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Postman in the snow flurry (February 2018): Leave the transit times to the customer
Photo: Thomas Warnack/dpa
The Christmas season is a particular challenge for Swiss Post.
This year, the company is under particular scrutiny in view of the complaints from many customers and criticism from the supervisory authority.
Recently, there had been problems with the delivery of letters in particular – although the trend was towards fewer and fewer letters being sent.
The group justified this, among other things, with a high level of sick leave and the empty labor market.
Now a manager has a suggestion as to how the reliability could still work: by Deutsche Post charging a surcharge for the faster delivery of letters.
Claim »no longer up-to-date«
The fact that the postal service has to deliver 80 percent of all letters the next day is "no longer up to date" given the electronic communication options, Nikola Hagleitner, who is responsible for letters and parcels on the group board, told the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung".
Especially since environmentally harmful night flights are necessary for this.
"We should consider letting customers choose the terms," Hagleitner said.
“They could then decide whether a particularly fast delivery is worth a surcharge or whether the letters can take a little longer to get there.
That would allow us to work much more flexibly.«
In Germany, the Post has undertaken to ensure the basic service required by law - and to deliver at least 80 percent of the letters the following day.
Federal Network Agency boss Klaus Müller spoke of "qualitative deficits" in view of the problems at the post office and has spoken out in favor of his authority's options for sanctions.
The situation, particularly when it comes to letter delivery, is "an annoyance for ordinary people" and also "unacceptable for the circulation of documents", where it is legally relevant that they arrive within a certain period of time.
Trade unionists accuse the group of bad planning
Trade unionists criticize that the current problems in the area of delivery are mainly homemade.
The postal staff is far too thin, and thousands of deliverers are missing nationwide.
In addition to the problems with delivery, the postal managers are also confronted with demands from the employees: the Ver.di union wants to achieve in the upcoming collective bargaining that the around 160,000 employees will receive 15 percent more wages in the future.
mmq/dpa
