On Monday, 2 March 2015, the postage price for Australia Post’s business services goes up again. Are you ready?
At the end of March last year, prices went up for business services like PreSort Letters. Then in June, Regular delivery (which used to be called Peak) became Priority delivery, and Surface delivery (which used to be called Off-Peak) became Regular delivery.
Now at the start of March this year we have another price increase. Most increases are in the 5% to 6% range, some are a bit less, some are more, and some are a lot more.
Medium is finally gone (for now at least)
Australia Post made the decision in 2014 to remove Medium as a PreSort Letters size for Priority delivery (old Regular). Removal of the Medium letter size for PreSort letters will also be complete on Monday, as we see its departure from the (new) Regular delivery too. The Medium size allowed for letters up to 180 x 260mm in size (eg. B5) and up to 20mm thick. When lodged as PreSort letters, these Medium size envelopes will all now be categorised as Large, meaning that postage increases to these items are typically 11%+ even for the Regular delivery timetable.
When a filled DL envelope is more than 5mm thick, then typically C5 envelopes are used, which fall into the Small Plus size category. But regardless of the envelope dimensions or weight, if your sealed envelope is over 5mm and up to 20mm thick, or over 125g, it now becomes Large (allows sizes up to 260 x 360mm).
It is my belief that within about a year, we will see the Small Plus category fade away and become the new Medium. This will probably be in line with another price adjustment.
Calculating the price changes
To assist in calculating your PreSort Letter Service postage rates, The Document Institute has developed a comparison table of this Australia Post business bulk mail service.
Please click here or the image below to download it (92KB PDF).
For a complete understanding of all effected Australia Post business bulk mail services, please visit the Pricing Updates page on the Australia Post website.
What's next?
Australia Post seem to have been fairly consistent with their [rice increases over recent years...but we believe that $1 stamps are just around the corner.
Whether it's to the full $1 or not we can't say, however our prediction is that we will see increased stamps in October 2015 and another increase to business postage services in March or April 2016. We also believe that at one of these times we will also see the introduction of the Priority and Regular mail services for normal mail as well as business mail.
Business already aren't too happy with the elongated delivery time for regular business mail at an increased price. How will consumers react when they have to pay close to $1 for a stamp and have delivery take the best part of a week?
Another piece from The Document Institute, #1 at increasing productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness in high-volume personalised customer communication management.