Some prices up 8% - tariff changes from 25 March mean new definitives

Royal Mail have made an  announcement about tariff changes which take effect from 25 March 2019.  The new stamps will be issued on Tuesday 19th March.


UPDATE 26 February. 
The stamps for this tariff change are listed below. Note these colours are from publicity images and - as we have seen before - may be quite different when we get them!

£1.35 in orchid mauve (name previously used for £1.52 - in 2015)
£1.60 in amber yellow (name previously used for £1.33 - in 2015)
£2.30 in gooseberry green*
£2.80 in spruce green (name previously used for £2.45 - in 2015)
£3.45 in dark pine green (name previously used for £1.40 in 2017 which looks nothing like this)
£3.60 in bright orange

* This name was assigned to the £1.05, which had a colour much closer to the £2.80 shown below. The colour shown here is much closer to that of the £1.57 which had the colour tag 'Tarragon Green'.

 

 

I wonder why, when we have bright primary colours for 2nd, 1st and Signed For stamps and some low values, why Royal Mail can't use more bright colours for the airmail values?  (Images of actual stamps showing the correct colours are here.)

As usual the country definitives repeat the tired images now in values of £1.35 and £1.55.  Post Office staff have particular problems with working out the denomination of the Northern Ireland top value.

As previously announced we will not be stocking any 2019/M19L stamps.

UPDATE.
Printing dates known so far:
Northern Ireland - 28/12/18
England and Wales - 02/01/19
Scotland 03/01/19

Machin printings, all printed on SBP2i, have been reported as:

£1.35 07/01/19

£1.60 07/01/19

£2.30 08/01/19

£2.80 09/01/19

£3.45 09/01/19

£3.60 09/01/19

Reports of other dates are welcomed!


The rate tables

From 25 March 2019	1st		2nd
	Old	New	Old	New
Letter 100g	67p	70p	58p	61p
Large Let 100g	£1.01	£.106	79p	83p
S Parcel 1kg	£3.45	£3.55	£2.95	£3.00
S Parcel 2kg	£5.50	£5.50	£2.95	£3.00
Med Parcel 1kg	£5.75	£5.80	£5.05	£5.10
Special Delivery has increased from £6.50 to £6.60 (100g) and from £7.30 to £7.40 for 500g.   What we used to call the Signed For fee has increased at the basic level from £1.10 to £1.20 making a 1st class signed for letter £1.90 from £1.77, and a 2nd class £1.81 (from £1.68).  The extra for Large letters and Parcels range from £1 to £1.20.
International	Europe		World Zone 1&2
10g & cards	£1.25	£1.35	£1.25	£1.35
20g	£1.25	£1.35	£1.45	£1.55
100g	£1.55	£1.60	£2.25	£2.30
Large Letter prices will increase up to 250g and be lowered for items above 250g. Prices for tracked services up to 1kg will increase while those over 1kg will be reduced. The price of surface or economy letters rises by 10p to  £1.20 for 20g and by 5p to $1.50 for 21-100g. As with airmail, the prices for Large Letters are increased at the 100g and 250g steps but reduced for 500g & 750g.

The full tables are now available to download here.
have not yet been published for ordinary customers, only those for business customers.


Effect on collectors
The effect of this will be to increase further the cost of collecting stamps, not just the definitives but special issues as well.  The price of the April Birds of Prey set will rise from £6.70 to £7.00 with corresponding increases in the cost of first day covers and presentation packs.  Books of 6 x 1st class will increase from £4.02 to £4.20.

Businesses
If readers look at your incoming business mail with postage paid using a franking machine, you will see that the prices they show are 

• Prices for sending a 1st Class Letter through your franking machine with Royal Mail Mailmark technology will increase and start from 61p and a 2nd Class Letter will start from 41p.
• Prices for sending a 1st Class Large Letter through your Royal Mail Mailmark franking machine will start from 95p and a 2nd Class Large Letter will start from 72p

For other business customers prices start at the rate shown, although the actual price will depend on volumes posted and only the largest mailers will benefit from these huge discounts.

• Prices for barcoded Letters and Large Letters will start from 40p and 72p respectively.
• Prices for non-barcoded Letters and Large Letters will start from 42.7p and 75p respectively. 

Small businesses, especially those using stamps for postage, will see their costs rise again especially for heavier international mail.  Bearing in mind the commission charged by card companies and PayPal, it will probably be necessary to increase postage and packing costs - in our case for the first time in many years.   And although many dealers have 'discount postage' and older NVI stock, there is a limit to how many 7-20p stamps we can put on a letter to take advantage of this!


Royal Mail in trouble with Ofcom
As has been widely reported, this price increase has been set a week too early, which makes one wonder what the senior management team at Royal Mail had in mind.  Did nobody think of the regulatory regime?

The BBC reported: 

Royal Mail has apologised after announcing a price rise which breaches a cap designed to make the postal service "affordable" for all consumers.

From 25 March, the price of a second-class stamp will rise by 3p to 61p - breaching Ofcom's current price cap of 60p which is in place until 1 April.

Royal Mail says it will donate the extra revenue, expected to be £60,000, to charity Action for Children.

Ofcom set the current price cap in 2012, when it allowed Royal Mail to increase the price of first and second-class stamps by 14p, following concerns the universal service was at "severe risk".   The cap was set at 55p and would increase in line with the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) measure of inflation, making the official cap 60.65p today.

Ofcom had announced the cap will increase to 65p from 1 April, and then will rise in line with the annual CPI rate of inflation until April 2024.

So a week later, and they could have legitimately increased the price to 65p, though that would have met with huge criticism from users.

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