An Post not making the most of itself.

CJhaughey

small rant

I feel angry when I deal with An Post, they continually whinge about poor profit levels but do nothing to make it better for themselves.
Example:
I buy a lot of stuff from the US due to the favourable exchange rate, and a lot of stuff comes in USPS boxes that are prepaid up to a certain level.
You buy the box for a set price and just pack your stuff in it,(subject to weight limits) and send it off with no more hassles.
Does An post have a similar service? No = a chance for revenue lost.
Does An Post have any mailing materials? No= more chances for revenue lost.
The argument might be presented that the size of population is not big enough, well New Zealand which has a broadly similar sized population and a bigger geographical area have Post Offices which have a large range of mailing supplies in store.
Do you think that An post has missed the boat with regards to this kind of stuff?
I am not even going into the reduced postal insurance from €1200 to €350....

rant over and discussion invited.

Heisenberg.

This post has been deleted.

CJhaughey

Yes , I heard that advertised and TBH is probably as you say a step in the right direction.
My mini-rant was more to do with the retail end of things.
If they only had an A4 capacity plastic bubble wrap envelope in store I bet people would buy them.
ahh maybe in a few years they will stock that kind of thing..

jor el

I think one of An Post's major problems is delivering flyers in the post. If you want to post a letter now it costs 58c or something like that. However, if you want to blanket post an entire area with mail then it's only a few cents each. It takes the postmen as much time to sort all this as it does to sort full priced mails, but price paid was far less so An Post make a loss on it.

mcaul

There are 4.2 million people in Irealnd and 270 million people in USA. Economies of scale allow USPS do things like this. Royal Mail don't do it, neither does French PO or any other european PO service.

CJhaughey

Yes point taken about USPS but if you read my post that says NZ has a postal system broadly similar to An post and they manage to sell a good range of postal supplies, I am not talking about postpaid envelopes etc but more like the precut cardboard boxes that you fold to make a cover for a DVD/CD box, or perhaps padded envelopes in various (A5, A4...) sizes
I am talking about making it into a profitable business not just providing a lossmaking service, and this is all part of it.
I remember sending stuff back from France and the Post office sold cardboard boxes.