Mail firm on the up thanks to post strike
A private mail company is snapping up scores of business customers from strike-hit Royal Mail – and most say they won't be going back.
Send Marketing is now handling up to 50,000 letters a day at its base on Aldridge Fields Business Park. Managing director Guy Chatburn said: "About half have only just come to us in the last two or three months, in the run-up to the strike action. A survey of our customers found eight out of 10 said they would not go back to using Royal Mail for their business post."
The five-year-old company has 15 staff handling business mail at its Aldridge base, such as promotional letters from Wolverhampton's Grand Theatre, Symphony Hall in Birmingham and Birmingham Rep as well as Nationwide Autocentres and Fujifilm.
"We handle letters, not parcels, and we use independent postal companies like Secured Mail, TNT and City Link," said Mr Chatburn. "They handle the mail until it is delivered to a Royal Mail delivery centre – effectively Royal Mail only handles the last mile of the process, pushing it through the letter box.
"Because we handle mail in bulk, we can print and deliver a letter for just 27p, 3p per letter cheaper than a Royal Mail stamp.
"And we have also found that, despite the strike action, 94 per cent of our customers have been unaffected because we are largely by-passing the disruption of the Royal Mail's collection and sorting network."
