So, let me get this right. The company that sent this letter used a private mail provider, which have been encouraged because it is assumed that they would be able to undercut the publicly run mail service due to “private sector efficiencies”. Then, having taken its admin costs and profit from that service, they were able to subcontract this out to the publicly-run Royal Mail, who were able to do the work at break-even or better for whatever money was left. Who’s efficient now?
This has somewhat of the same flavour as James Meek’s piece for the London Review of Books, in which he points out that one of the completely unexpected consequences of electricity privatisation was that the privatised industries would, to a large extent, be bought up by nationalised companies elsewhere in Europe: “Why was it that we had to lose our nationalised industries in order to hand them over to nationalised industries from other countries?”