New Royal Mail Surcharges from November 2023: Time to Explore Alternatives?
Like many others, I received an email today from Royal Mail detailing charge increases that are quite ridiculous. Starting this November, Royal Mail is introducing two new surcharges – the Green Surcharge and the Peak Surcharge.
This is on top of other recent price rises announced by Royal Mail. We've always had a serious consideration about shifting the bulk of our parcel volume to Evri. The price is significantly better and although there's still much to be desired with the service levels, Royal Mail's service has gotten worse in recent years. This makes the gap in service between the 2 much less but the price now becoming increasingly larger. There are many parcel broker services supplying extremely competitive rates for Evri which has me wondering what are other businesses doing in response to Royal Mail's recent price hikes.
Brief Overview:
Peak Surcharge: Effective from 20th November 2023 to 7th January 2024, this surcharge is due to the increased demands and operational costs during the holiday season. For many of our products, this means an additional £0.10 or £0.05 per item.
Green Surcharge: Starting sometime after 6th November 2023, there will be a 2p per item charge. Royal Mail claims that this surcharge will fund decarbonisation measures in their operational network.
The introduction of these surcharges, especially during a peak season, is both concerning and insulting. Many of us received a horrendous service from Royal Mail last year and quite frankly, I believe they have got a lot to prove this year in setting things right and showing us all that they can perform well. Royal Mail is losing market share in parcel volumes and increasing our prices is not the best way to keep our custom.
While I understand and respect environmental initiatives, the combined effect of these surcharges seems like nothing less than a way for Royal Mail to increase its profits at the expense of businesses that are expected to absorb the additional fees. As an Amazon seller, that sounds like a very familiar position.
Royal Mail seem to becoming increasingly wild with their 'Surcharges' and they're starting to come across as the Ryanair of the courier world where the price you expect to pay is followed by a whole host of 'add-ons'.
Like most retailers, Christmas is a peak trading period for us and a substantial portion of our volume is traded within this period. I have no doubts that every courier has to increase their staffing levels at this time of year as volumes are higher but as volumes are higher, we're all paying them more to do this as a consequence of our increased volumes. I therefore cannot see a genuine reason why such a 'Peak Surcharge' is justifiable. In addition, the Green Surcharge is a joke. If Royal Mail as a company wish to invest in its environmental initiatives then it's welcome to do so but to force it onto customers as a surcharge seems cheeky, to say the least!
I believe the intention here was to make the charge small enough to be absorbed but for us, it remains a 4-figure increase over the period of time it's being charged. With nothing extra to show other than Royal Mail trying to take advantage of businesses. There will no doubt be further annual price increases next year with Royal Mail. The rate at which price increases are occurring at Royal Mail is becoming too much and other parcel providers seem only too willing to attract new customers.
This then leaves the following questions:
- Is your business taking any action in response to Royal Mail's recent price hikes and surcharges?
- Are other sellers considering moving their volume over to Evri or another courier?
- What sort of rates are people achieving with Evri and based on what annual volumes?
- What issues do you encounter when operating with Evri at scale and does the price difference justify these issues?
56 replies
Seller_Fg2fqaWOnEtha
It's one disaster after another... I don't know what to do, training pigeons seems to be the only option to be honest. They are bound to be better than EVRI.
Seller_FZLmkAPnHuV4L
We use the retail Click and drop website for some things as Royal Mail wont give us good rates on Tracked 24 or Tracked 48. Special Delivery also cheaper through the retail site. EVRI and YODEL would need to price less then £2.50 per parcel inc VAT for it to be worth us switching.
Seller_W9elyIPPelcSB
We have a RM Click and Drop Account which works well but, and it is a huge but, they put our Tracked 24 and 48 prices up last lear by 60% because they claimed we were not reaching their volume threshholds. As we sell a lot of quite valuable books we like to use a fully tracked service at times (and always through Amazon). To add insult to injury the RM rep we finally managed to speak to suggested we use the normal retail Click and Drop service as the rates were better. And they are: we pay £5.50 plus surcharges per small parecel on our businesss C&D account and only £3.29 through the retail service. Price-gouging or what? On the other hand, our RM international rates on account are massively better than retail, and it must be said, RM are usually pretty good at delivery for us.
During the strikes RM was a nightmare of course and we switched to Evri, especially for International post. We had no problems whatsoever and everything got where it needed to go with no complaints from customers. Like others, we do have some doubts about the quality of Evri's service and have had stuff left out in the rain, just chucked over the gate etc. on items we've bought for delivery to home. Like the OP we have had the RM correspondence about price rises and are monitoring the situation. We will use other suppliers like Evri if their price is more competitive.
Seller_AOTRC1PcxFlWr
after losing premium eligibility three times due to royal mail performance we have shifted to dhl approx 25% more in cost but brand hits well with customers and also means don't lose premium so allows sales to grow so worthwhile investment albeit profit hit we have had to scale back costs to maintain margin
Seller_ZQyopdiwkUHOZ
It's been the same for us for a while; we'd switch from Royal Mail if there was a viable Large Letter alternative.
We just can't take the hit of paying significantly more for postage and even a slight increase in price for the types of products we sell leads to a fairly significant drop in sales, so we can't pass the cost on either.
Seller_yr4TlcuTjThYJ
Don't forget their fuel surcharge, which only ever goes up irrelevant of the price of fuel! In July 2022 it increased to 8% from 6% when fuel was £1.90 a litre.
Now it's 25% cheaper, but no reduction in surcharge...
Fuel is actually cheaper now than it was when they increased the surcharge from 4% to 6% in March '22!
The Ryan Air of the postal service is the perfect analogy!
Seller_I4e8ZXRNIlQB8
I would advise everyone to check your OBA / e invoicing account, i logged in this week to see surcharges being raised for incorrect format / weight items almost daily for the past 2 weeks ( for context the last surcharge i had was March this year )
I am guessing they are back to using automated machines to check item sizes and weights which caused a huge headache last year for sellers
Seller_9UUlSlJeeHU0I
I find RM very reliable, touch wood in all the years I have been selling on amazon, I had at the most 3 problems of non delivery and on one of them, the book was returned due to non accessible address. I would far rather use RM despite extra cost than use Evri and find find my ratings plummet.
Seller_Rvj1153dOprkQ
Always amazes me as a business we assume having a business account makes the rates better...but as a personal customer using Click & Drop you don't get the fuel surcharge on top so there's no incentive to have a business account, really is there!
I was using EVRi via Parcelhub for the previous year and the service and price was really good (believe it or not) but a couple of months back I got offered a really good rate to swap to Royal Mail Tracked 48/24 via Despatch Bay...
The rates beat Royal Mail direct and they operate a "fair fuel surcharge" pricing which at the moment stands at 0% on orders. Even worse case diesel pricing goes up drastically, the charge would only be a few percent on top, which still makes it cheaper than RM direct.
They also offer EVRi, DHL Parcel, Parcelforce and more.
Worth checking them out for sure...especially as Amazon pinch most our profits so any few pennies we can save here and there help.
Seller_UWHIrg10u7Yh2
EVRI as an alternative we started using December 2022 during Royal Mail strikes.
All is good with EVRI till we encounter a problem with EVRI.
With Royal Mail CRL, we have the experience this gets delivered despite the postie not scanning at the delivery point. Customer's receiving emails from Amazon to claim is another aspect. If the postie hasn't scanned and if the customer asks for a refund with no delivery scan, we have to refund.
Using EVRI for 6+ months now, we realise the extra £1.50 for a large letter which EVRI charge for a large letter is not worth it. Yes, it is tracked along the way, however EVRI tracking is painful. There have been multiple of our deliveries lost by EVRI during the past 6+ months, the claim process is pathetic (we know with Royal Mail we can't claim on CRL), however the claim process with EVRI with an extra £1.50 doesn't work. So, better to use a service saving £1.50 per large letter and be prepared to refund.
For a more expensive product, just buy Royal Mail Tracked 48 from RM retail :).
