Royal Mail publishes 2012 prices.

Some very serious price increases.

While any increase will mean a knock on increase to customers, the removal of the price bands for small packets below 750g is a crippler. At the moment, packets below 100g are £1.58. From May 1st all packets up to 750g are £2.70. Businesses who sell light cheap items are going to be very badly affected. In our case, the main problem will be potentiometers. They are just slightly too large to be sent as a Large Letter, and therefore have to go via Small Packet. On ebay we subsidise the postage cost and charge £1.50. On our site we of course give free shipping for orders over £20, and someone purchasing 10 pots will still get this benefit. However, it came as a surprise to us to find that many times (probably most of the time) customers order one single pot. We pride ourselves on offering affordable postage to our customers, however there is no way we can subsidise the postage to the tune of £1.20 (+ packaging). Certainly we will switch the posting of pots to Second Class, but that is still an increase of the stamp price of 87p to £2.20.

What will this mean? We are not sure. We have just over a month to try and find a palatable solution for our customers. We will explore all options, but it is a certainty that we will have to raise the price of postage on potentiometers considerably.

Thanks Ofcom.