Fewer letters, fewer problems? Why I’m not bothered by Royal Mail’s new delivery plan

Both OFCOM and Royal Mail agree that it is not cost effective for them to continue delivering letters everyday, and can I really blame them?

I haven’t sent a letter in over 3 years, and the only letters I get, which are few and far between, are junk such as my opticians reminding me to book my well overdue eye test.

Most things that would have originally been delivered in the post have been replaced by emails. Bills, bank statements, newsletters, junkmail, the lot. Even my opticians were sending me emails about my overdue eye test, which made the letters they were sending me more or less a waste of ink.

There are so many better ways to keep in contact with people today. If I wanted to get in touch with a friend who lives on the other side of the country, I could call them, text them, or message them on a wide range of social media platforms and get a response instantly. Sending a letter, on the other hand, is a long-winded way to waste both time and money, waiting for a reply that might not come for days on end.

It doesn’t help that stamps are so expensive. A 1st Class stamp costs £1.70, and a 2nd Class stamp costs 87p. For context: in 2022, a 1st Class stamp cost 85p. For further context: an email is free.

And it seems like Britain agrees with me. The number of letters delivered by Royal Mail has fallen from 20 billion in 2004-05 to 6.6 billion in 2023-24, showing that less and less people are using letters as a form of communication.

However, I will concede that even I get excited when I see a letter at the bottom of my door with my name on it. The physical act of picking it up, opening it, and wondering what it’s about brings a feeling that an email or text message notification simply can’t match: the novelty.

The novelty quickly fades when I see that it’s from the opticians.