Deadline approaches for Danes to move mailboxes to the street
Post Danmark has said four out of five Danes have now complied with their new mandate to place their mailbox on the street to accept delivery of their mail each day. The recent Postal Act brought in new rules that essentially require householders to set up mailboxes on the edge of their properties, rather than having letters and documents delivered to the door.
Post Danmark said yesterday that it is now sending out letters to 174,000 remaining households to warn that if they do not comply by the 1st March deadline, they could find their mail returned to sender.
Eva Malene Hartmann, the head of residential services for Post Danmark, said: “Four out of five households that were affected by the new rules have moved their mailbox. It means that almost 94% of all households are now in compliance with the Act.”
She warned of those not yet meeting the terms of the rules: “These households are entitled to find that it makes a difference whether you respect the law. We will return items to the sender if people have not moved their letterboxes to the street.”
Act
The Danish Parliament passed the Postal Act in December 2010, with the law coming into effect on January 1, opening up the market fully to competition, while establishing conditions for the universal service obligation.
Section 7 of the Postal Act, which came into effect January 1 last year, allows postal operators to refuse delivery of mail to those households that do not meet its provisions on setting up mailboxes at the street.
Post Danmark spokesperson Lisa Olufson told Post&Parcel that the new letterbox rule does not affect parcel deliveries, since they are not usually delivered through letterboxes.
“We will still deliver parcels directly to the customer at the door, unless the customer prefers to pick it up at the post office or at our self-service automatic ‘Døgnposten’ (parcel terminals),” she said, adding that oversize letters that do not fit in household mailboxes will be delivered to the door.
Post Danmark, part of Scandinavian postal company PostNord, delivers mail to about 2.6m households across Denmark, six days per week.
