“Hugely disappointing” is how the Irish Postmaster’s Union president described An Post’s decision to raise the stamp’s price, reports RTE.
Despite being the ones “that have feet on the ground” and have daily face-to-face contact with clients, Sean Martin, a postmaster in Tramore, said that postmasters were not consulted.
“I’ve no doubt it’s business consultants that probably haven’t set foot in a post office that have made this decision,” reports RTE.
It follows An Post’s announcement that later this month, stamp prices will rise by 25 cent to €1.65.
According to An Post, the hike accounts for rising operational expenses, a continued decline in the amount of letters being posted, and pay increases for postal employees, reports RTE.
According to An Post, letter volumes have decreased by 50% over the last ten years, 40% since 2017, and 8% in the last year.
According to its statistics, companies and government agencies currently produce 93% of letters, with personal cards and letters making up only 7%.
“Hurt society’s most vulnerable people,” reports RTE.
The most vulnerable members of society, who use the system to send and receive cards in order to keep in touch, would be the ones most affected by the shift, according to Mr. Martin.
“This is going to hurt the most vulnerable in society, and the isolated because they’re the people that actually are posting the mail throughout the system, because it’s important that they get mail regularly so that they’re not they don’t feel isolated,” reports RTE.
Since letters and packages account for one-third of post offices’ earnings, Mr Martin told RTÉ’s Today with Claire Byrne that the move to raise stamp prices will also make things less feasible for them.
According to him, this would negatively impact the entire community.
“Making it more and more difficult for a customer to come into the post office is going to affect the post office. And your local post office is going to affect the community, because invariably the money that we hand out in the community is spent locally; that sustains jobs locally, and it creates jobs locally. And if you make it less and less viable for post offices, it will affect communities as well,” reports RTE.
According to him, An Post is unwilling to address the cost-of-living problem, which is hurting self-employed postmasters.
To evaluate if this would inspire individuals to send more mail, Mr. Martin proposed that it could be time to consider “a Ryanair model” and lower the expenses, reports RTE.
However, he stated that it will get more challenging because volume decreases as costs rise.
The new pricing, which will take effect on February 27 for individual consumers and March 1 for corporate users, is in line with worldwide trends, according to An Post, and it is less expensive than the benchmark price of €1.88 for a next-day letter service in the UK and many other EU nations, reports RTE.
The price of a next-day-delivery stamp in Denmark, where the number of letters has decreased by 85% since 2008, is €5.23, however stamps that do not cover next-day delivery in Denmark are less expensive.
Additionally, the price of stamps for letters sent abroad is rising, going from €2.20 to €2.65. Additionally, the cost of shipping big envelopes, packets, and packages to other countries will increase, reports RTE.
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