Last year, tens of thousands of citizens again complained about the post office because letters and packages arrived late or not at all. The postal service wants to work on its reliability.
In 2023, the Federal Network Agency received 41,589 submissions regarding complaints about the postal service. The authority announced this. In 2022 there were 43,125 complaints. Compared to 2021, when there were only around 15,000, the level of complaints is still very high.
The opportunity to criticize applies to the entire postal and parcel industry; However, 90 percent of the complaints are directed against the market leader Deutsche Post, which delivers letters and delivers parcels under the DHL brand. However, some citizens may also have had negative experiences with letter and parcel delivery but did not complain to the Bonn authorities.
The head of the Federal Network Agency, Klaus Müller, pointed out that the level of complaints remained high. This shows how important a reliable postal service is to people. “Unfortunately, we have so far only had very limited opportunities to take action in the event of quality deficiencies,” said the former Green politician.
Fewer Occasional tests as 2022
If a lot of complaints come from one area, the network agency initiates a so-called cause check, which ultimately only amounts to a warning from the postal service. In 2022 there were 86 special tests, in 2023 this number fell significantly to 35.
As part of the current postal law reform, the supervisory authority is to be given the opportunity to impose fines and penalty payments in the future and thereby put the Bonn-based group under financial pressure. The reform in question is scheduled to be completed in April, but the approval of the Bundestag and Bundesrat is still pending.
Post wants to become more reliable
The postal service wants to work on its reliability. Each complaint is one too many, said a company spokesman, according to the dpa news agency. “We regret if customers are not satisfied with our service,” said the Post spokesman. “This year we want to work particularly hard to deliver the increasingly fluctuating volume of letters and parcels even more reliably and to continue to offer good and legally compliant working conditions for our employees.”
However, according to the company spokesman, the network agency only forwarded around 15 percent of the complaints to the post office. Therefore, the company cannot conclusively assess whether these are always quality defects on the part of Deutsche Post. The number of complaints has fallen and the number of investigations has fallen significantly.
In the past, the postal service had, among other things, cited high levels of sickness to justify the deficits. Trade unionists complain that the company is short-staffed at some locations in order to reduce costs.