Contract Options
National Access Agreement
This is suitable for customers who have a posting profile that is consistent with the average Royal Mail national geographical mix of mail for delivery throughout the UK. Consequently, it does not have a disproportionate amount of mail for geographic areas with a high cost to serve, nor a disproportionate amount of mail for areas with a low cost to serve. Under a National Access Agreement, the Customer has to hand over daily to 31 ‘mandatory’ and a minimum of 60 of the 68 Inward Mail Centres. Prices are geographically uniform.
Zonal Access Agreement
This is suitable for customers with mailings that do not on average meet the Royal Mail national geographical mail profile. Royal Mail has placed each of the 10,500 Postcode Sectors in the UK into one of five price zones using the criteria of delivery point density and delivered volumes that are the principal drivers of its delivery costs. Under a Zonal Access Agreement, each posting on any given day is priced based on the number of items for delivery in each zone.
Access Agency Agreement
This type of Agreement can be signed as either a National mailing profile format or a Zonal mailing profile format as mentioned above. It’s additional features allow an Access Operator or Intermediary to act as a sending customer’s formal agent for Access mailing items, which allows the agent to charge the postage element exclusive of VAT for VAT exempt companies. The VAT exempt customer needs to complete the relevant Schedule of their agent’s Access Agency Agreement to sign up with Royal Mail as an Agency Customer of Royal Mail Wholesale under the terms and conditions of their agents Access Agency Agreement. Doing so enables the framework for the VAT exempt invoices. Please refer to the Agreement and User Guide for more details.
Premium Access Agreement
This type of Agreement is available for Access 120, Access 120 OCR, Access 120 CBC and Access 1400 services on a Zonal mailing profile, or Access 120 and Access 120 OCR services on a National mailing profile (as mentioned above) and is for being brought into Inward Mail Centres at a defined late evening access slot for Royal Mail to deliver the following working day. The Premium Agreement has different presentational requirements from the other Access Agreements mentioned above and has a separate User Guide. It also has separate prices.
Please refer to the Premium User Guide and the Premium pricing table on this website for more detail.
Mail Centre Extraction Agreement
This Agreement is only available for machineable letters and postcards addressed to international destinations. The service allows Customers to design and produce their own personalised international stamps for retail sale in the UK for delivery outside of the UK. All international stamp designs must be pre-approved by Royal Mail. Mailing items bearing these international stamps can be posted into Royal Mail post boxes before being extracted at Royal Mail outward mail centres and handed over to the Access Customer. The Access Customer is responsible for the onward international conveyance of the items. Maximum item weight is 20g. Item price is 15.06p plus hand over charges. Please refer to the Mail Centre Extraction Agreement and User Guide for more detail.
Post Office® Collect Service
The Post Office® Collect service enables Postal Delivery Operators (the customer) to offer the intended recipient of items of mail the use of participating Post Office® branches as a collection point for undeliverable packages. The customer may choose to take the package to a convenient Post Office® where it will be held whilst awaiting collection by the recipient. The customer is required to leave a calling card (notification card) with the intended recipient advising the Post Office® branch the package has been taken to and the dates it will be available for collection. The service operates in the same way as the Royal Mail Local Collect and Parcelforce Worldwide Convenient Delivery services.
The service charges comprise a fixed annual charge of £367,132 and a per item charge of £1.0267. For more information please visit the FAQs on the Royal Mail Wholesale web site or refer to the Post Office® Collect Agreement and User Guide.
Details of the relevant entry criteria for each of the above options are available by contacting Royal Mail Wholesale via this link