Denmark Posts Its Last Letters as Hallowed National Mail Ends (thetimes.com)
- Reference: 0180332879
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/12/08/197230/denmark-posts-its-last-letters-as-hallowed-national-mail-ends
- Source link: https://www.thetimes.com/article/b527b8fb-855e-4b9e-a087-49a6561e72e9
PostNord, the postal service Denmark has shared with Sweden since 2009, started removing its 1,500 remaining red post boxes in June; a handful will go to museums. Letter volumes collapsed from nearly 1.5 billion in 2000 to 110 million last year. A standard stamp now costs 29 Danish kroner ($4.52). A private logistics firm called DAO will take over letter delivery. PostNord will continue handling parcels. The decision has rattled postal services elsewhere in Europe. Deutsche Post in Germany, still delivering 61 million letters daily, has warned it faces the same trends.
[1] https://www.thetimes.com/article/b527b8fb-855e-4b9e-a087-49a6561e72e9
Re: (Score:2)
Also, what's the functional difference between a letter and a small parcel? Could you drop off a parcel-shaped letter at the post office, with the only difference being that it's not being put into an outdoor post box?
Re: (Score:2)
Money I should imagine - a small parcel would likely cost the sender more, maybe have more content scrutiny
Re: (Score:2)
Better question is if you can drop a letter-shaped parcel to some post but not actually post-office and have it delivered to someone (ideally still to the post box, but it'll be the letter-shaped-parcels box I guess). And if you can how's that different from a regular letter, except that it's handled by that company.
Re: (Score:2)
Bulk it up a bit, stick it in a bubble wrap flexi-pack?
Re: infrastructure remains (Score:2)
Letters can be pdf and delivered digitally. Small packages not so much.
USPS should be once a week for most places (Score:2)
Also put a trashcan next to community mailboxes to recycle junk mail.
Rural locations could have residents pick up their own mail at the PO.
Force government agencies to use comm methods other than USPS.
Re: (Score:1)
Rural locations mostly do have residents pick up their own mail at the PO if you're within a certain number of miles of said PO - 5? 10?
Hope this also reduces use of wet signatures (Score:2)
As somebody who has had to deal with a lot of bureaucracy recently, I sure hope some organisations revise their insistance on sending you a paper document to physically sign and send back to them.
Reduction (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd say keep letter delivery, but cut it to once a week. Have a smaller workforce cycle through the routes. Do bulk mail once a month.
Re: (Score:3)
I say keep letter delivery since it's incidental to parcels anyway and mostly needs the same infrastructure ... plus, it keeps people employed. I'm actually very much FOR New Deal style government jobs programs, even if they're "make work." Pure crapitalisim is overrated.
Re: (Score:1)
Bet classical Egypt had a ( Nile-based ) postal service ... Tigress/Euphrates cultures certainly did. In the USA New Deal government-jobs were a model of efficiency for their time. Sadly government services have NOT become more efficient/responsive/effective. Still, something to be said for easily communicating with another human W/O using electricity. Extra points for hand-writing with real ink on real parchment. Do I trust FedEX? Hahahaha...
Re: (Score:2)
Keeping people employed just because is probably the reason the USPS is having the issues it already has. Cutting the workforce and cutting every other day of delivery could make a HUGE impact to their bottom line. Likely the same mail trucks could carry and deliver two days of mail every other day without needing to put more trucks on the road.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
And yet, we squander over a trillion per year sending our military thugs all over the world, buying them gold plated toys, and on abusive domestic lawn forcement and mass incarceration. USPS is a drop in the bucket. Fuck austerity.
Re: (Score:2)
Let the postal workers join the military if they need a job
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, and risk their bodies for Big Oil? Or perhaps risk their good names following orders to commit war crimes? Fuck the US military ... anyone with half a brain should stay far away from that band of filth and vermin. War is a racket. Let's create good jobs, not more murderers and thugs.
Re: Reduction (Score:2)
We don't need more military. In fact we need less.
The reason for the existence of the second amendment was to not need a standing militia. We DEFINITELY don't need both things.
Re: (Score:2)
Bulk mail should just go away. It's a garbage delivery service.
Re: (Score:2)
Fuck FedEx ... nothing wrong with socialized public services, 'ya neoliberal austerity twit. Efficiency is boring.
Re:Now do USPS (Score:5, Informative)
> Now do USPS.
> Paper mail is a waste of time except when it isn't, and for those times pay for FexEx!
Noting that UPS and FedEx don't have to deliver to every address, USPS does.
Also, the Postal Service is in The Constitution, [1]Postal Clause [wikipedia.org].
Also, some myths debunked: [2]Let’s Get to The Truth: Myths and Facts about Postal Privatization [apwu.org]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Clause
[2] https://apwu.org/news/us-mail-not-sale-lets-get-truth-myths-and-facts-about-postal-privatization/
Physical addresses vs. mailing addresses (Score:3)
> Noting that UPS and FedEx don't have to deliver to every address, USPS does.
USPS delivers to every mailing address , but not to every physical address. USPS has been using cluster mailboxes as a cost-saving mechanism for some time. There are also "Group E" PO Boxes, which the USPS provides (without charge) to those physical addresses to which it will not deliver.
In other words, the Universal Service Obligation is satisfied by having a "drive here and pickup your mail" policy. I expect a private company would offer the same.
Re: (Score:2)
Never going to happen. The junk mail lobby has too much influence in Congress, and Congress gets free use of the postal service for "constituent communications" (aka electioneering).
Re: (Score:3)
Why? I ship a lot. It's almost always faster and cheaper to ship by USPS than UPS or FEDEX. For-profit services are always worse quality that government services. They have to be, in order to make a profit.
Re: (Score:2)
USPS should just go the package delivery route. Almost no one sends snail mail anymore these days, it's all ads that just go straight into the trash. USPS should do package delivery daily, 1st class letter delivery once per week and an express letter delivery tier for letters that absolutely must get delivered before the next weekly delivery, they can go on the truck with the packages.
Re: (Score:2)
If they're delivering the packages, why not just deliver letters along with them? Basically same infrastructure.
Re: (Score:2)
Because delivering letters means they basically have to do a full route and basically roll by each house even if there is no letter to deliver or pickup. Just doing packages means you only target those getting a package. Potentially less miles driven and less man hours used.
Re: (Score:2)
If there's no letter to deliver, they don't need to do a full route, unless picking up mail in the box is also a service.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not rooting for it ... this is why I love Poland and prefer it to the US. It kept the best aspects of socialism. The national railway or one of the local successor companies runs trains to virtually every city of 50k people or more, as well as may smaller places. Generally, decently fact, clean electric trains. Public schools and certain higher ed are publicly run and of fairly uniform, if not of top-notch quality. National healthy system. Anyone working on the equivalent of a US W2 is enrolled by
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is that the alternative to government ends up being Snow Crash style corporate authoritarianism. I prefer having a society that's fairly egalitarian ,,, Poland has a much lower GINI than the US or even Western Europe. It's great,