3.2 Million Germans vote for their mail carrier of the year
Often they do more than just delivering letters and parcels: mail carriers catch thieves, free people locked in a boiler room, and save the day when holidays are at stake. Customers appreciate this level of commitment: 3.2 million German citizens took part in the "Vote for your favorite mail carrier" campaign as Deutsche Post searched for the 1,000 most favorite mail carriers of the year.
"The campaign was an enormous success," says Jürgen Gerdes, Board Member for MAIL and PARCELS Germany of Deutsche Post World Net. "The positive feedback was overwhelming." From July 2 to August 31, 2007 customers were able to register their vote for their Mail Carrier of the Year either by sending in a postcard or online. From amongst all the entries received the company is giving away 1,350 valuable prizes, including 50 Smart for two cars. The winners will receive a written notification in October. The 1,000 mail carriers who received the most votes in their delivery districts will receive an award from the Deutsche Post Board of Management on October 27, 2007, in Berlin.
The high response rate shows just how good the image of the 80,000 mail carriers at Deutsche Post really is all over Germany. In sparsely populated, remote areas participation was particularly high: In Hemmoor, Lower Saxony, for example, 97.1 percent of households took part in the campaign. In larger cities mail carriers have a broad fan base, too, with responses particularly high in Frankfurt am Main, Cologne, Augsburg, Giessen, Kiel, and Karlsruhe.
Many members of the public took the opportunity to relate highly personal and, in some cases, spectacular tales about "their" mail carrier. One such example is Petra S. from Bexbach who thanked her mail carrier for ensuring that her trip to Australia started off on the right note. He learnt from talking to her that she was expecting important travel documents and kept an eye out for the long awaited envelope at his mail office. On the day of her flight the documents finally arrived. The mail carrier immediately took them to Petra S. – with just two hours to spare before she was due to depart. "That really was last-minute," the happy customer wrote, who was only too willing to give the helpful mail carrier her vote.
Mail carriers are prepared to step into the breach in other emergencies, too. Dieter Faulhaber, for example, freed a woman and her three-month-old baby daughter from a boiler room during his mail round in Tauberbischofsheim. Her small son had accidentally locked her in and did not have the strength to open the heavy door on his own.
Mail carrier Andreas Soiron from Bergisch-Gladbach also became a hero when he witnessed a kiosk robbery and without further ado pursued the thief on his company bike, even though the thief had escaped on a motorcycle. He kept in constant contact with the police via his cell phone. Thanks to Soiron's help police officers were able to arrest the thief soon afterwards.
The mail carrier of Antje M. from Nottuln is almost one of the family. Her three-year-old son calls him his "best friend" and always greets him with a mailbox he built himself. The boy's highlight of the day is when the mail carrier puts the mail into his self made mailbox. "If my son misses the mail carrier he's often in tears," reports Antje M. Reason enough for her to give her vote to her son's likeable "best friend." The mail carriers with the most votes will be presented with their Mail Carrier of the Year award on October 27, 2007, in Berlin.
