The cost of sending a book weighing more than 450 grammes first class could be cut from £1.50 to 85p as long as the package is less than 25mm thick but the price of sending light but awkwardly-shaped items such as posters could soar.

This seems like a very sensible move. After all, it must cost more to try and deal with a huge poster tube than with thick book. It cost me over £7 to send a book the other day, and it did occur to me that it’d only actually take up a very small space in a Royal Mail van, and it seems sensible for prices to be reformed to reflect this. For the first time in a long time, I think the Royal Mail are making the right move.

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Obviously anon above is on the payroll, the post office is guaranteed to lose even more money by doing this - your book obviously weighed a lot so fuel cost per mile will be greater than for a poster! Also every Post Office (all state monopolies thank heavens and not privatised)in the developed world work by weight - we are obviously withdrawing from the developed world again! Certainly it is unfair to base Postal Costs on size not weight.

» This comment was received at 08:58 on 22 July 06

The system is based on both size and weight, not size alone. And many developed countries use systems like this - America, Japan, and Belgium to name just three. The point is that larger and awkwardly shaped packages can’t go through automatic sorting machines as easily, and so the cost of sorting the packets is greater. Fuel per mile would indeed be greater, but manpower is much more expensive than fuel.

And I’m certainly not on the Post Office payroll!

» This comment was received at 09:25 on 22 July 06

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