Royal Mail are to increase the cost of deliveries for account customers. The underlying contract rates won’t change, but from the 28th of January 2019 the Royal Mail fuel surcharge will rise from 3% to 4%. The fuel surcharge is applied on the product price after any discounts or commissions, and before VAT
Fuel surcharges are a way for carriers to raise and lower prices outside of contract renewals as their fuel costs change, although generally fuel surcharges only ever seem to rise and never fall. Royal Mail remind customers that their fuel surcharge has remained static since the 31st of March 2014.
Royal Mail Fuel surcharges were introduced five years ago. Prior to April 2013 Royal Mail included these costs into the overall parcel price. This change, says Royal Mail, brought the postal service in line with other parcel delivery companies who already apply a fuel surcharge.
The company says that they have done their best to absorb changes in fuel prices and held off increasing their fuel surcharge for as long as possible, but are now in a position where they are forced to pass on some of their increased costs to business customers.
Royal Mail Fuel Surcharge – Affected Services
- Royal Mail Special Delivery Guaranteed by 9am®
- Royal Mail Special Delivery Guaranteed by 1pm®
- Royal Mail Tracked 24®, Royal Mail Tracked 48®
- Royal Mail 24®, Royal Mail 48®
- Royal Mail Special Delivery Guaranteed Returns®
- Royal Mail Tracked Returns®
- Mail Order Returns
You can keep up to date with any further changes at royalmail.com/surcharges
11 Responses
I can’t think of many industries where something like this would be accepted or un regulated, certainly if it was consumer facing it would be.
For Royal Mail to say they introduced it to come in line with other carries is just nonsense, they did it to get more money. If anything they could of not introduced it and pushed the fact that they were the only carrier to not have one!
Fuel surcharge from all carriers is a con and needs to stop, it never changes except going up and just eats away at margins all the time.
Just have one, honest price for your services.
I think fuel surcharges should be banned . If they want to increase prices , add it to the cost of stamps. Its a bit like the underhand price increases on Ebay where they are going to penalise sellers on service metrics and that crazy increase on shop prices but selling it as a bonus package with a useless packaging discounts, auctions etc etc
I think if you use code BPL you can avoid the surcharge. SU1 has it, but its definitely a con
The Royal Mail fuel surcharge is complete nonsense. It’s simply a rip-off. I’m surprised that the regulator is letting them get away with it. Was it around 10 years ago the cost of fuel rocketed? but it gradually went down and fell to nearly £1 a litre if I remember rightly but the fuel surcharge remained at 3%
No one likes a price increase but fuel surcharges are a common feature of this market and the Royal Mail rate is a long way below those of many of its competitors. It doesn’t apply to the price of stamps, franking machine postage or any of the regulated products (such as BPL).
There is a very positive reason why fuel surcharges are used. The alternative is for the risk of significant unforeseen fuel increases to be factored into the up front price. Be careful what you ask for !
Anyone who can’t work out what a 4% fuel surcharge is on the Royal Mail rate card price for the products concerned must really struggled with the volumetric weight based, zonal, plus fuel and congestion zone surcharge prices pushed as good deals by some of the other carriers.
May be if royal mail looked at the wastage of fuel, they could actually lower the cost of postage. If they run there haulage side of the business more efficiently they could save at least 5 million plus a year.
Love the way they increase prices, wait a few months then declare this. To be honest my other courier just did the same. hiked prices… waited a few months and suddenly fuel surcharge must go up too. They seriously think that we view it differently when they dod it in two hits.
But it is like everything in life…. you pay more, you get less! Actually saying that, i now get a postie with letters at midday, a postie with parcels mid morning and a collection late afternoon! Seems that delivering letters and parcels to an indusrial area requires two people and two rounds now…. next thing we will get 1st class early and 2nd class later…. hmmm I remember them cutting the second delivery of the day to save money years ago!