An Post delivery service quality declined in 2011, says regulator

Ireland’s national postal service An Post saw the quality of its delivery services decline in 2011, compared to the previous year, according to regulators ComReg. The latest figures come as the communications industry regulator is in the process of taking legal action against An Post for repeatedly missing its legal targets for service quality since they were set back in 2004.

For the full calendar year 2011, An Post delivered 83% of its single-piece priority mail next-day – two percentage points down on 2010.

The score keeps An Post well behind its statutory target of 94% next-day delivery for priority mail.

An Post also missed its target for delivering single-piece priority mail within three working days, achieving a 98.2% rate during 2011, against a 99.5% target. This was one point down on the 2010 performance.

Results for the fourth quarter of 2011 were particularly poor, with next-day performance down five points on the same quarter in 2010, to 79%.

The latest results, assembled by market research firm Ipsos MRBI, showed the first annual decline in service levels at An Post since 2006. Generally, service quality has been slowly improving at An Post since 2003, when just 71% of priority mail was delivered next-day.

The Ipsos research was based on 29,530 items of test mail posted from private homes and businesses. The study did not record items that were posted but not delivered.

According to the study, An Post performed best delivering mail collected from businesses, with 87% of priority mail delivered next-day, a similar level to 2010. Post Office collections saw a one point decline in next-day delivery compared to 2010, to an 83% rate.

Collections from post boxes fared worst in 2011, with a three-point decline in next-day service for priority mail, to am 81% rate.

Lawsuit

Ireland’s communications regulator ComReg is already in the process of taking legal action against An Post for failing to achieve its statutory quality of service targets since they were set back in 2004.

The lawsuit was filed back in February 2012, with the postal service saying at the time that it was “puzzled” that the regulator would take a decision to sue at a time when it was already under pressure from falling mail volumes and a weak Irish economy.

The company said it would contest the legal action “vigorously”, but suggested the lawsuit could damage its financial stability.

An Post is currently making around EUR 800m in turnover each year, and is in the process of investing EUR 200m in new technology while considerably downsizing its work force.

The firm is planning to cut 1,200 to 1,500 staff from its current roster of about 9,000, by 2016.