German Federal Network Agency allows mail consolidators new numbering variant

The Federal Network Agency has called on Deutsche Post AG (DPAG) to end an anti-competitive practice. DPAG had refused to accept mail from consolidators, under their downstream access agreements, if it was not in conformity with DPAG’s specified numbering. Some of the competitors had called for a numbering method that differed slightly from DPAG’s and that would enable mail to be numbered consecutively at the same time as being automatically sorted to postal routing regions. “Doing away with a second processing run means that the consolidators, under their agreements, can consolidate larger volumes in the narrow time window they have between collection from the customer and dropoff at DPAG”, Matthias Kurth, Agency President, declared. “It will allow the consolidators to achieve bigger rate discounts for their customers – mostly SMEs – and to tap further customer potential.” DPAG had wanted consecutive numbering in the routing regions as a whole. The consolidators, however, wanted consecutive numbering in each routing region separately and to compile the sets of numbers by making posting lists and providing the added-up total number of pieces on the last letter in each routing region. Last year, the Agency already ruled in a single case that this kind of consecutive numbering had no disadvantages for DPAG as regards verifying the total volumes posted and that refusal to accept mail was therefore anti-competitive. This decision has now been extended to include all consolidators.