Following the sneaky introduction of revised postal rates by “Royal Mail” which are reflected on the SOTA shopping site I have discovered another “gotcha” introduced by these lovely people. They have also revised the sizes (downwards) for First Class mail.
The upshot of this is that trophies within the UK no longer travel as First Class letter at a cost of £1.65 but now attract the Small Parcel rate of £3.20!
I will have to amend the site to reflect this but will not do this until after the month end if you wish to order in the near future.
This does not affect shipments to other parts of the World which travel at the “Small Package” rate.
In reply to GM4TOE:
Hi barry heard on the news last night that thay are opening parcel offices on a sunday to keep up with business parcels dont know about deliveries thou, got to pay for it somehow hhhmm best 73s sean
If somebody is kind enough to lend me one to play with I will have a go!
The other option is to laser etch blank glass - somebody out there with a high power laser engraver willing to lend that to me too?
The old-fashioned way with a coating of wax, a scriber and a bottle of hydrofluoric acid is more fun than laser etching but nowadays I don’t have an easy source of supply of the acid! (Though powdered fluorspar and battery acid might work…)
I can remember when it was available over the counter in Birmingham, too, but it was indubitably a dangerous chemical in inexperienced hands, and nowadays even far more innocuous chemicals cause people to shiver in terror. Dammit, I remember determining copper content with potassium cyanide titration, in the current climate I would probably have to do it dressed like the Stig!
Oh, Mike! I’m sure I would make a most impressive Stig - right up to the point where I have to get in a car!
Yes, the hydrofluoric always came in a plastic bottle and was handled with gauntlets in a fume cupboard. Cyanide for electroplating for some reason came in solid balls about the size of a tennis ball. The guys doing the plating were quite cavalier with the stuff, even eating their lunchtime butty beside the plating bath! The worst was the chrome plating, these little backstreet plating houses in Brum had poor extraction, and the chromic acid spray used to eat away the nostrils of the platers - quite nasty!
In reply to G8ADD:
the chromic acid spray used to eat away the
nostrils of the platers - quite nasty!
I’m not surprised. We used to use the stuff (Pot Dichromate in conc sulphuric acid), hot, for the ultimate cleaning agent for glassware. It would even take carbonised organics off!
Royal Mail have, once again, sneaked in some postal price rises under the radar (at least I had not heard anything about it)
Consequently there have been some marginal increases in postal prices for awards and merchandise which I have now included on the website.
In addition, though it will not directly affect anybody at this time, Singapore has been included in the higher World rate (along with Australasia) even though it is surrounded by countries which fall into the lower rate (Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan etc). That I just do not understand!!!
Shipping between Australia and the UK (and the reverse) was always out-of-line with similar shipping distances. So much so that on occasions I found it cheaper to use a courier service than the Post Office! Depends upon package size of course (the courier sevices tend not to like large packets) and if you can wait up to 3 months, sending via sea mail remains the cheapest option I believe.
Part of the scene these days Barry I’m afraid. A standard letter for delivery in VK now costs AUD1 and the likely delivery period is quoted as two days or maybe three after the day it was posted.
The postal service here has been losing money for years and they probably rightly blame the electronic media. On-line purchasing has seen the parcel business boom and it subsidizes the letters.
There has been some grumbling over the salary of the head of the Post - about 5 times what we pay the PM. Paying big salaries is supposed to ensure we get the best managers. And by inference the best and cheapest service.
Can’t see any evidence supporting that one.
Why are international postal rates inconsistent?
Political decisions
Incompetence
Graft
Pick one, two or three.
The opinions expressed here are not necessarily those of local management. No further correspondence will be entered into and the writer will be wearing his Stig outfit when reading mail in future.
It almost seemed as though you were describing the situation for the U.S. Postal Service. Package volumes up (so 2016 rate increase). Letter volume down (so a 2016 by pennies rate decrease - thinking to to reverse the trend?). I seriously doubt that. Delivery times optimistically quoted but seldom realized. Randomly mis-routed Packages (they always blame the address label). Package tracking often seems to depend on if they actually remember to do it. Many times only catching up after the delivery was actually made. I always thought it was only us with complaints.