Royal Mail Tariff Change 29th March 2016
Royal Mail’s prices change annually – usually on the Monday nearest to the 1st April (The beginning of Royal Mail’s new financial year). This year Easter Monday puts a (chocolate flavoured? ) spanner in the works and so prices change on Tuesday 29th March.
Essentially this tariff has very little in the way of the surprises of recent years – but one that could be missed is the difference – for the first time- for postage purchased online verses the price for good old stamps or postage labels applied at a Post Office. For the first time Royal Mail are disincentivising the use of stamps over postage bought online. Granted there has been a difference in pricing for some years for postage applied via a franking machine, but the prices were not really comparable since the necessary equipment had to be purchased/leased and maintained, so only for high volume users did the savings really make any sense.
Royal Mails prices can be found here: Royal Mail Tariff 2016
In summary: Online postage prices have been frozen and the stamped postage generally increased by a few pence. Many prices have not changed including those for International letters between 20g-100g.
Where does this leave Post and Go collectors? The NVI values to change are that of the ‘1st Class’ (from 63p to 64p) , ‘1st Class Large’ (from 95p to 96p) and ‘World 10g/Euro 20g’ value (from £1 to £1.05), resulting in a 7p increase in the cost of a collectors strip from £7.68 to £7.75.