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CHRISTMAS

1.4 million parcels a day: record Christmas for Swiss Post

Swiss Post, Switzerland’s postal service, sorted and delivered a record 1.4 million parcels every day in the week before Christmas.

Published: 27 December 2018 16:54 CET

1.4 million parcels a day: record Christmas for Swiss Post

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This figure represents an increase on last year’s 1.3 million parcels per day.

Experts say this is due to the growing popularity of online shopping.

With 8.4 million people living in Switzerland, this means that 1 in 6 citizens had a parcel delivered during the last week before Christmas.

But despite the busiest time coming in the week before Christmas, Swiss Post also sorted through 1 million packages a day in the weeks beforehand.

Since Black Friday, on November 23, Swiss Post says it has delivered some 25 million parcels and more than 400 million letters.

To compensate for the sudden spike, all available staff in three of the biggest Swiss Post sorting centres (Frauenfeld in Thurgau, Härkigen in Solothurn and Daillens in Vaud) have been working extra shifts on Saturdays for the last five weeks.

Swiss Post has expanded its sorting system in the past few years to further help it cope with such high numbers of parcels.

It is also currently working on the construction of three new regional sorting centres in Ticino, Valais and Graubünden.

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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