Category: Observation

Posted on

Save up to 78% on postage to the USA


I was surprised to find out that you could make substantial savings by sending post to the USA from across the border using An Post:

Exchange rate used: 1 EUR = 0.80 GBP

Summary

  • An Post Standard Post is substantially cheaper than Royal Mail Airmail for all scenarios above
  • It is 75% cheaper on average for the Letter scenarios above
  • A 100g letter is 78% (£2.58) cheaper to send via An Post
  • It is 38% cheaper on average for the Packet scenarios above
  • Both services aim to delivery within 5-7 days so it is a fair like for like comparison
  • Royal Mail do offer a Surface Mail option which is only cheaper in the 100g Packet scenario above, however it is only 20 pence cheaper and by choosing the surface mail option it adds almost 5 weeks to the delivery time.

Obviously you can only take advantage of these savings if you live in Northern Ireland and either live close to the border or have reason to travel across the border. In many cases it probably would not be worth driving a significant distance to avail of this saving unless you had many items to post. Savings may also be possible to other international destinations.

Sources

Posted on

Transatlantic Post


Did you know that it costs eleven pence more to send a postcard from the UK to the US than it does to send from the US to the UK, despite it travelling the exact same distance?

As interesting (or not) as that may be to you (and please feel free to discuss below), the purpose of this post is primarily to test the Google Chart API.

NB: USD prices were converted to GBP using an exchange rate of 0.6279 as retrieved from Google on 2nd March 2012. USPS pricing for letters is by ounces not grams and these were converted to equivalent grams for the purposes of the above comparison. All prices were retrieved from the official websites for each organisation.