Three days for standard letter
Post wants to slow down significantly
October 7, 2023, 4:05 a.m
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The Federal Network Agency is putting a stop to any increase in postage. The postal service is now specifying how it envisions a reformed system: In the future, there will be two speeds for shipments, depending on the price. The standard letter would then be allowed to travel for three days.
After the postage increase was rejected, Deutsche Post would like to deliver standard letters much more slowly than before. “There could be a priority letter that reaches the addressee the day after the letter is posted, and a standard letter that only arrives after three days,” Nikola Hagleitner, the manager responsible for the letter and parcel business, told “Welt am Sonntag”. The price for the priority letter “should be higher than the current postage”. At the same time, Hagleitner assured that there was no talk of doubling the price. She demanded that the Federal Network Agency also have to “reset the pricing procedure upwards” for the future standard letter. She justified this with significantly higher costs.
At the beginning of August, the Federal Network Agency rejected Deutsche Post’s application for an early increase in letter postage for 2024. The company cited “drastically increased costs due to inflation, higher energy prices and the very high collective bargaining agreement in 2023 as well as a significantly greater decline in letter volumes” as reasons for the application. However, the federal government is considering accommodating Deutsche Post and extending the delivery time for letters to three days, as the “Business Insider” portal reported in August. The Federal Ministry of Economics therefore wants to make a corresponding proposal for a new regulation of the Postal Act. Until now, the rule for letters and postcards is that they should reach the recipient on the following working day (“E+1”). The postal service has been trying to extend this term for a long time.
Manager questions complaint record
According to manager Hagleitner, the company does not want to change the number of delivery days. “We have no interest in changing anything about the six-day delivery,” she told “Welt am Sonntag”. The post office wants to maintain letter delivery in Germany and continue to fulfill the statutory universal postal service. “But for this we need a new fee regulation that gives us a profit margin from which we can invest around one billion euros in delivery every year,” she demanded. This year, the postal service expects a decline in letter volumes of six percent.
Hagleitner also commented on the increasing number of customer complaints about errors in the delivery of letters and parcels to the Federal Network Agency. “We don’t know how the Federal Network Agency’s numbers come about.” The authority last reported around 11,000 complaints in the months January to April 2023, which represents a new record for the year as a whole. “We ourselves see significant improvements in delivery between 2022 and 2023,” Hagleitner told the newspaper. This year the delivery times for letters are “extremely stable”.