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C9 Zones! - Back to distance charging?

Introduction

Members will be aware that the 1840 postal reforms abolished distance related charging, and for postal items that has remained ever since. (But not for parcels and packages.) However, in the last few years, since 2014, some of the Post Office's competitors have started printing Zones on the mail that Royal Mail now does the "final mile".

Usually called C9 mail after the serial numbers of the various licence holders, C9 10001-81 (with some gaps), this mail is delivered by the operator, or his agents to the appropriate Royal Mail Delivery Office.(Some of the licence holders are organisations like banks, who have their own licence, but pay other operators (like UK Mail C10001, on TNT C10002, (now Whistl) to do the sorting and delivery to Royal Mail).

This display shows some of these Zone markings. There could/will be more. Not all mail from these operators has Zone markings. Quite what the Zones actually are, and the pricing arrangements are considered Commercially sensitive by the various operators, and the Royal Mail. As you can see, much of this mail is in window envelopes, so by the time it enters the junk mail circuits, the delivery address has vanished. And since the return address often has no direct connection to where it was posted, or rather enters the Licence Operators Operations, that doesn't give any clues either. Can anyone with further information, or access to people who deal with companies mail please publish!

(link)

Frame 1

  1. Introduction
  2. Text, then upright lower case Zone A, at top
  3. No text, upright lower case Zone A, at top
  4. S above Zone A upright then bar code, at bottom
  5. No text, upright lower case qone B, at top
  6. M above and after lower case Zone B, at bottom
  7. R above and after upright lower case Zone B, at middle (or bottom if WDL size)
  8. Text, then upright lower case Zone A, printing error, at top
  9. Text, then upright lower case Zone B, printed inverted, at top
  10. Text, then upright upper case Zone A, at bottom
  11. Text, then sloping left lower case Zone A, at bottom
  12. Text, then sloping left lower case Zone B, at bottom
  13. Text, then sloping left lower case Zone C, at bottom
  14. Text, then sloping left lower case Zone D, at bottom
  15. Text, then sloping right lower case Zone A, then barcode, at bottom
  16. No zone marking, current January 2019