European postal service quality exceeds EU objectives
The International Post Corporation (IPC) has reported that the quality of letter mail service in Europe in 2015 exceeded both the European Union’s (EU) speed objective of 85% of intra-EU mail delivery within three days of posting, and its reliability objective of 97% within five days. Using the IPC UNEX measurement system, the IPC found that 89% of international priority and first-class letter mail was delivered within three days of posting and 97.1% within five days. The average delivery time was 2.5 days.
Commenting on the results, Herbert-Michael Zapf, President and Chief Executive officer, IPC, said: “2015 was the 18th consecutive year that the end-to-end performance for priority letter mail in Europe exceeded both the speed and reliability objectives set by the 1997 Postal Directive. The consistent high level of performance demonstrates that postal operators continue to work hard to maintain a reliable service for customers.”
These results cover a total of 32 countries: the 28 EU Member States together with Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Serbia.
The postal performance tests are conducted independently by external research firms. The results for 2015 were based on 266,000 test letters of which more than 75% was containing Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags. The passage of a test letter at a specific point in the mail pipeline is recorded by RFID readers. The test letters move anonymously through the international mail processing system, from posting to delivery.
The UNEX results 2015 brochure is available at: https://www.ipc.be/~/media/documents/public/unex/full%20year%20results/unex_leaflet_2015_en.pdf
