have ever used. I have in the past used Amtrak, ANC, Interlink, Fedex and Securicor for my business and not one of them can touch Royal Mail on price. Some can be as effective but for a whole lot more moolah.
So to this beautiful piece of utter bullshit.

It comes from today's Guardian link

Private post operators clean up as customers switch from Royal Mail
Royal Mail's pre-Christmas postal strikes saw many companies send merchandise by TNT and other private companies

Britain's private postal operators have made substantial inroads into Royal Mail's customer base as a result of the strikes at the end of the year, and any further upheaval will accelerate the process, warns a significant player in the industry.
Sounds bad doesn't it?
What this little titbit doesn't make clear is the size of Royal Mails 'customer base' nor how diverse it is.

London-based Post-Switch, a business that specialises in providing customers with the cheapest and most efficient mail options, says it helped about 45 companies change from state-owned Royal Mail to rivals over the past month.
Here we go.
'About 45 companies' means what exactly?
44 companies?
46 companies?
40 companies?

"We are seeing a lot of people inviting us in to tender for the first time and only one of those that we help moved away to private operators has gone back to Royal Mail, despite the end of the industrial action," said James Campbell-Clause, Post-Switch sales and marketing director.
Again no numbers just 'a lot'.

Clothes catalogue company Lands' End is one of the companies that has transferred its 10m items-a-year business to DHL and TNT. Managing director Tim Curtis said he felt compelled to safeguard his employees and cannot see himself going back. "It [the private alternative] is slightly cheaper and a good service. We would like to stay with Royal Mail, but cannot as long as this uncertainty remains," he added.
So even though this gentleman says his company, which shifts 10 million items per annum, has decided that DHL/TNT is a 'good service' he also makes it clear he would prefer to stay with Royal Mail!
Hardly a ringing endorsement of the private carriers is it?

The shake-up follows a series of days of industrial action by members of the Communication Workers Union in recent months in protest at the way modernisation was being introduced into the state-owned postal operation. The strikes were called off in the run-up to Christmas while further talks between management and unions take place to try to find a permanent peace settlement.

Those talks are ongoing and many heavy users of the postal system, such as mail-order firms, continue to be nervous, fearing a second bout of disputes after the holiday period is over.
Now here is the real issue.
For Lord Mandelson of Foy and the inept management at Royal Mail to get their part privatisation through they have to scare away enough 'big customers' to ensure that the private couriers can actually be portrayed as white knights and save Royal Mail from total collapse.
To be clear Mr Brown Chancellor of the Exchequer was and still is the person wholly responsible for Royal Mail's financial difficulties when he raided the pension scheme to fund Tony Blair's dreams and aspirations. Meddling politicians who'd have thought it?

Royal Mail said it could not quantify at this stage what level of business had been lost as a result of the disputes and many private operators, such as TNT, have played down any advantages they've gained, given they use the state system to deliver the "final mile" under access agreements which continue with Royal Mail.
Now I have a BIG problem with this.
Royal Mail is a company (person) in legalese (Look it up. Legalese definitions are all really bizarre) but as the company itself cannot speak presumably a person (flesh and blood person who may have a legal fiction or name) must have uttered these words on behalf of the company so why aren't they named?

Private companies are also keen not to be seen to be benefiting from the upheaval at Royal Mail, which recently reported a first-half operating profit of £184m, but admitted it had a pension deficit of more than £10bn. A spokeswoman for the CWU said there were no hard figures on what post volumes had been lost by Royal Mail, adding: "There have been a lot of stories about customers such as Amazon moving away, but some of this has been incorrect. It is obviously all unhelpful [to us] but there is no firm, empirical evidence yet."
Why are companies keen not to be seen profiting from Royal Mails problems caused by Jonah Browns theft of their pensions?
Why are there no 'hard figures'?
There are hard figures but Royal Mail and it's employees choose not to put them into the public domain for whatever reason. Perhaps they reveal an entirely different message to the one Postswitch, Lord Mandelson of Foy and Mr Crozier are peddling.

DX Group said it had won some extra volumes but expected much of it to migrate back gradually. "We were not in favour of the strike because we do not want the trend of e-substitution (customers moving from physical mail to email) to accelerate," said John Coghlan, chief executive of DX.
So carefully worded. If DX gave a better or cheaper service then their 'extra volumes' from customers would stick. It's quite significant that their Chief Executive sees these 'temporary customers' moving back to Royal Mail.

Post-Switch says customers are moving from Royal Mail because they want greater certainty of service, but others want lower prices. Campbell-Clause claims a mailout of 50,000 items with a two-day delivery could cost 21p using Royal Mail, but only 17.4p using TNT, according to its calculations.

"We found savings of 23% for Jo Malone, an Estée Lauder brand," he added, arguing that changes in VAT payments and "zonal tariffs" at Royal Mail will further play into the hands of private rivals.
"Quality of service" indeed. Total rubbish.
In the direct mail world it's all about ROI (return on INVESTMENT) so price is key. As Royal Mail doesn't charge VAT it will always have the edge on price until Royal Mail management 'regionalise' pricing to make Royal Mail uncompetitive. If the UK leaves the European Union as I believe it should then this advantage will be lost as there would be no need for VAT.

TNT took the government to the European court over the VAT payments that are levied on private operators, but not on the majority of Royal Mail postal operations.

The Dutch-owned company has been promising to launch a door-to-door letters business across Britain, following successful trials in Liverpool, if it can get the government to shelve VAT on its deliveries. The Conservative Party is understood to have considered doing this, should it win the next election.
So we get a FOREIGN owned private company taking our publically owned public company to the European Court to try and get it's commercial advantage nullified even though TNT is under no obligation whatsoever to deliver a letter across the land for a single fee like Royal Mail is. Indeed TNT only wants the lucrative parts of Royal Mails business not all of it!

Private companies are already looking at new ways of delivering post with DX offering customers the chance to pick up mail from their local post office under an agreement with Post Office Counters.
Royal Mail is not all that it seems. It is actually a group of very diverse 'divisions' operating as independent yet symbiotic public companies to deliver Britain's mail. It has been ostensibly 'structured for maximum efficiency savings' but the reality is as ever very different. It has been broken down into parts small enough for privately owned companies to swallow. DX, DHL and TNT all want to swallow various highly profitable bits of Royal Mail leaving the remainder in public ownership.


So Post-Switch is telling a few fairy stories which the Guardian has spun out into the public domain to please the Nulabour luvvies by showing us how bad Royal Mail is being affected by these aggressive courier companies.



To sum up
Around 45 companies have jumped ship from Royal Mail to private couriers, allegedly.
1 company went back to Royal Mail once the strikes are over. Allegedly.
Royal Mail's people say they have no idea how much business has been lost to the private couriers nor any idea of the volume of the contracts lost nor any idea of the value of this lost custom. Allegedly.
The unions seem to be equally in the dark about these figures.
One of the private couriers Chief Executives expects Royal Mail to take back all of the increased custom his company received during the Royal Mail strike action.

Private Couriers are hardly 'cleaning up' are they?

In fact this entire article proves the opposite. If only Lord Mandelson of Foy and Mr Crozier would quietly leave the field and the Tory equivalents would simply take themselves out of the picture Royal Mail could actually become the public British success story, it really is in private.

[Puppetmaster]

Strange how in the run up to Xmas we were swamped with City link packets,I guess dsa.

But I agree did not see many courier vans in the run upto Xmas,I tend to see more Parcel Force vans than anybody else.

[barclay]

What a joke Royal Mail is now letting RIVAL firm DX to leave mail at post office counters for DX customers to go and collect, DX must be laughing their B------s off!!!!!!!!!