Royal Mail - Tailor Made Incentives

Background

Tailor Made Incentives are postage credits which Royal Mail offers to its customers to encourage additional mail volumes. They are negotiated against objective criteria and up to specified monetary limits, set out in Royal Mail’s Tailor Made Incentives Policy Manual as notified to Postcomm.

Condition 7 of Royal Mail’s licence requires it to provide to Postcomm and publish information on all changes to the terms and prices of its conveyance services unless Postcomm has granted a prior exemption.

On 17 August 2007, Royal Mail applied for a Direction from Postcomm for exemption from Condition 7(4) of its Licence, regarding publishing on its website some of the details relating to Tailor Made Incentives (TMIs).
On 28 February 2008, Postcomm issued a “minded to” consultation letter seeking views on Royal Mail's request for exemption and Postcomm's initial assessment of this request.

This consultation was put on hold in 2008 while Postcomm investigated a suspected breach of the access headroom provision for Mailsort 2 in Condition 21 (5).

Once that investigation was completed, on 28 May 2009 Postcomm launched a short, one month re-consultation. Postcomm received four responses to this consultation; however no new substantive points were raised which had not been made in the earlier consultation.

On 27 November 2009, after further consideration of the issues, Postcomm issued a direction to allow the exemption subject to the following conditions:
(a) Royal Mail will continue to notify to Postcomm the full details of all TMIs as and when each one is approved;

(b) Royal Mail will notify Postcomm and Consumer Focus of changes to its Tailor Made Incentive Policy Manual three months in advance of their introduction; and

This direction will be reviewed after one year (i.e. in November 2010) and thereafter as judged necessary.

Royal Mail - Tailor Made Incentives

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