Yep - agree with all of that. It has stopped me buying cheapy posters on ebay unless I can get more than one in the tube.
Adam, if you're sending posters and want to save a few £, try parcel2go or parcelmonkey. I've found you get a tube delivered for around £4 and they'll pick it up from you rather than you having to go to the post office.
I recently went to post a tube to a friend in the US...it was one of Bruce's big strong tubes. Royal Mail wanted £50 to post it! Laughable. I went with Fedex using parcel 2 go and it was 'only' £24. That was for a fully tracked service and it was delivered in about 5 days. RM are just too pricey these days.
£50.00!! Blimey, what did you have in there!? A lead-lined poster!?...
...just kidding, did you have it insured for the full amount or was it the size of the tube that caused the problem?
Royal Mail are readying themselves for privatisation and in the process are losing thousands of customers.
Today I sent two packages by Royal Mail Second Class Signed For - one with one poster in it weighing 438g and another with four posters in it weighing 860g. Both cost £3.70 to send excluding the cost of the tube etc, which I noticed was the wrong postage charge when I looked at the receipt a couple of hours ago, so I expect to receive these back as the charge should have been £6.30 each. It was the first time it has happened to me, and I feel sorry for the Post Masters as they are getting a little confused with some things as Royal Mail are changing things without fully informing them, I mean, have you seen what the Post Masters have to do now? It's ridiculous. They have to scan barcodes to say what the packages are, whether or not they are hazardous etc, and that's after already putting this data into the system for printing the postage labels, but it's such a flawed system because someone could send a hazardous package illegally and simply say "Nope, nothing bad in that one!" and the Post Master cannot do anything about it.
I've looked into parcel2go but will look at parcelmonkey too, thanks Tob. There's quite a few really. There's also myhermes, but have heard bad things about them so I'll just have to research it properly and use what is best for me, however, at the moment the Royal Mail is the easiest. Will keep you posted on what transpires.
