NZ Post - price rises, delays, etc

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Is NZ Post delaying standard mail?
If you thought your TM deliveries were getting slower, here's a possible reason. The Postal Workers Union (of Aotearoa) claims that NZ Post has a policy of "holding back standard mail which has been processed and ready for delivery".

http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industr ... ries-Union" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

NZ Post denies this, however as one of their customers I can relate that I sent a small book to Auckland on 7th January which took over three weeks to arrive. Now that's slow!

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I've had a few parcels take longer than normal.
THanks for the article, confirms what I suspected.

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Postage prices are going up again. Postage for a standard envelope is rising from 70c to 80c, larger envelopes from $1.40 to $1.60 and parcels will cost between 10 cents and $1 extra. This takes effect on 1st July.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/artic ... d=11223180" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

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At the same time as NZ Post is planning reduce home deliveries to three days a week, Royal Mail in the UK is expanding its service to incorporate Sunday deliveries for parcels.

Royal Mail announced on Wednesday that parcels will be delivered in the trial to addresses within the M25, which encircles London. The initiative is part of a move by the group, which was privatised last year, to make it easier for shoppers who are not at home on working days to receive goods.

It will help the firm keep pace with commercial rivals who are already carrying out deliveries on Sundays. In January, Amazon started offering Sunday deliveries through its Amazon Logistics service.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... ndays.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

While letter volume has decreased over the years, the popularity of TradeMe has seen parcel delivery increase many times over. If they could keep parcel postage at a reasonable price, NZ Post might be able to leverage this service as a serious income stream. Instead they seem determined to hand that side of their business to private courier companies.

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In an eerie coincidence, Stuff is running a story today on this very issue. NZ Post confirms that mail volumes fell 7.5% last year and that figure is likely to hit 10% this year. But delivery of parcels is growing strongly according to NZ Post CEO Ashley Smout.

The small-package business is burgeoning - fuelled by ever-growing numbers of Kiwis buying stuff online - but its numbers will never replace the loss of letters. Parcel volumes are expected to increase by 10 million over the next five years, while letter volumes will fall by 252 million.

However, parcels are money spinners. If you combine New Zealand Post's mail and courier business, parcel earnings will outstrip mail earnings in the next one to two years, Smout says.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/1007738 ... tal-system" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

So why price yourself out of the market and hand so much of this business to your competitors?

Our mail is getting slower - it's official!
Fairfax have been running a little postal test since 2007 - they post a bunch of letters around the country and see how long it takes for them to arrive.

In 2007, all but two of the letters sent around the country by FastPost arrived the next day, as promised. This time only half were delivered on time, with the rest mostly arriving with those sent by ordinary post.

One FastPost letter took two days to travel 7.5km across town from the Wellington CBD post box to its South Coast destination. Another took three days to reach Palmerston North from Wellington and another took four days to arrive at a Blenheim PO Box.

Those of us who trade regularly on TradeMe will have our own 'slow post' horror stories. I had one small parcel take four weeks to get to Auckland from Dunedin last year. Ordinary letter post usually takes between three to eight days to cover the same journey.

One thing's for sure, our mail is very unlikely to speed up when NZ Post implement their plan in July next year to reduce home delivery from six days to three and close half of their major processing centres. Fifty existing mail processing sites will be 'consolidated" into just three mail centres, so mail sent across town from anywhere outside Auckland, Christchurch and Palmerston North will have to travel to those centres to be sorted. That also comes at the cost of 1,500-2,000 jobs.

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Australia Post is also considering reductions in its postal service along similar lines to the NZ model.

Under a user-pays system, city residents who want their mail delivered faster or more often would have to pay for it.

"If you want it fast, you pay for it ... if you want it more frequent you pay more, if you want it express you pay more," Australia Post chairman John Stanhope told Fairfax media.

He said New Zealand had already tested delivering letters only three days a week and the response of users was "'that's ok'".

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/m ... deliveries" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I wasn't aware that 3 day a week deliveries were already happening in NZ. NZ Post say it doesn't start until July 2015. Does anyone know where or if this is taking place yet?

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NZ Post has confirmed that from July, standard mail will only be delivered every second day. The cutbacks begin in the bigger urban areas then roll out to smaller centres over the next two years. This handy chart shows the damage.

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Update from the ODT.

Priority mail will continue to to be delivered six days a week in major towns and cities at double the standard price.

In my experience, airmail envelopes can take five or six days to travel from Dunedin to Auckland, and that's with six day delivery. I'd expect a few "Where's my item?" emails from angry TM buyers while the changes settle in.

Luckily those of us living in a rural area will retain the current six day a week service.

[ionet]

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NZ Post to extend trial of mobility scooters to cut costs of mail, freight deliveries


New Zealand Post is to extend a trial of customised mobility scooters that allow posties to deliver both parcels and letters, helping the state owned mail service cut costs as the internet shrinks letter volumes

http://www.sharechat.co.nz/article/18fb ... eries.html



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It didn't take NZ Post long to reneg on their promise that rural delivery services wouldn't be affected by their cutbacks. The ODT reports that NZ Post is pulling out of six-day rural delivery in parts of Otago and Southland from November. We'll be getting a five day per week service and I imagine most rural services throughout the country will be affected.

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NZ Post are putting up their prices again.

From 1 July the cost of posting a basic letter rises from 80c to $1... a 20% increase. Fastpost goes up to $2. Rural delivery and parcel pricing remains the same.

[ionet]

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The increase from 80c to $1 represents a 25% increase for both Standard mail and
similar for Fastpost


The previous increase in 2014 (I 'm guessing) from 70c to 80c was a 14.29% increase

and the increase prior to that in 2011 from 60c to 70c was a 16.67% increase


In roughly 10 years - the cost of standard mail has basically doubled from 50c to $1.00


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Paul Charman writes a heartfelt piece on enhancing, rather than destroying NZ Post in the Herald.