First and second class post could be scrapped, consultation suggests

[billsstamps]

Getting rid of Sunday collections is still not acceptable for me, so certainly not content with no Saturday collection.

Britiish deliveries are more an more internet based and for the sake of the nation's economy, we need a seven day a week collection

[Juliebabe25]

Here in NZ our post office is trying to cut costs in the face of declining mail (not parcels)

I'd rather see an end to Saturday deliveries than another rise in charges.

I'd rather see 3 days a week delivery if it meant that prices could come down.

[booksntings]

Here in NZ our post office is trying to cut costs in the face of delining mail (not parcels)

I'd rather see and end to Saturday deliveries that another rise in charges.

I'd rather see 3 day a week delivery if it meant that prices could come down.

That could be one way of getting people to shop in bricks & mortar stores, though it would most likely only benefit the big guys like Walmart & tesco

[rokins_toys]

To be honest, I would agree with the scrapping of 1st and 2nd class services aslong as the replacement was cheaper than current 1st class prices. There just seems to be no point to the two teir system these days. Royal Mail could save themselves a lot of money without having to sort 1st and 2nd class mail out and pass those savings on to their customers, and no doubt, it would save Royal Mail in other areas as well.

Although the majority of 1st class is still delivered within 24 hours, the majority of people probably couldn't care less if it took 2 days, I know I don't, but there is an irony when a 2nd class item can arrive before a 1st class item lol. So with delivery aims what they are today, they might as well just scrap 1st and 2nd class, have a one teir system where everything is delivered within 2 days.

As a business, I would not like to see something like standard parcels scrapped though as we have many items they can be expensive to ship 1st class and standard parcels is the cheaper option I would rather give my customers. But it would be nice to see the cost of standard parcels "up to 200og" come down in price as I feel it is a little too expensive now.

I also think next day delivery should be kept for priority items, special delivery etc, and even these should come down in price to be honest.

Having read the article in question, I see it states the government is doing all it can to privatise Royal Mail, but I feel this would be extremely bad for the general public and businesses that rely on Royal Mail services. If Royal Mail goes private, I can see the same thing happening to it as what has become of our energy companies today where everything is priced far higher than it needs to be to satisfy the greed of owners/shareholders. Energy prices in Britain are at least 30% higher than they need to be (given the constant increases over the past 5 years and how much prices have come down by, energy companies always raise prices by at least 15% year on year, yet only lower them by a small fraction) and if energy prices were 30% lower, the energy companies would still be making substantial profit, and if Royal Mail went private, we would jsut see endless price hikes, lame excuses to justify it, while small businesses end up suffering as a direct result of it. Prices for postage are too high now as it is, the last thing we need is more increases, and let's not forget, as a business, you only qualify for Royal Mail's cheaper business tariff if you are sending in excess of 5,000 parcels per year, and a lot of small businesses do not even do half of that so have to use the public tariff.

If any changes should be made at Royal Mail then doing away with 1st and 2nd class is a good start, it will save Royal Mail money and those savings can be passed on to the customers. I also think another change should be that the limit to qualify for business tariff prices should be lowered to 500 parcels per year so a larger number of smaller businesses can benefit from cheaper prices than those laid out in the public tariff and this would go a long way to helping those small businesses. Royal Mail should never be privatised, if it is, the majority of small businesses will be priced out of using their services and couriers are not exactly cheaper either especially when it comes to the types of products that people are selling online. If we used a courier, we'd have to charge £4.95 shipping for everything, even a single action figure and that's just ridiculous, but even with Royal Mail's prices, we're already at £3.52 to ship a single action figure when you take into consideration the cost of packaging materials on top. So the other change would be the introduction of a one teir system that is cheaper than current first class prices which will never happen if Royal Mail are privatised, the government needs to pull its head out of its rear end and stop selling everything off, which is a major problem with the government, they keep privatising things they would directly earn revenue from, which is why I strongly believe as energy companies cannot keep their prices low and fair and cannot keep their greed in check, they should be re-nationalised.