Superdrug cuts the price of stamps for Christmas

[TrueBlueTerrier]

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/arti ... article.do

The price of stamps is being cut by Superdrug from today to help those sending Christmas cards.

The High Street chemist chain is knocking 21p off a book of 12 first class stamps, bringing the price down to £3.87.

It is cutting 10p off books of six first class stamps, reducing the price to £1.94. The price of a book of four first class stamps for bigger letters will also fall by 10p, to £1.82.

Royal Mail sells first class stamps for 34p each and first class stamps for larger letters for 48p.

Superdrug's move is anticipated to be so popular with customers that it is planning to limit each to 72 stamps. The reduced price stamps will be available while stocks last.

Trading director Jeff Wemyss said it would help cut postage costs on many of the one billion cards which are expected to be sent this Christmas. "This is an early Christmas present to our customers," he added.

Royal Mail defended its decision not to lower its prices, saying: "Royal Mail's stamp prices are already among the very lowest in Europe and we lose almost 6p on average on stamped letters and cards."

[jacee]

I suppose that Superdrug will pay the full price to RM for the stamps and use them as a loss leader to encourage customers to buy other things in their stores. Nothing wrong with that as long as we get the revenue we are supposed to. I am more concerned at the number of uncancelled stamps I see each day on the IPS that may get re-used by the public. It's time we had stamps that fell apart if you tried to take them off an envelope.

[Sick Postie]

Retailers are able to buy to stamps a little below the face value so that they can at least try to make a profit. You have to purchade quite a lot at a time from RM and the shops only make a very very small profit on them it's more just to provide a service to the customers.

[DGP1]

Most (if not all) retailers get 5% discount on stamps so they will be selling them at about cost but I'm not to sure if RM allow stamps to be sold cheaper than they do it

[k979aaa]

Most (if not all) retailers get 5% discount on stamps so they will be selling them at about cost but I'm not to sure if RM allow stamps to be sold cheaper than they do it

I do not see why not for we let the competion use our service for less than cost so why not?

[F0zziebear]

Competition pay an access price for use of part of the system and 13.5p at the time was seen as fair. RM made representations about the cost.

Retailers can get wholesale discounts as is the case in forms of wholesale.

The cancelling of stamps is in many cases a waste of time. The labour time and cost to manually cancel stamps outweighs the benefits. It's the same with revenue collection. Do you concentrate on large offenders or bother about getting back some revenue on inidivudal stamps.

I was involved in studying this and the conclusions were quite simple with the resources available.

The black market in retail stamps just does not exist in sufficient numbers to bother about it. Also the use of stamps is declining as a proportion of the market.

[jacee]

Competition pay an access price for use of part of the system and 13.5p at the time was seen as fair. RM made representations about the cost.

Retailers can get wholesale discounts as is the case in forms of wholesale.

The cancelling of stamps is in many cases a waste of time. The labour time and cost to manually cancel stamps outweighs the benefits. It's the same with revenue collection. Do you concentrate on large offenders or bother about getting back some revenue on inidivudal stamps.

I was involved in studying this and the conclusions were quite simple with the resources available.

The black market in retail stamps just does not exist in sufficient numbers to bother about it. Also the use of stamps is declining as a proportion of the market.

Thanks for that Fozz - I won't have a conscience now if I let any slip through while I'm sorting

[k979aaa]

Royalmail as a whole are a loss leader lose these two clowns :cfo & :lfo and we should be in profit by the end of the week!