AUSTRALIA Post’s (AP) top management sent the wrong mail to its consumers this week when it proposed a $30 a week delivery charge for the daily “postie” unless they consented to a three-days-a-week service.
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Subsequently AP vehemently denied it was planning to scale back door-to-door deliveries.
Either way the company’s communication delivery was poor.
The postal service is considered a rite of the Australian taxpayer.
Certainly the advent of other forms of communication, particularly email, made a dent in AP’s traditional mail business but there are still many people, particularly the house bound and older Australians, who rely upon a daily mail delivery.
Organisations like the Council for Social Services and the NSW Business Chamber have criticised the move; the Chamber said it might ground commercial progress.
AP’s parcel delivery, express services and excellent range of retail services such as passports and overseas currency, not to mention the quality of attention provided by staff, are of inestimable value, particularly to suburban, rural and regional Australians.
The growth of online retail businesses should further increase AP’s parcel business, leading to the belief of many AP supporters that the company would be wiser to engage ordinary mail customers in a dialogue to sustain their postal deliveries rather than wielding the big profit stick.
In AP’s favour is that it has been able to provide mail services for such a long time at low cost (an ordinary letter these days costs just 60 cents anywhere within Australia) and the variety of mail services offered now is outstanding.
Mail delivery is a community service obligation of AP which overall is hardly going broke.
It made an overall after-tax profit of $312 million last year (up 11 per cent) that included profits of $556 from parcel delivery, express services and retail.
