Surcharges at Christmas
Unlike last Christmas, customers who receive mail with insufficient postage may this year be asked to pay a surcharge.
It is understandable that Royal Mail should want to recover its costs for handling and delivering mail. But we hope they will take a common sense approach, and surcharge only where the sender deliberately and blatantly under-stamped the mail. Customers will be still familiarising themselves with how Pricing in Proportion affects them, and they need an approach from Royal Mail that recognises this.
Of course, the best way to avoid mail recipients having to pay surcharges is through the senders making sure that they pay the correct amount. If you’re unsure what postage you need to pay, it is worth getting advice at a post office. Additionally, many greeting cards display information on whether the item is classed as a ‘letter’ or ‘large letter’.
It is understandable that Royal Mail should want to recover its costs for handling and delivering mail. But we hope they will take a common sense approach, and surcharge only where the sender deliberately and blatantly under-stamped the mail. Customers will be still familiarising themselves with how Pricing in Proportion affects them, and they need an approach from Royal Mail that recognises this.
Of course, the best way to avoid mail recipients having to pay surcharges is through the senders making sure that they pay the correct amount. If you’re unsure what postage you need to pay, it is worth getting advice at a post office. Additionally, many greeting cards display information on whether the item is classed as a ‘letter’ or ‘large letter’.
Labels: Christmas, Postwatch, Royal Mail
posted by Postwatch at 12:59 pm
3 Comments:
I have just collected from our town centre Main Post office Collection point a C6 xmas card that had the correct first class stamp on. I had to pay a surcharge on top of the senders 1st class stamp of £1.06.(plus £1.00 Parking)
The offence?
The xmas card had a tiny decorative stuck on bow!!!!
I do not blame the Staff having to work within the Royal Mail but the blind donkeys running the monopoly.
The size charging system is a crazy system and will lead to the eventual break-up of the postal system, and not be the saving of them.
All this has done for me is to ensure that I for one will not send any mail where I can now send electronic cards.
An additional word of warning...
I have discovered that moves are underway to close "postwatch" our peoples Post Office`s only safeguard, and merge it with some massive NGO watchdog that looks after the main Utility providers.
THIS IS INSANE
What next? Higher postage rates for rural deliveries? Oh, Sorry I have just discovered that just such proposals are in the pipeline just as soon as "Postwatch" can be gagged, or lost within a vast "Utilitywatch" organisation.
I have just been caught by the same scam,my christmas card was the correct size but had a small bump in the middle caused by a father christmas on the front of the card.the cheerfull post office worker who relieved me off my one pound sixteen pence informed me that just his sorting office had handed out 1000 insuficient postage cards in 3 days.thats a cool £1000 in 'admin' charges for the post office.You can imagine how i felt when i got home from that and found another insuficient postage card on the doormat waiting for me
I have just been charged £1.16 for collecting a Christmas card from an elderly relative that was 6mm oversize on one side. The irony was that when I returned home there was a card on my door mat that although clearly addressed had been wrongly delivered by the Postman. Can I now charge a handling fee to Royal Mail to do the decent thing & deliver this to the correct address in the next road? One good turn deserves another!
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