Jasmine Birtles
Your money-making expert. Financial journalist, TV and radio personality.
On Monday October 7 First Class stamps are set to go up by a whopping 22% so MoneyMagpie suggest that you SHOP NOW – buy a book of first class stamps and make sure you buy your christmas stamps (if you use first class) ahead of that date!
Class and Letter Size | Current Price | Price from Oct 7 |
First – Standard | £1.35 | £1.65 |
First – Large | £2.10 | £2.60 |
Chief commercial officer at Royal Mail Jack London has said: “We always consider price changes very carefully, but we face a situation where letter volumes have reduced dramatically over recent years, while costs have increased. It is no longer sustainable to maintain a network built for 20bn letters when we are now only delivering 7bn.
“As a result of letter volume decline, our posties now have to walk more than three times as far to deliver the same number of letters as before, increasing the delivery costs per letter.”
He added: “It is vital that the universal service adapts to reflect changing customer preferences so that we can protect the one-price-goes-anywhere service, now and in the future.”
Royal Mail said the new price of first- and second-class stamps remained below the average prices in Europe of £1.66 and £1.26 respectively.
With this hike in mind, we suggest that you buy your stamps now, buy stamps for a couple of Christmases if you need to. Because these rises don’t seem to be stopping.