39 minutes ago

NZ Post to return mail with no private bag address

39 minutes ago
An unidentified NZ Post worker is delivering two parcels onto a doorstep.

NZ Post brings on more people and more vans each year to help with the heavy Christmas workload. Photo: NZ Post

The Postal Workers Union is concerned a new directive from NZ Post will mean less mail is getting where it needs to go.

Letters addressed to a company's physical address when a PO box is available will be returned to sender, with workers no longer allowed to look up the box number and replace it on the envelope.

NZ Post chief customer officer Bryan Dobson said that was "a hugely time intensive process", and has told workers to stop doing so.

"Most big businesses, government agencies, shops etc have both a physical address (where the building is located; and not usually eligible for mail delivery) and a postal address (usually a PO box where their mail gets sent)," Dobson said in a statement.

"NZ Post will no longer be offering this free readdressing service, and will instead be asking New Zealanders to address their mail to an address that qualifies for mail delivery."

This might mean people needed to look up a mailing address to make sure letters were safely received.

He acknowledged this change might be inconvenient for customers, but it was part of a raft of changes "in response to New Zealanders choosing to communicate more online".

But the union said it represented a "downgrade in services", with the focus no longer on getting mail where it needed to go.

Co-national president John Maynard said: "This is government departments, hospitals, resthomes - and we've been getting a lot of feedback from the posties around the country, they are very unhappy about the loss of service to the people."

He said it would also affect high-profile mail recipients like MPs - any mail to an elected official would now need to be addressed to Parliament's private bag, rather than "Parliament Buildings, Molesworth Street, Wellington" or "The Beehive".

"There would be very few constituents writing to their MPs who would know that Parliament Buildings has a private bag," Maynard said.

"We can see the point that, perhaps if a company's got a box number, make sure you advertise it, but there will always be somebody that's gone past, didn't realise there was a box number, and wanted to send mail to that place - I've done it myself."

He was concerned it would result in double-handling, when those returned letters again came across NZ Post workers desks when the sender gave it another try.

More changes were on the way.

Late last year, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment proposed fewer deliveries every week, a reduced number of postal outlets, and no longer having mail deliveries to letterboxes at front gates.

Dobson said they would eventually begin combining mail delivery with the parcel delivery network, "moving from two urban delivery networks to just one".

This would manage the high cost of delivering much less mail than in the past, allowing the service to remain commercially sustainable, he said.

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