Jakers! 60p for a first class stamp from 30 April

[mycarsavw]

Interesting point, what options do Royal Mail give to people to bulk-send items?

The obvious solution would be to keep stamps fairly expensive for the public, but offer a monthly/yearly subscription or something that gets you unlimited postage or something. Either that or simply bulk discounts on stamps?

While we don't bulk send, we do have a large volume of outgoing post.

We use a franking machine for 'normal' letters (to clients etc) and DX for the bulk of our B2B letters.

We're slowly moving everything we can to email though.

[badass]

Less letters, but more online shopping-generated post/parcels as a balancer, you'd think?

Striking workers ruined those contracts for RM though

[shaithis]

Funny thing is...about 8 years ago I bought a sheet of 100 first class stamps for 20-odd quid........within a couple of weeks of me buying them every company I sent cheques to suddenly went on-line.....

Since then I've used about 8 of them in total.......sods law!

They are increasing in value nicely though

[Lowe]

I am still surprised that RM don't offer discounts to Smartstamp users, instead thecharge a subscription which seems nonsensical to me!

Exactly why we swapped to a business account, SStamp was just a waste!

[sammyc]

Yes, except you don't use letter stamps on parcels.

The postage for parcels isn't rising nearly as fast, it's just letters, which are now out of fashion. There is competition in the sector now, so if you want royal mail's benefits then you have to pay for it sadly.

Smaller parcels is more what I was thinking of I guess, ie letter-rate & large letter. By far the majority of anything I buy or sell on ebay goes by large letter, the small-padded-bag type item, cds, bits & bobs. Those are the items I was thinking would have helped replace the amount of lost letter traffic - but in quantity terms I am quite likely inaccurate, admittedly.

[Sputnik]

For 60p you can deliver a letter personally (and tbh quicker!) within about a 1.5 mile radius of your home.

I just pay the local Scouts to do it, They deliver anywhere in the village for 10p.

[Spud1]

I am really curious to find out how much money RM waste on designing new stamps? Anyone got any idea??

I went to buy 6 1st class stamps earlier in the week, and rather than the standard, recognisable, sensible image of the queen's head, it had some silly picture of the 2012 Olympics.

No problem with them creating all kinds of crazy (although pointless) stamps - but can't we have a premium on those different ones, representing the extra cost that they surely incur?

Stamp price should increase in line with inflation, no argument there - but considering the amount of money we already know that RM waste, and the amounts that we don't know about..I can't see how they can justify an increase of this magnitude.

[shaithis]

Well, to be fair, prices should rise with increases in costs across-the-board, not just inflation.

My main gripe is how much they have spent out in claims and costs due to thieving bar-steward posties. I know 3 people who have repeatedly been done-over by their postman and have had to go to court to give evidence because of it....including my brother (4 parcels missing in 1 month!), whose postman had a house like an "Aladdin's cave" according to police. How they let so much go missing before bringing in the police, I do not know.