XMAS BLACK MAIL

[TrueBlueTerrier]

http://www.sundaymirror.co.uk/news/sund ... -20157322/

crooge Royal Mail bosses will hit customers with a £1 fine for every Christmas card sent with under-paid postage in Britain.

People who RECEIVE the cards will have to fork out for the "handling" charge - and trek to their local sorting office to pay the penalty and retrieve their post.

The Royal Mail has opted to enforce the fines under boss Adam Crozier's controversial Pricing in Proportion charges for the first time this year.

They will raise hundreds of thousands of pounds as customers have to pay the £1 charge plus the missing postage.

The decision comes after the Royal Mail declared profits of £233million for the last financial year.

Watchdogs have attacked the postal penalties as "unreasonable" - last year the Royal Mail declared an amnesty on underpaid postage.

Andy Frewin, of Postwatch, said: "Our hope is that Royal Mail will adopt a sensible approach and won't apply the rules too rigorously.

"Christmas spirit will be sorely The correct postage for a standard size Christmas card - classed as a letter - is 34p first-class and 24p second-class. But the cost jumps to a minimum 48p to send a large The correct postage for a standard size Christmas card - classed as a letter - is 34p first-class and 24p second-class. But the cost jumps to a minimum 48p to send a large letter or card first-class and 40p to send it second-class. Sending a packet weighing over 750g costs from £1.09 first-class and 92p second-class, depending on its weight.

Postwatch says customers in doubt about correct postage should go to their local post office or call Royal Mail customer services on 0845 7740 740.

In December 50m more items a day are posted than the rest of the year.

5m a year are too badly addressed to deliver.

A card arrived at Kirkton Community Centre in Dundee last Xmas 33 years late.

It was for a worker who left in the 1970s.

The first special set of Christmas stamps was launched in 1966 and was designed by a group of schoolchildren.

The last posting day for Christmas cards is Dec 20 (1st class) and Dec 17 (2nd).

Parcels should be sent by Dec 14.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

http://www.sundaymirror.co.uk/news/2007 ... -20157284/

Christmas is supposed to be the time of goodwill. It is also when the Royal Mail makes a fortune from the avalanche of cards dropping through letter boxes throughout the country.

But that isn't good enough for the greedy fat cats who run Britain's postal services. For them, Christmas is a time to rip off the public. The Sunday Mirror has discovered they are sneakily introducing a penalty charge for anyone who receives cards without the right stamp on.

There was uproar when the Royal Mail changed the way they charge for sending letters by basing it on size rather than weight. The inevitable result was that some customers - particularly the elderly - put on the wrong postage.

The Royal Mail agreed to an amnesty for penalty charges last Christmas. But this year, whoever receives a card without the correct stamp on will be hit with a £1 fine as well as having to pay the extra postage.
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The Royal Mail has not had a good year. It has been stricken by strikes and cuts to services, and has been attacked for paying its bosses huge salaries while posties struggle by on low wages. But taking advantage of Christmas to rip off hundreds of thousands of customers really is scraping the barrel.

The watchdog Postwatch says it hopes the Royal Mail will be sensible and not apply the penalty charge too rigorously.

But expecting a seasonal spirit of generosity from the bosses who run our postal services is like believing in Santa Claus.

[andy2007]

Could people not just take RM to Court, as so many have done with the Banks over Overdraft Fees?
It would soon wipe the smirk of adam and allan's faces if they were suddenly hit with tens, or even hundreds of thousands of Court Cases from the Public!

[DGP1]

Unless they are sent directly to the RLE, I'll just be delivering them.

[Stormproof]

We get nothing but grief off customers about the £1 handling fee, I now tell them we have to finance :cfo & :lfo bonuses somehow

[Shiggaddi]

Could people not just take RM to Court, as so many have done with the Banks over Overdraft Fees?
It would soon wipe the smirk of adam and allan's faces if they were suddenly hit with tens, or even hundreds of thousands of Court Cases from the Public!

The difference between our handling charge, and the handling fees charged by the banks, is that they charged something like £25 to send a letter telling them they're overdrawn, they've exceeded their limit, a cheque has bounced etc. The challenge to the banks, was that they can only charge their costs associated with the breach, which is probably an automatic letter print, an envelope, and postage, which probably cost no more than £1. Eventually the regulators agreed £12 is reasonable.

Royal Mail charge £1 for a breach like this, and even gives you an option of sending the item back to sender without paying. For the £1 RM charge, someone has to manually fill in a form to send to the customer. Someone else has to keep the letter in the callers office and spend a few minutes with each customer as they enter.

It is unfortunate that people will fall foul of this. If people knew RM were being lenient, they would start sending large letters with normal stamps on, but if RM law down the law rigidly, then they're accused of being scrooge at Christmas.

Either way you look at it, RM do far more for their £1 fee, than the banks do for their £25.

[jemima]

It's not really the size of the charge that's the problem. It's the difficulty of having to travel to pay it and collect the mail. Couldn't RM have an online payment option (with the payment address notified to the local delivery office holding the mail), so the item could be redelivered without inconvenience for the recipient?

[TrueBlueTerrier]

It's not really the size of the charge that's the problem. It's the difficulty of having to travel to pay it and collect the mail. Couldn't RM have an online payment option (with the payment address notified to the local delivery office holding the mail), so the item could be redelivered without inconvenience for the recipient?

Actually you can http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/esur ... entication
why they dont advertise it though

[Shiggaddi]

As well as the online payment system, you can also put stamps on the card, and pop it back in the postbox. However, not that many people keep spare 1p, or 2p stamps which would be needed for exact postage.

[britwrit]

This is a good, no, brilliant idea. For the sake of 6 pence or whatever, we completely break someone of the habit of sending Christmas cards by post. Next year, they send e-mail cards and thankfully, we'll have a shorter, quieter holiday season, with none of that pesky overtime to worry about.

[F0zziebear]

Pricing in Proportion was brought in because RM had v.few flat sorting machines, but were offering a standard rate for letters. Therefore the cost of senidng a flat A4 envelope in reality was far more expensive than sending a standard A5 envelope. Therefore Pricing in Proportion said I will charge you more for something that has to be handled manually by RM. This helped to discourage magazine companies who were senidng shiny A4 envelopes covered in clingfilm type wrap. These even got stuck in the few flat sorting machines.

The PPA got very upset over this, but why should they be getting a subsidised service in comparison to a small business or invidivdual sending a regular sized envelope.

Now one may argue if RM has a monopoly over post in the UK then how on earth did we help design products that our machinery and set-up doesn't cope with? A very good question and I do not know the answer. All I can say is we are where we are.

As for privatisation. Yes it is coming, the question is how far away it is. The government have sold off every other business and RM is not different. Better to accept this and negotiate for a decent transition. Then someone else may argue that it's like saying to Hitler well you are likely to invade and take over the country so let's negotiate a reasonable settlement. That may be a harsh and extreme comparison, but I'm sure so of you in the union believe that unless you fight on the shores now the union may as well not exist.

Food for thought after you've finished your round

F0zz

Morning TV is sh*te

[mrlovepantsuk]

The Sunday Mirror has discovered they are sneakily introducing a penalty charge for anyone who receives cards without the right stamp on.

SINCE WHEN HAS IT BEEN SNEAKILY INTRODUCED, IT HAS BEEN GOING FOR A FEW YEARS NOW. GOOD OLD LAZY JOURNALISM.

[mrlovepantsuk]

oops, sorry for shouting

[TrueBlueTerrier]

oops, sorry for shouting

It was worth shouting about.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7112552.stm

Customers might have to pay surcharges this year for some Christmas cards that arrive without sufficient postage, though the fees were waived last year.

Consumer watchdog Postwatch warned that an amnesty for cards without enough postage will not be repeated this year.

New sizing and pricing rules began in August 2006, but were not enforced over last year's festive season.

In the spirit of the holiday, customers should get the same deal this year, said Andy Frewin, Postwatch's director.

"What we are hoping very much is that Royal Mail will apply the spirit of Christmas rather than the letter of their rules and only ask for the surcharges when it is blatantly under-stamped," he told BBC's Breakfast.

Mr Frewin said customers who receive a card with insufficient postage will be given a notice to that effect and will then have to go to the post office, queue for service and pay £1 plus the missing postage before they can collect their cards.

A spokesman for Royal Mail told the BBC that while there is no official deal to ignore the surcharges over the coming weeks, they will be applied using "common sense" over the holiday season.

In bringing in the changes last year the Royal Mail said 80% of post should cost the same amount to send.

Royal Mail said the charges reflect the cost of sorting large letters, which has to be done manually instead of by machine.

Postwatch has encouraged consumers to familiarise themselves with the revised pricing and sizing in order to avoid the extra fees and inconvenience.