63% of businesses say postal costs have increased

One year on from Royal Mail’s introduction of Pricing in Proportion (PIP), MarketingFile conducted a survey to see if business postal costs had increased or decreased.

When asked “since PIP was introduced, have your office mail costs increased”, 44% said yes, and 16% said it had decreased. When asked how the changes affected their Direct Mail costs, 63% said costs had increased, with 25% staying about the same. A sharp contrast to the Royal Mail’s initial pitch to Postcomm which stated: “The great majority of our mail will not change in price and this means that most of our customers will not be greatly affected”.

Whatever the opinion of PIP, 65% of businesses still use first class post for their office mail, and 44% for direct mail. With the British stamp still being the preferred method of payment for 49%.

When asked, are you happy with the service you receive from the Royal Mail, 50% of business users said no. Despite this, when asked if they would think about using a different provider the majority of particpants said yes, but were confused about the available suppliers.

With last month’s debate between Postcomm and the Royal Mail on possible reductions of deliveries to 5 days a week, we asked "How would this affect you?" 28% of our readers felt it could have a