I sat and did the Brigade post this week, as I do every week – weighing packages, printing out labels, writing customs tickets etc. And for the third week in a row, I took a sharp intake of breath at the end of it all. If you’re outside the UK you probably may not be aware that the Royal Mail hiked their prices considerably at the end of April. The main impact is at the lower end of the weight scale, where most of the parcels we send are – RM have effectively put the minimum prices of most services up by a pound or more. On each of the past three weeks we’ve lost money on postage, and that’s before we start taking account of the cost of packaging (ziplock bags, padded envelopes, boxes, even the labels used to print the postage – they all add up).
So … well, you know what’s coming next, don’t you ? Much as we hate to, we’re going to have to alter our postage charges structure, effective immediately. We’re raising the £1 handling fee per order to £2 + VAT (for orders from Europe) or £2.50 (Rest of the World) BUT at the same time we’ve reducing the percentage fees for both. UK prices will remain the same for the moment. The net effect of this will be to raise the minimum postage price for overseas orders, but by reducing the percentages the effect will be less for medium to large orders, and in fact large orders will cost less than they do at the moment. It’s on small orders where it will be most noticeable, but that reflects the changes that RM have made.
You can see the exact details on the ordering page on our website. If you have any queries or comments about this, please feel free to e-mail us about it.