{"id":7823,"date":"2019-02-22T18:55:05","date_gmt":"2019-02-22T18:55:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/royal-mail-sorry-for-raising-stamp-price-above-cap\/"},"modified":"2019-02-22T18:55:05","modified_gmt":"2019-02-22T18:55:05","slug":"royal-mail-sorry-for-raising-stamp-price-above-cap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/royal-mail-sorry-for-raising-stamp-price-above-cap\/","title":{"rendered":"Royal Mail &#8216;sorry&#8217; for raising stamp price above cap"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div property=\"articleBody\">\n<figure class=\"media-landscape no-caption full-width lead\"><span class=\"image-and-copyright-container\"><\/p>\n<p>                <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"js-image-replace\" alt=\"Stamps\" src=\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/320\/cpsprodpb\/184E2\/production\/_105745599_stamps.jpg\" width=\"976\" height=\"549\"\/><span class=\"off-screen\">Image copyright<\/span><br \/>\n                 <span class=\"story-image-copyright\">Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n<p>            <\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p class=\"story-body__introduction\">Royal Mail has apologised after announcing a price rise which breaches a cap designed to make the postal service &#8220;affordable&#8221; for all consumers.<\/p>\n<p>From 25 March, the price of a second-class stamp will rise by 3p to 61p &#8211; breaching Ofcom&#8217;s current price cap of 60p which is in place until 1 April. <\/p>\n<p>The price of a first-class stamp will also increase by 3p to 70p.<\/p>\n<p>Royal Mail says it will donate the extra revenue, expected to be \u00a360,000, to charity Action for Children.<\/p>\n<ul class=\"story-body__unordered-list\">\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-politics-46895002\" class=\"story-body__link\">Calls to ban low-level letterboxes<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul class=\"story-body__unordered-list\">\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/business-46722228\" class=\"story-body__link\">Unwanted gift returns &#8216;set to rise&#8217;<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Ofcom set the current price cap in 2012, when it allowed Royal Mail to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/business-17522500\" class=\"story-body__link\">increase the price of first and second-class stamps by 14p<\/a>, following concerns the universal service was at &#8220;severe risk&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The cap was set at 55p and would increase in line with the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) measure of inflation, making the official cap 60.65p today.<\/p>\n<p>Ofcom had announced the cap will increase to 65p from 1 April, and then will rise in line with the annual CPI rate of inflation until April 2024.<\/p>\n<p>Royal Mail says it informed Ofcom of its &#8220;error&#8221; before announcing the new 61p price on Friday.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We apologise for this mistake,&#8221; a spokesman for the company said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are putting this right by donating the revenue that we expect to collect from the error &#8211; around \u00a360,000 &#8211; to our chosen charity Action for Children, which helps disadvantaged children across the UK.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Ofcom says Royal Mail did inform them of the price rise but had not explained how it happened.<\/p>\n<p>It added that it is &#8220;urgently seeking clarification from the company&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p>The newly-announced price increases are the highest for the two stamps together since 2012.<\/p>\n<p>Royal Mail says its prices remain good value when compared with other postal operators around Europe.<\/p>\n<p>It says on average, the equivalent cost of first-class post in Europe is 99p, while second class costs 77p.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-47331801\">Source<\/a> by <a href=\"\">[author_name]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Image copyright Getty Images Royal Mail has apologised after announcing a price rise which breaches a cap designed to make the postal service &#8220;affordable&#8221; for all consumers. From 25 March, the price of a second-class stamp will rise by 3p to 61p &#8211; breaching Ofcom&#8217;s current price cap of 60p which is in place until &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7824,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}