Royal Mail Sameday has launched a new website enabling businesses and consumers to quote and book online for courier services almost anywhere in the UK.

Royal Mail Sameday is a premium service for guaranteed delivery within the same day which is now open to businesses and consumers as a pay-as-you-go service which can be booked online using a credit or debit card, without the need for an account. The new online system removes the need for users of the Sameday service to make their bookings over the telephone.

Royal Mail extended access to Sameday collection and delivery services in response to demand from SMEs, marketplace sellers and consumers who wanted guaranteed delivery for urgent items. Research from MetaPack reveals that same day delivery is the service that UK consumers are most likely to use in the future: 76% of consumers expressed a desire to use same day delivery, ahead of 69% who wanted delivery within one hour.

Of course it’s unlikely that every customer will suddenly demand and require a same day delivery service, but there are circumstance where the cost is less important than speed in which case they’ll happily pay for the service.

With Royal Mail Sameday, you can follow every package from start to finish using real-time GPS tracking, and will receive email or SMS confirmation as soon as their parcel is delivered. The Sameday on demand service can be ordered anytime, day or night, seven-days-a-week, 365 days a year, to almost anywhere in the UK.

The Sameday service is built on its rapid response capabilities. To ensure that 98% of all deliveries are collected within one hour of booking, Royal Mail uses satellite technology to assign the nearest driver to collect each booking and send it on its way as swiftly as possible. Royal Mail Sameday delivers 99.9% of all bookings within 24 hours.

Example costs for Royal Mail Sameday

I ran a couple of quotes just to see how competitive the service is. From my location in Thatcham Berkshire a delivery to my mother on the Isle of Wight would cost £101.45 (£84.54 plus VAT) which may seem excessive, but take into account a 90 minute drive to Portsmouth, wait for the 40 minute ferry crossing and then another 30 minute drive and it’s quite reasonable. (Bear in mind the return ferry crossing alone costs £35.00)

Another quote I checked was from Thatcham to Reading which came in at £26.40 (£22 plus VAT). That’s about a 25 mile trip and would probably take an hour and a half for me to deliver and return home. Again the price seems more than reasonable for an urgent delivery as I don’t even have to go out – Royal Mail will collect from me and do the door to door delivery.

Next time you have a customer desperate for a product today, do dismiss them out of hand. In thirty seconds on the Royal Mail Sameday website you can have a delivery price to give them. Plus if you ever mess up badly and forget to ship an item a same day delivery might be the way to get you out of trouble.

Source: TameBay