Changes to Royal Mail prices.
For those of you who have not had the opportunity to go to a post office in the last few days prepare yourself. We are probably all used to see prices go up each year, after all, there is inflation to account for. However, if you go to post a packet at the Post Office then you will have to ready yourself for yet more restrictions and classifications of the size/weight of what you are sending. In short, the Royal Mail now base the cost of delivery on the size and weight of the package. Unfortunately, they have decided that most parcels thicker than 8cm are now not considered ‘small’. If you take a look at the Royal Mail Price Guide PDF you are likely to be left agog with how confusing it has become.
On our contact page, there are clear instructions on how to package a hard disk drive. In short, you require lots of packaging to ensure that it has a safe journey. What the change in Royal Mail price structuring means is that sending a relatively light, but bulky package is going to cost significantly more. From our own estimates probably between 33 to 50% more compared with 2012 prices. Here’s a typical response to the changes from the online retailer “Mobile Fun”.
We have found the Royal Mail service very useful over the years. Customers have been able to pay for our data recovery service as late as 4 pm and the recovered data has been sent out the same day, to arrive the next day, by the Royal Mail. Moreover, the pricing that we have charged for the return carriage in this cases has typically been between £5 to £7. Very good value we think. The reason why we still charge for postage separately to our data recovery fees is that about 50% of our customers collect the return media device in person and we would prefer not to lumber them with additional charges.
Unfortunately, due to the changes we sadly find it hard to recommend using the Royal Mail / Post Office service. CDR is currently reviewing is methods for the return of media, particularly in cases where data is required urgently. We expect it is likely that a two-tier delivery speed option is likely to be available. Once a final decision has been made the suggestions will be added to the packaging page.
Finally, if you do require courier services which make the process simple and secure when sending a HDD or other storage device to use, then please check out MyHermes and Parcel Monkey.