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Stamp costs rise to ‘keep delivering quality’

The cost of posting a letter in Germany is set to rise for the first time in 15 years – by three cents to 58 cents – to maintain standards, Deutsche Post chief Frank Appel said on Saturday.

Stamp costs rise to 'keep delivering quality'
Photo: DPA

He said costs had risen significantly in the last 15 years and that the rise must be implemented in order to continue to deliver quality and pay staff reasonable wages.

Postage for the “Maxibrief” sized package will also rise from €2.20 to €2.40, while sending books and goods will become more expensive, as will international delivery.

A “Kompaktbrief” of up to 50 grams will cost €1.50 rather than the current €1.45 when sent abroad.

The average increase will be 2.8 percent, the Post said on Friday, and said its prices were still in the mid range when compared to other European countries.

Although Deutsche Post no longer has its monopoly on Germany’s postal services, it still holds around 90 percent of the letter-sending business.

The steady shrinkage of the market is driving the company to the internet, where Appel said they were working on trying to create super-secure communications platforms. “The topic of security has developed a huge potential,” he said.

Deutsche Post, which is the biggest postal and logistics group in the world, has been growing in Asia in particular, and recently posted positive business figures.

DPA/The Local/hc

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POST

Can you rely on Sweden’s Postnord to deliver cards and presents on time?

Wednesday marks the last day you can send first class letters or parcels in Sweden and still hope they'll make it in time for Christmas Eve. But how reliable is PostNord, the company which runs Sweden's postal service?

Can you rely on Sweden's Postnord to deliver cards and presents on time?

What can you still send and hope for it to be delivered by Christmas? 

The Christmas deadline for letters and parcels outside of Sweden already passed on December 12th, as has the deadline for ordering anything online and hoping for it to arrive on time, with most e-commerce companies advising customers that anything ordered later than December 19th will not arrive in time. 

But if you’re sending first-class letters, pre-paid parcels, and small packages for delivery through the letterbox, you can still send them up until December 21st. The same goes for other parcel services such as Postnord MyPack Home, PostNord MyPack Home small, PostNord MyPack Collect, and Postpaket parcels.  

And if you’re willing to pay a bit extra, you can send express mail letters, express parcels, and first class ‘varubrev’ small parcels up until December 22nd. 

“Those dates still apply. We have written in a press statement that if you send by those dates you can be pretty sure that they will arrive in time,” Anders Porelius, head of press at PostNord, told The Local on Tuesday. 

But can you trust Postnord to deliver when they say they will? 

Not entirely.

The Swedish Post and Telecom Authority, Sweden’s postal regulator, ruled on December 8th that the company was failing to meet its regulatory target of delivering 95 percent of all letters within two working days, with 28 million letters delivered late between June and November. 

An investigative documentary by TV4’s Kalla Fakta (Cold Facts) programme, was sent pictures showing huge piles of late, undelivered letters in one of PostNord’s terminals, and interviewed postal workers who said that they were unable to complete their deliveries now they had been moved from daily to every other day, as they had twice as many letters to deliver on the days when they worked. 

“You get yelled at by the customers, and rightly so, you get yelled at by your bosses, and you scold yourself because you feel like you’re not able to do enough,” said Emilia Leijon, one postal worker. “We pretty much never manage to deliver a whole satchel. There’s too much post and too little time.” 

What is PostNord doing about the delays? 

The Swedish Post and Telecom Authority has given the company until January 30th to carry out an analysis into why it is not managing to meet its targets, and to draw up an action plan of how it is going to improve. 

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