“Oh god, I have to pick up my package at the post office.” If you think of the Arnulfstraße letter center with horror when you hear this sentence, you might live in the Westend. The branch there in Bergmannstraße closed at the end of August 2021. Since then, parcel post has repeatedly been brought to Neuhausen when the courier cannot find anyone at home. “It’s always a horror to have to drive here,” writes one reviewer in a Google rating.
In the future, postal customers will have to travel farther than usual to drop off mail, pick up parcels or withdraw money. Four locations were closed in Munich last year: Agnesstrasse, Angererstrasse, Bergmannstrasse and Fraunhoferstrasse, all of which are popular and well-frequented post offices. Five other branches have to close this year.
This causes resentment among the residents, anger in the district committees and resistance in the city council. On Thursday, the economic department invited members of the city council and district committee chairmen to an information event with representatives of Deutsche Post AG.
“Munich people see postal services as a service of general interest,” says Deputy Head of Department Kurt Kapp. For this reason, Mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD) is campaigning at the federal level for the next post office to be reached after a maximum of 1000 meters – instead of the current 2000 meters. An answer from the Federal Ministry of Economics is still pending, said Kapp.
Increasingly online banking: This is the reason for the branch closures
The question remains how serious the situation is. “I think the postal service in Munich is very good,” says Helmut Muhr, Deutsche Post’s regional policy officer for almost all of Bavaria. Right at the beginning of the discussion, he made it clear that the closures in Munich were not decided by Deutsche Post, but by Deutsche Bank. Because more and more bank customers are doing their business online, the institute is cutting back the branch network of its Postbank brand.
By the end of 2023, 200 of the 750 branches in Germany are to disappear, in Munich this will affect nine branches. “We are not happy about the bank’s decision,” says Muhr. “But we can’t stop or prevent that, the bank decides independently about its branch network.”
By the end of March 2022, the Postbank finance centers in Alter Hof and Theresienstraße should close. One is currently looking for alternatives for the two locations, says Postbank Manager Muhr. A new partner branch is to be set up in the vicinity of Theresienstrasse, and “promising talks” are being held with retailers in the city centre. In any case, “a seamless transition” is planned, according to Muhr.
By the end of September at the latest, the previous locations Romanplatz, Korbinianstrasse and Hofmannstrasse are to be abandoned. Efforts are being made to find a successor retail location on Romanplatz. Anyone who has previously gone to Korbinianstrasse is referred to the existing branch at the Hausleiter stationery on Illungshofstrasse, where there will be two post offices in the future. And anyone who has visited the post office on Hofmanstrasse has been able to switch to a newly opened branch at Aidenbachstrasse 139 since last October; in addition, another one will be opened in Fallstrasse by the end of March.
When ATMs go away, it hits the elderly in particular
There is a lot of subjunctive in these sentences, the search for new quarters is difficult, especially in the city center, where the high rents are accompanied by great difficulties for delivery traffic.
In the ensuing discussion, the chairmen of the district committees sometimes criticize harshly, but also make suggestions for improving care. Günter Keller (SPD) from Sendling-Westpark criticized that several small shops would create new problems with delivery and delivery. He suggests separate loading zones for the branches.
Sibylle Stöhr (Greens) from Schwanthalerhöhe states: “With the closure in Bergmannstrasse, there is now no ATM, which is not easy for older people.” Patric Wolf (CSU) from Schwabing-Freimann proposes central locations for packing stations, where not only DHL is represented, but other shipping providers are also included.
Alexandra Gaßmann (CSU) from Laim demands that parcels are also delivered close to home when nobody is at home. “Why don’t parcels end up in your own neighborhood but somewhere else when you’re not at home?” asks City Councilor Stefan Jagel (left).
Because online trade is booming, there will be more Packstations
Muhr, the representative of Deutsche Post, counters the lament that there are fewer and fewer branches in Munich with figures. He shows a city map on which almost 500 Deutsche Post and DHL locations are marked in Post yellow. As of December 31, 2021, there are 122 partner branches in the city.
“Partner” because the network has been reorganized since the two postal reforms in the 1990s and the privatization of the former Bundespost: since then, the post has no longer operated the branches, but Deutsche Bank, Aldi, Lidl, Edeka, Rewe and others.
Of these, 30 offer financial services. In addition, there would be five acceptance points for business mail, 162 DHL parcel shops, 166 Packstations and 38 so-called points of sale, where you can buy little more than stamps. The number of Packstations in particular is to be massively expanded over the next two years, as online trading is booming.