New delivery rates for Fighting 15s flags

With new Royal Mail rates coming into force on 1 January 2021, Fighting 15s has been looking at the changes and how different items are handled by the online shopping cart.

We have now introduced a delivery class for flags, allowing these items to be sent using cheaper letter and large letter rates both within the UK and internationally, provided that flags are the only items in an order. There is already a special delivery category for paint and bulky items that causes small parcel rates to be charged for any order containing them, so what we’ve done is introduce a rule to send thin, light items more cheaply. So customers who order up to about 11 sheets of flags should benefit from letter rates, and these orders will be sent out in card-backed envelopes. Orders for more sheets of flags will go out large letter inside appropriately rated boxes.

It’s not all good news. The new Royal Mail rates see a jump in postage costs that we have to pass on. International rates are particularly badly affected.

In addition, a number of our box suppliers have run out of our usual packing boxes and we’ve had to source more expensive versions. This affects the fixed costs per order. In order to reduce the impact, we have split the handling charge that an order attracts into one for letter/large letter packages and one for small parcels. Costs for letter and large letter packaging are far less than for small parcel boxes, and we have set up the shop to charge the lower fixed costs for flags or orders for non-bulky figures up to about 450g. We’ll spare you the maths on how fixed costs skew delivery charges for orders for one pack of figures or a pot of paint more than they do for several items.

The new rates are in effect now. What was that? Did we hide some bad news behind a facade of good news? Yes, yes we did.