The German Federal Network Agency received almost 23,000 complaints in the first half of this year — that’s up 13% on the same time last year, which was also a record. Almost 90% of complaints relate to market leader Deutsche Post / DHL.
Up to 2022, people in Germany were largely happy with their mail service, but then jobs were cut, prices raised and complaints began piling up.
Damaged parcels, mail delivered to the wrong house — or not at all — and disastrous delays have been sending the country’s blood pressure soaring.
Image: Thomas Trutschel/photothek/picture alliance
Consumers complain about unreliable postal services
“For months on end here, it was drip, drip, drip. First, there would be something, then nothing at all. And then something would arrive and then nothing again. It really wasn’t good,” Patrick Gröne told German public broadcaster ARD.
He had ordered for some live ladybug larvae to fight the aphid problem blighting his house plants. But four weeks later when the much-awaited package finally arrived, the larvae were all dead.
He got a replacement batch — eventually. Again, none of the larvae were alive.
Another case that has been widely reported in the German media involves an eighty-two-year-old woman who tried in vain to get an ultra-fast delivery to a North Sea island where she was vacationing. Instead of getting the mobile phone that she had forgotten at home the next day, it finally turned up six working days later.
Job cuts, working conditions, profits
Germany’s service sector union Ver.di and communication workers’ union DPVKOM are blaming the difficulties on ongoing restructuring and waves of layoffs.
And those are not expected to end any time soon. In March, Deutsche Post announced that it would be cutting another 8,000 jobs by the end of the year to save a billion euros ($1.17 bn). Last year, turnover rose to €84.2 billion, but operating profits sank to €5.9 billion.
DHL delivery workers are often so pressed for time that they tend to leave parcels for an entire apartment block with neighbors living on ground or first-floor flats.
The company is keen to play down the problem. It says the number of complaints is small in relation to the volume of letters and parcels transported by Deutsche Post and DHL: Over twelve billion letters and 1.8 billion parcels in 2024.
“In a company with 187,000 employees and around 50 million items processed per day, mistakes can never be completely ruled out,” a spokesperson told public broadcaster ARD. Nevertheless, the company is keen to stress that it is constantly working to improve quality.
But as well as the complaints lodged with the infrastructure watchdog, BNetzA, Deutsche Post itself logged some 420,000 last year.
Denmark says goodbye to letters
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Climate change and false expectations
Deutsche Post blames this year’s specific woes on recent heatwaves — which required workloads to be cut — and union walkouts about job cuts. Moreover, it said not all customers are aware of recent changes in the postal laws.
These mean that the company can now take up to three working days to deliver letters. Up to January 1, 2025, they were still obliged to deliver 80 percent by the next working day.
So maybe it’s all about expectations? Certainly, if things go on like this, Germany’s Deutsche Post and DHL are set to have a record year of the worst kind, beating out 2024’s total of 44,406 complaints.
Edited by Rina Goldenberg
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