An Post Price Increase
August 23, 2004
I just heard that An Post are seeking to increase the price of a stamp yet again. This time from 48 cent to 53 cent. For non-Irish readers, An Post raised the price of a stamp only last August and since then, many Irish-based direct marketing companies actually send their juniors over to the UK on the car ferry to do their mailings from there. It is cheaper to send post from the UK to Ireland, than from Dublin 7 to Dublin 2. Crazy.
Small businesses like Brightspark will wait with bated breath to see what ComReg the regulator comes back with. But I fear it might go through - An Post seems to me to be managing its media releases very well (probably the only thing it's doing well). Last week we heard about how they're going to lay off lots of workers at SDS, it's loss-making delivery arm, this week it's upping the price of a stamp. Sounds to me like "we'll take a hit on SDS and let everyone else take a hit on the stamps".
But it might mean that more businesses turn to email marketing as a way to communicating and they'd do well to turn to the email marketing section of this site to find out how to do it properly!