Royal Mail faces £ 600m legal battle over anti-competitive behaviour

[TrueBlueTerrier]

https://www.cityam.com/royal-mail-faces ... behaviour/

Royal Mail and logistics company Whistl are preparing for a High Court battle, after the latter accused the postal service of anti-competitive behaviour, which it claims resulted in over 2,000 job losses at the firm.

The claim from Whistl, which is for upward of £600m in damages, comes in the wake of Royal Mail being fined a record £50m by regulator Ofcom over the same affair.

In the upheld complaint, the postal service was judged to have used its monopoly position to target Whistl with price hikes in 2014 when the claimant, then called TNT UK, was looking to challenge Royal Mail’s position as the UK’s dominant postal company.

At that time, Whistl was preparing to launch its own independent postal service that would facilitate deliveries from businesses to households. The service, which was going to use its own postal workers to make deliveries entirely independent of Royal Mail, was set to cover 42 per cent of British homes. Whistl then would have paid Royal Mail to deliver to the remaining 58 per cent.

But in the run-up to the launch of the new service, Royal Mail raised the cost of making deliveries on behalf of third parties, such as Whistl, in an attempt to hamper the prospects of the new service, the regulator found.

This led to the service, which at the time was Royal Mail’s only door-to-door letter delivery rival, becoming economically unviable, Whistl claimed. Thereafter the company made 2,000 job cuts and discontinued the ‘final-mile’ delivery service.

Whistl chair Nick Wells alleged in a statement that the behaviour was “symptomatic of a historical culture within the organisation, which has been prepared to deliberately abuse its dominant position”.

The claim will add to the already-full in-tray that Martin Siedenberg, the new chief of Royal Mail’s parent company International Distribution Services, is having to manage. Siedenberg has spent much of his first months in charge enmeshed in protracted industrial disputes.

The Royal Mail did not immediately respond to a request for comment but said of the claim in its annual report: “Royal Mail believes Whistl’s claim is without merit and will defend it robustly.”

[daveyeff]

if RM lost they wouldn't pay anyway. they've got no money

[Bob Cooney]

Why should RM pay ?

The article confirms the postal service is/ was a natural monopoly therefore Whistle cannot claim that RM are anti competitive and any classical economist would testify to that as fact.

Whistle among others have been piggy backing the RM network extracting revenues that should have been invested back into the postal service which suprise suprise RM now cant provide.

Whistle aren't competitive and productive they are benefactors of a regulator that has been set up to extract revenues from the postal service ( state now RM ) and they hide this from the general public under the guise of increased competition and productivity when the opposite is true.

The contradictions in the Ofcom report are there for all to see - its a con job / doublespeak that has starved the postal service of investment and its that system that should be under scrutiny in court.


.

[clashcityrocker]

Why should RM pay ?

The article confirms the postal service is/ was a natural monopoly therefore Whistle cannot claim that RM are anti competitive and any classical economist would testify to that as fact.

Yet RM have already been fined £50 million by Ofcom.
Why didn't a classical economist testify then?

[Mr Rush]

Why should RM pay ?
The article confirms the postal service is/ was a natural monopoly therefore Whistle cannot claim that RM are anti competitive and any classical economist would testify to that as fact.

Yet RM have already been fined £50 million by Ofcom.
Why didn't a classical economist testify then?

Are there any left in the halls of power?

Whistl were going to toss 56% back to us because we were cheaper than setting themselves up as a competitor - and that's... competition?

At the risk of starting a flamewar: now that the big bad EU can't tell us to open up the postal market I ask everyone to hold their breath until DSA is terminated. I'm sure it won't be long.

[theotherone]

https://www.whistl.co.uk/news/whistl-cl ... royal-mail

They are obviously trying to look for an out of court settlement.