EVRi to start delivering letters?

[TopperGas]

Probably should be in the "competitors" section but it's no doubt of interest to posties if EVRi do start delivering letters:

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[Mr Rush]

I look forward to slapping surcharges on them all as with their packets that keep slipping into our network.

[richietns]

Why there's no money in them we've been told for a decade,they gonna cheery pick the best bits again.

[yubin282]

Didn't someone else try this about 15 years ago ? and unsurprisingly it went tits up.

[DGH]

Didn't someone else try this about 15 years ago ? and unsurprisingly it went tits up.

It was TNT, as I recall, in London and Manchester.

[reddevils]

Royal Mail recently announced they were increasing prices for 'downstream access operators' who collect and pre-sort mail before handing it over to Royal Mail for final delivery. They were increasing rates by up to thirty six percent for access business mail and economy letters which includes bank statements, NHS letters and utility bills.

The operators such as Whistl, Citipost and UK Mail were outraged, complained to Offcom and there has now been a freeze in any potential changes until Ofcom decides whether it is permissible or not.

It could possibly be coincidental after these events and was always planned but now Evri are consulting the GMB Union about a new product in letters. Evri was recently bought by DHL meaning the two are merged. Conveniently DHL owns UKMail which is one of the downstream operators that use the Royal Mail network for the delivery of their bulk post.

Uk Mail collects and processes over 1 billion letters! Royal mail currently delivers between 6.6 billion to 6.7 billion letters a year.

We don't yet know what Evri/DHLs plans are. It seems unthinkable that UKmail will undercut Royal Mail and use its own delivery operator Evri to deliver these letters. How this would function does not seem feasible. However, in the UK in 2026 anything can happen. If they can do it cheap, then they will, regardless of the consequences.

A billion letters is a substantial amount of revenue taken from royal mail. How many of these billion letters they intend to deliver themselves is not clear. Interesting times ahead!

[Hitcher]

Didn't someone else try this about 15 years ago ? and unsurprisingly it went tits up.

Yep, and they ended up in bins and rivers.

[funkflex55]

This suits Royal mails plan perfectly. They don't want letters so if Evri start them then that'll help the decline even more. I mean if the public think RM are bad they are in for a treat given Evris absolute dogshit service levels.

[Duesouth]

I personally don't think Evri would take on mail. Its a massive task, that even us posties can't even manage on a day to day basis. There's just no time, but I can imagine an Evri driver working from 7am till 7pm everyday just to earn a living. Not many people stay long in Evri as it really doesn't make you much money once you factor fuel and other travel costs.

The only products that could work for them are moonpig cards, passports (but we already have that contract) and sensitive documents. To start off with, there wouldn't be an influx of letters on a scale of what we have to deal with. They would gradually introduce mail to see how much they could handle and take it from there.

[TopperGas]

I doubt anybody thinks they take mail on in a big way but they could take on Moonpig, Funky Pigeon, the Radio Times and other similar weekly magazines, leaving RM with just letters which probably make less profit per person item? Perhaps this is part of RM's master plan if it's not they could be left just delivering the unprofitable mail and whining even more about competitors not having the same costs issues having to pay NI etc

[sorefeet17]

Not that we set a particularly high bar, but wouldn't Evri have to vet their delivery personnel to a higher standard if they are delivering sensitive information?

[smok3y666]

Good. Maybe we do less mail and RM f**k off all the moaning c***s. Best thing that can happen. Bring it on.

[Mr Rush]

Didn't someone else try this about 15 years ago ? and unsurprisingly it went tits up.

Yep, and they ended up in bins and rivers.

Or in pillarboxes.

There's very little chance of any bypass networks emerging again with the continued exponential decrease in letter volumes since they were last tried in 2014. At most I could see Evri handling some specific contracts in low volumes comparable to how 1C is handled under DM26.

[clashcityrocker]

Didn't someone else try this about 15 years ago ? and unsurprisingly it went tits up.

Yep, and they ended up in bins and rivers.

As someone who worked in an area Whistl was delivering in, my memory of it is somewhat different.
Far from going "tits up", they were about to expand their areas until Royal Mail illegally screwed them over to prevent it. Their inveators backed out.

Postal regulator Ofcom imposed a record £50m fine on Royal Mail in 2018 for breaching competition law when Whistl – then known as TNT Post – attempted to become its first end-to-end competitor in wholesale mail delivery.

The fine came after Whistl lodged a complaint. Following an investigation Ofcom ruled that Royal Mail abused its dominant market position in 2014 with price changes that specifically targeted competition from Whistl. The regulator found that Whistl would be hit with higher charges than its competitors in the areas where Whistl still relied on Royal Mail for deliveries.

Royal Mail made three failed attempts to challenge the outcome, including in the Supreme Court, before paying the fine.

There is still the matter of the £600 million Whistl is claiming in damages.

[NWpostie]

Royal Mail recently announced they were increasing prices for 'downstream access operators' who collect and pre-sort mail before handing it over to Royal Mail for final delivery. They were increasing rates by up to thirty six percent for access business mail and economy letters which includes bank statements, NHS letters and utility bills.

The operators such as Whistl, Citipost and UK Mail were outraged, complained to Offcom and there has now been a freeze in any potential changes until Ofcom decides whether it is permissible or not.

It could possibly be coincidental after these events and was always planned but now Evri are consulting the GMB Union about a new product in letters. Evri was recently bought by DHL meaning the two are merged. Conveniently DHL owns UKMail which is one of the downstream operators that use the Royal Mail network for the delivery of their bulk post.

Uk Mail collects and processes over 1 billion letters! Royal mail currently delivers between 6.6 billion to 6.7 billion letters a year.

We don't yet know what Evri/DHLs plans are. It seems unthinkable that UKmail will undercut Royal Mail and use its own delivery operator Evri to deliver these letters. How this would function does not seem feasible. However, in the UK in 2026 anything can happen. If they can do it cheap, then they will, regardless of the consequences.

A billion letters is a substantial amount of revenue taken from royal mail. How many of these billion letters they intend to deliver themselves is not clear. Interesting times ahead!

For years third party companies were happy to take letters from firms, charging a premium price and dump it on Royal Mail and pay pennies while pocketing the difference, they're outraged because they're going to lose money, we SHOULD have charged them FULL price from the very start, we wouldn't be losing money and RM position would have been more secure, we wouldn't have been privatised certainly as the income stream goes straight to the treasury.