Postal department to collect Speed Post from homes

Sending Speed Post packets will be easier soon with the Department of Posts planning to start the service of collecting parcels from homes at no extra cost.

“We will set up toll-free call centres in eight cities this year where customers can call and get their packets picked up from their homes,” DoP general manager John Samuel said.

The postman would collect packets from homes and deliver it without taking any extra charges, he said. The call centres would be set up in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Pune and Ahmedabad.

DoP would also introduce a system of alerts which will inform customers about the receipt and delivery of Speed Post packets through SMS or e-mail.

Speed Post, which currently has a market share of 27%, expects revenues to go up to Rs550 crore in 2007-08 from Rs449 crore at present, Samuel said.

The monthly traffic from Speed Post exceeded Rs1.4 crore in March 2007.

“With our new measures, the volumes and revenues will definitely go up in future. We are expecting 40-50% increase in our monthly traffic,” Samuel said.

To make Speed Post competitive in the express industry, the government last week reduced the rates for local services by 40% to Rs12 from Rs20 earlier for up to 50 grams, but increased the rates in weight slabs above 50 grams.

Samuel said the Department would also expand its reach to 1,500 cities by the end of this year. It currently has about 5,000 booking offices across 1,200 cities.