THE Royal Mail Group has admitted a breach of competition law which led to an Ofcom investigation.
The UK delivery giant has admitted “being part of an illegal anti-competitive agreement” with SaleGroup, a reseller of its business parcel delivery services, for more than four years.
Last year, Royal Mail Group informed the competition watchdog, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), that its Parcelforce division had an agreement with the smaller firm which meant they would not offer services to each other’s customers.
Parcelforce Worldwide had the agreement with SaleGroup, trading as Despatch Bay, which meant they shared customer data to avoid approaching one another’s customers, Ofcom said.
Ofcom said it found, after Royal Mail informed the regulator of the incident, that the agreement between the businesses broke the law by restricting competition by sharing customers.
SaleGroup is an online reseller which arranges deliveries for small and medium-sized business customers by sourcing multiple parcel operators, rather than carrying out deliveries itself.
The regulator said that it found the two companies implemented, monitored and enforced an agreement to share customers, lasting from August 2013 to May 2018.
The two companies enforced the agreement through regular email correspondence, with one usually asking the other to withdraw a quote provided to certain customers.
Some of these offers had undercut the price a customer was paying at the time, meaning that once offers were withdrawn, customers were left paying the higher price.
Royal Mail Group was granted immunity from paying a fine over the incident because it came forward to the CMA.
SaleGroup was handed a £40,000 fine by the regulator.
A Parcelforce Worldwide spokesman said: “Parcelforce Worldwide welcomes competition and takes compliance very seriously.
“We have been fully co-operating with Ofcom throughout its investigation.”
Why are you making commenting on The National only available to subscribers?
We know there are thousands of National readers who want to debate, argue and go back and forth in the comments section of our stories. We’ve got the most informed readers in Scotland, asking each other the big questions about the future of our country.
Unfortunately, though, these important debates are being spoiled by a vocal minority of trolls who aren’t really interested in the issues, try to derail the conversations, register under fake names, and post vile abuse.
So that’s why we’ve decided to make the ability to comment only available to our paying subscribers. That way, all the trolls who post abuse on our website will have to pay if they want to join the debate – and risk a permanent ban from the account that they subscribe with.
The conversation will go back to what it should be about – people who care passionately about the issues, but disagree constructively on what we should do about them. Let’s get that debate started!
Callum Baird, Editor of The National
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here