Undelivered shipments or extremely long delivery times: The consumer advice centers have set up a new online service for complaints about postal or parcel service providers.
“What rights do I have as a postal or parcel service customer?” With an online offer from consumer advice centers, those affected should now receive help with undelivered packages, shipments that arrived late or permanently closed post office branches. The consumer advocates announced this today.
The “Postal Trouble Tool” on the consumer advice center’s homepage provides support with complaints about letters, parcels or delivery services. This allows consumers to find legal information, recommendations for action and the right contact person for their problem.
Complaints are increasing
Using the tool, consumers can also have individual letters created so that they can contact the company in question or the Federal Network Agency directly. The Network Agency is the supervisory authority and should be involved if complaints are not resolved, persist or occur again and again, consumer advocates recommend.
“We have been receiving a lot of complaints about the service provided by postal and parcel services for many years. Over time, there have been more and more complaints,” explained Julia Gerhards, consultant for consumer law and data protection at the Rhineland-Palatinate consumer advice center. “We hope to be able to help delivery service providers improve their service in the future.”
Less time pressure for the post
However, the delivery of letters is likely to take longer in the future. Last week, the Federal Ministry of Economics presented a reform proposal for the postal law, according to which the postal service should have less time pressure when transporting letters.
So far, the company has to deliver at least 80 percent of the letters submitted on the following working day. This requirement should be removed. Instead, the post office is said to have delivered at least 95 percent of the letters to the recipients on the third working day after they were posted. On the fourth working day it should be 99 percent. There has not yet been such a high compulsory value.