Royal Mail charges more to send packets to UK addresses than to Russia

One is a naval port on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, more than 5,000 miles from Britain. The other lies just across the River Thames from Westminster. Yet if you want to send a package to Vladivostok, in the far east of Russia, Royal Mail will charge you less than it would to send the same item to Vauxhall, in inner London.

An anomaly in postal pricing means that some packets, posted at any UK pillar box or Post Office, are cheaper to send abroad via Airmail than to send to a British address by second-class post. It has led critics to label the Royal Mail’s pricing system as “crazy”. The gulf in prices has arisen after Royal Mail ratcheted up its prices for sending larger items of mail within the UK by first or second class post, at a time when a growing number of packets are being posted by online retailers and by individuals selling items through trading websites such as eBay.



The so-called “pricing in proportion” policy takes into account the size and thickness of each item of mail, as well as weight. Previously, prices were based solely on weight. Anyone posting an item which weighs 100-120g (3.5-4.2oz) and is bulky enough to be a “packet” rather than a letter - more than 353mm (13.9in) long, 250mm (9.8in) wide or 25mm (1in) thick - would need to apply £1.51 in stamps to send it to a UK address by second class post, or £1.72 by first class.

By contrast, they could send the same item anywhere in the “European zone” for only £1.42 by the Airmail small packet service. The zone covers the whole of Europe and the whole of Russia and Turkey. It extends to the former Soviet states of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, which are entirely in Asia. Other remote locations which come within the European zone are the Azores in the mid-Atlantic, the Canary Islands off Africa, and the Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic.