Archived questions

Printed Postage Impressions (PPIs) are a simple, pre-printed alternative to postage stamps or franking machines. Easy to buy and print, you can choose First Class, Second Class or Mailsort® 3 PPIs, and we supply design templates for you to download and use. For small mailings you can even use a handstamp for placing the PPI design onto your mail cover. Using PPI earns you a 2p discount but you will need to have a Credit Account with us and to spend more than £5,000 a year. Follow the link below to find out more about getting an account. Alternatively, you could lease a franking machine if you do not want to buy one. Royal Mail has a list of approved suppliers.

Find out about:

• PPI™
• Franking™
• Credit Account

Royal Mail’s e-Commerce Solutions service might be just what you’re looking for. It will market and sell your products online, taking care of warehousing and delivery, plus handle payment clearance and invoicing. It’s a full transactional retail service for your business, and is a great way for you to sell out-of-season stock.

Find out about:

• e-Commerce Solutions 

Yes you can. With Timed Delivery, you’ll receive your mail at a time to suit your needs, any time after 6am. It can be at the same time every day, or on the same day each week or month, and we’ll deliver any other mail with the normal post round. Timed Delivery costs £262.50+ VAT per month but you’re not limited by a minimum amount of mail and you can even use the service with Response Services and Special Delivery™, although there’s an additional fee for Special Delivery™. Your business must be within 10 miles of a delivery office. We promise to deliver within 7.5 minutes either side of your chosen delivery time, or within 15 minutes in London. If we fail to deliver on time, you’ll be refunded that day’s fee.

Find out about:

• Timed Delivery

Safeplace™ is a new free Royal Mail delivery option that enables your customers to nominate a safe place for alternative delivery of items they order from you over the phone or internet. Safeplace™ is designed to help businesses in the e-business, mail order and home-shopping sectors to deliver to their customers first time. Offering a Safeplace™ delivery option can significantly increase customer satisfaction, because it removes the need for them to receive delivery of large items in person. This is only available with Royal Mail Tracked which has a minimum entry requirement of 5,000 items per site per annum.

Alternatively, you could offer Local Collect™ which allows your customers to choose a participating Post Office™ from which to collect. Instead of waiting around all day for a delivery, they can pick up your package from their nearest Post Office™, at a time that suits them. And, as we only release the package to people with the correct identification, it offers peace of mind.

Find out about:

• Safeplace    
• Royal Mail Tracked
• Local Collect 

Freepost™ services are the easiest way to help your customers reply to you. Freepost™ Standard Handwritten provides you with a Freepost address for the respondent to write on their own envelope. Freepost™ Standard Pre-printed allows you to design your own return device – usually an envelope, card or tear-off coupons – printed with your address and enclosed in the mailing to a customer. Customers then use this to reply to you free of charge. You’ll be invoiced and we'll tell you how many responses you have received on a day-by-day basis. It’s a helpful tool for monitoring the success of your mailings.

In addition, we also offer Freepost™ Plus, which offers better value for money if your pre-printed return devices are able to be sorted automatically by our machines. Freepost™ Plus has the appeal of Freepost™ Standard and is ideal for direct mail and advertising.

Find out about:

• Freepost™ Plus 
• Freepost Standard™ 
  

The best way to achieve this would be by setting up a PO Box. It is particularly helpful if you’re expecting a large amount of mail for something like a competition entry or a response to a direct mail campaign. You can either pick up the post from your delivery office or have it delivered direct to your normal address, with the advantage that it’s already separated from your normal mail.

Find out about PO Boxes

Whether you’re after one-off, weekly or daily deliveries, you can use our super-fast Royal Mail Sameday service, which is available 24/7. Up to 98% of items are picked up within the hour, we’ll deliver to almost anywhere in the UK, plus you can track the item online.

Find out about Royal Mail Sameday

It sounds like you need to switch from a franking operation to using Printed Postage Impressions (PPIs).  It’s really easy to use – you download the PPI artwork and can print it straight onto your envelope from your computer. PPIs are available for a wide range of services including First Class, Second Class and Mailsort® 3, as well Big Book and international services. PPIs not only save you time but can earn you generous discounts, too.

Find out about PPI

Yes you can. Local Collect is a service for customers which allows them to pick up packages and other items from their nearest participating Post Office – at no extra cost to themselves.
Find out about Local Collect