Press group accuses Norway Post of overcharging mailers

Norway’s trade press association has lodged a complaint with the country’s regulators accusing Norway Post of overcharging periodical mailers for postage. Fagpressen – the Norwegian Specialised Press Association – claimed its members were being over-invoiced, but also that the nation’s postal service had been cross-subsidising some of its mail services by merging product categories into a single product.

Suggesting to the Norwegian Post and Telecommunications Authority that Norway Post has violated the terms of its operating licence, Fagpressen has also given notice to the Post that it will seek damages.

Norway Post denies the allegations, telling Post&Parcel today that it is confident no licence breach has occurred, that no illegal cross-subsidisation has taken place, and that it is actually losing money on its periodical delivery services at the moment.

In the past, the Post priced its periodical and magazine services specific to the content within mailings, but this approach ended in 2006. At the start of the year several different categories were merged into a new periodicals distribution product, which has seen some specialised press and magazine publishers experiencing a price increase of up to 15%.

Fagpressen represents 230 members, who have a total circulation of around 4.2m copies, with members generally running specialised titles, about half of which have circulations below 5,400.

The trade press group claimed that Norway Post has “no objective criteria” on which to calculate its mailing prices now that it has merged a number of product lines together. Cost distribution in the merged product is now “skewed and detrimental” to trade press mailers, it said.

The association said essentially, its members are now paying for postal services they do not use, for example when small titles are supplied pre-addressed pallets for sorting centres when they are actually mailed from local post offices or mailboxes.

Fagpressen also said it had been “difficult to understand” the reasoning behind this year’s increase in postal rates, adding the claim that the information provided by Norway Post to the regulator justifying the price increase had been “misleading” regarding the economic impact to mailers from the price rise.

“Responsibility”

Norway Post denied all allegations from Fagpressen, with spokesperson Elisabeth Gjølme telling Post&Parcel that prices had risen from the start of this month to reflect declining mail volumes and to more accurately reflect the actual costs of providing the delivery services.

“Norway Post has a responsibility to provide a good postal service throughout Norway despite the fact that letter volumes are falling dramatically,” she said.

“It also has a responsibility to make a profit and is currently losing money on periodicals and magazines. The price increase for periodicals and magazines as from 1 January 2012 was therefore completely necessary.”

The spokesperson from Norway Post said categorically: “Norway Post denies the allegations from Fagpressen. We are confident that we have not breached the licence by combining several mail products and increasing prices from 1 January 2012. These changes have been brought about by declining letter volumes. Norway Post denies that any illegal cross-subsidisation has taken place.”