Sept/Oct 2003

Guaranteed delivery by 9am on the next working day is the proposition of a new service launched by Royal Mail, which says it is targeting both consumer and business sectors.

Prices start at £6.95, which is competitive for such a service. E-tailers could of course absorb some of this fee as an incentive to customers, leaving a price comparable to what is sometimes charged for much less timely delivery. Prices are quoted for weights of up to 2kg (from £12.30).

Features of the service include track and trace, signature, name and time of delivery captured on delivery card, proof-of-posting receipts and compensation for loss or damage.

• Royal Mail has suspended its Decide & Deliver service, launched last year. It was conceived as a customer recruitment initiative, but aspired to offer benefits to consumers as well, aiming to help them speed up the process of entering data at e-tail Web sites. They stored their details online, and were able to transfer them at the click of a single button to target fields in Web shopping sites.

Royal Mail emphasises that other initiatives to stimulate home shopping continue, including experiments at Nottingham and elsewhere involving alternative delivery options such as box banks and collection from post offices.