Recently at the time of writing the Post Office rolled out some rather large changes in the way in which it charges its customers for regular mail. This has been in response to rapidly declining letter volumes in Australia and the resulting losses in their business.
You can read more detailed information about this by clicking here but essentially the Post Office was faced with a choice to either limit the number of times that they deliver mail from each day to three days per week or to introduce two pricing levels for regular mail as well as raising the price of postage.
In the end the option that was taken was the second one and two speed mail was introduced in Australia. Essentially this system gives Post Office customers the choice to send mail as they have been doing with 1-2 day delivery standards for a premium price or alternatively send regular mail at a reduced price if they are willing to accept 3-5 days delivery standard.
The feedback that we have heard from customers is that the majority have simply decided to place the required “Priority” print on all their stationary and accept the higher pricing in order to maintain the established delivery standard of their postal items.
Other customers however, are more sensitive when it comes to the size of their postal bill have opted to maintain two sets of stationary, one for priority and one for regular and leave it up to their staff members to use their discretion as to their delivery requirements which envelope that they use.
A third group of customers have opted to go the completely “Regular” mail route in order to keep their postage costs to a minimum and simply use the Express Post service or door-to-door couriers for their urgent items.
Each of these methods have their pros and cons as once staff members are offered a choice, there is a possibility that they could exaggerate the urgency of delivery of their items and use the costly premium service when the regular service would meet their needs simply because of convenience.
So which method is best? We feel that it is simply too early to tell but the consensus from our customers is that the difference between the two speeds of mail is not significant enough for them to consider using regular only or a combination of the two speeds so they are opting to convert completely to use priority only and adjusting their stationary orders to reflect this.
If you are unsure of the service that best suits your requirements wee are happy to help, please click here to contact us or alternatively feel free to call us on 1300 624 562 at any time.
