Amy Brooke
New Zealand Post’s plans to make it easy for mail to be stolen from rural customers is not only totally unacceptable: it’s extraordinary thinking – allied to other proposals where it thumbs its nose at the public who pay to support it.
Rural Women New Zealand (RWNZ) is reportedly very concerned at the decision to approve significant changes to New Zealand Post’s minimum service obligations: changes that will disproportionately affect the rural communities, and make it harder for rural people who already face longer travel times, reduced access to services and unreliable digital connectivity.
Under the new arrangements, rural mail delivery will be reduced from five days a week to three and the number of postal outlets will drop from 880 to 500 and then to 400 over four years. There will also be more communal collecting points and fewer individual mailboxes.
Sandra Matthews, National President of Rural women New Zealand, points out that rural New Zealanders rely heavily on postal services, not just for mail but for medication, paying bills, receiving essential deliveries and maintaining business operations. For many, frequent accessible post services are a necessity. She says, “Our rural communities are made up of hundreds of small businesses integral to the success of our main export owners, primary industries and tourism.” In a 2024 survey of members, 96 per cent identified maintaining New Zealand Post’s current service standards as important; 56 per cent indicated they rely on New Zealand Post mail services more frequently than three days a week; 93 per cent said a reduction in postal outlets, if it included their local outlet, would negatively impact them, their family or business.
Among other considerations, it was stated that forcing people to travel long distances to access a post outlet or shared mail hub creates a significant barrier. This is obviously a particular problem for older and more isolated rural residents, and makes doing business in rural areas even harder. It is also very obvious that arranging for mail for various rural people to be combined and placed in one box – some distance away from an actual address – will make it far easier for mail to be stolen. New Zealand Post management offers no explanation as to how this would be prevented. Does it even care?
RWNZ notes that NZ Post, as a state-owned enterprise, is obligated to act with a sense of social responsibility by serving the interests of the communities in which it operates. No wonder RWNZ asks, “Where is the social responsibility in decisions that isolate rural New Zealanders, strip away essential services and ignore the unique challenges these community face?” It is calling on the government to engage in dialogue with rural communities over how the most negative aspects of these changes can be mitigated and suggests dispute mechanisms could be instituted for affected communities. The organisation also wants to see a geographic criterion in New Zealand Post’s deed of understanding to protect access in rural and remote areas, a review of New Zealand Post’s post-operating model to identify more equitable service options and for New Zealand Post to be upfront about the post outlets in rural areas it plans on closing.
Hear, hear, most New Zealanders would say. This organisation’s performance has long been deteriorating. It’s now worse than ever.
While its postal service has declined, New Zealand Post’s prices have shot up. Admittedly a fair way back, I recall when a standard letter needed a 40 cent stamp – with an airmail or larger letter costing a little more. Today a standard sized letter costs $2.90 and a larger size $4.20 to $5.50. Faster airmail deliveries got replaced by FastPost, but this company no longer offers speedier deliveries for a little more cost: FastPost has gone. Moreover, it can take a week for a letter to arrive in Nelson from Wellington, just across Cook Strait, or from Auckland. Delivery times vary considerably.
New Zealand Post claims that its costs have been forced up because far fewer communications are now going by post. But this is by no means the whole story. Poor decision-making has been one reason for people turning to courier firms or abandoning Post Office boxes. When a new set was placed in our main post office some time back they were reduced in height, making it harder to have small parcels put inside and some newly installed ones were located close to the floor. Elderly box owners could have a great deal of trouble retrieving their mail from a lower and smaller box.
At the same time the queuing system to access postal services was shared with a bank in the same building, slowing down access to New Zealand Post counters. Customers for either the bank or the post office had to line up single file. After some considerable time, when this was pointed out, management caught on to the fact that it would be quicker for customers to queue separately. However, they still refused to take on board the suggestion that small trolleys should be provided at the door so that people coming in laden with parcels at Christmas or other times to send these to various destinations should not have to stand in a long queue trying to balance or hold on to heavy weights. The suggestion was well received by local staff who witnessed customers trying to manage these as the line slowly shuffled forward. Two or three small trolleys would cost very little.
Feedback was that management would not consider this but that customers could leave the queue to put the parcels on the counter so that by the time they got access to window service they could grab them and then be served. The catch here of course was that while standing at the back of the queue, one was not able to keep an eye on the parcels left on the counter. It was perfectly possible for anyone to walk away with them.
Then we lost our city’s main post office; this is now situated in a small corner of a local bookshop whose staff do their best to provide a good service. However, if one has to make a special trip into town to retrieve a parcel that was not delivered to one’s letter box, turning up between 12:00 and 1:00 pm means quite a wait as there is no one in attendance at that time… So much for top service – although the attendant herself is very helpful.
The problem, as always, is not with rank-and-file employees doing their best, but with the hierarchy: those who do the decision making. And two of the decisions by New Zealand Post management suggest strongly that it is time it is privatised. As the Postal Workers Union has pointed out, a new directive will mean that less mail is getting where it needs to go. It is almost unbelievable. The letters addressed to a company’s physical address will be returned to the sender if a PO Box is available! Workers will be no longer be allowed to look up the box number and replace it on the envelope. New Zealand Post’s Chief Customer Officer Bryan Dobson reportedly said that “it was a hugely time intensive process and has told workers to stop doing so”.
Hugely time intensive? The action of a few seconds? He states that 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). So he has decided that New Zealand Post will be no longer offer this free re-addressing service and instead will be asking New Zealanders to address their mail to an address that qualifies for mail delivery…This means people will need to check if mailing address also has a PO box to make sure letters are safely received. Dobson acknowledged this change might be inconvenient for customers but claims it is part of a raft of changes in response to New Zealanders choosing to communicate more online.
His is a curious response – it’s almost as if it is a punitive action. As the Postal Workers Union notes, it represents a downgrade in services with the focus no longer on getting mail where it needs to go. Its co-national president states that this will affect government departments, hospitals and rest homes, and that they are getting a lot of feedback from the posties around the country who are very unhappy about the loss of service to the people.
This apparently is of no concern to Bryan Dobson, although the postal union points out that this would also affect high-profile mail recipients like MPs, as any mail to an elected official would now need to be addressed to parliament’s private bag rather than Parliament Buildings, Molesworth Street, Wellington. The union official makes the point that even if a company advertises its box number there is always somebody who didn’t realise there was a box number. He added he was concerned it would result in double-handling when those returned letters again came across New Zealand postal workers desks when the sender gave it another try.
Noting this, as well as the reduced number of postal outlets, and no longer having mail deliveries to letter boxes at front gates (increasing the chances of postal theft and disadvantaging the elderly and infirm), one thing is obvious: New Zealand Post’s service is markedly deteriorating.
There is no evidence that management is focused on actually caring about the consequences for so many customers and its obligation to act with a sense of social responsibility by having regard to the interests of the communities in which it operates. This is simply not good enough and privatisation embodying obligation to customers can hardly make things worse.
