MAIL DELIVERY MELTDOWN
Remember the great post office strike of 2018? Probably not. In the erratic drip-feed of mail delivery in SA, a general downing of tools tends to pass unnoticed; post that actually arrives has, after all, become the exception rather than the rule.
In fact, for years the post hasn’t been the post office’s strong point, despite being its largest revenueearner. It’s something that came to mind last week, when the doughty mail service sent out a missive about its good works ahead of World Post Day on October 9.
You may be pleased to learn, for example, that the post office has cleared the 2.1-million item backlog at its international sorting centre. I, however, with four months’ worth of missing London Review of Books magazines, beg to differ.
It is, of course, entirely possible that the magazines — a comforting fortnightly reminder that print is not dead — have been dumped outside the wrong address, as was the fate of a bundle of magazines spotted on a Joburg neighbourhood WhatsApp group recently.
Presumably these count as “delivered” — no doubt contributing to the 89% mail delivery performance the post office crows about in its 2019/2020 annual report. It sounds impressive, given that it’s a whole nine percentage points above the company’s own target. Only, there’s no rational reason for the 80% target in the first place, given that communications regulator Icasa sets the bar at 92%, as auditor-general Tsakani Maluleke points out in her opinion on the report.
But even 89% seems hard to fathom, in my experience at least. There’s the Christmas card from Sweden that arrived in mid-May. And my driver’s licence, which has been enduring the ministrations of the postal service since at least September 8, according to the eNatis website. At this rate, I could have walked from Joburg to the card issuing authority in Pretoria to collect my licence card in person — several times over.
So much for the claim that delivery takes “three days between two cities in the same province”.
In what could be something of a pathological pattern, the post office also seems to have developed some self-aggrandising ideas about its package delivery service, and is on a drive to get customers to pick up their uncollected parcels at its branches. The company apparently “sends SMS notification and collection slips to customers and then sends them again weekly”.
I hate to differ again, but I have never received a text message from the post office. And, for the most part, the only collection slips I receive are the final notice — the warning that the parcel is about to be returned to sender. It wouldn’t be beyond the realm of reason to imagine the earlier collection notices were simply delivered to the wrong house. But that doesn’t really inspire confidence, does it?
It’s no wonder customers and courier companies alike are railing at the post office’s plan to insist on its right to be the sole provider of delivery services for packages under 1kg.
The financial woes of the post office are well documented: for five years costs have surpassed revenues; staff medical aid payments have been withheld; millions have been incurred in fines and interest to the SA Revenue Service for late payment of tax; and hundreds of millions have been flagged as irregular expenditure. The company is commercially insolvent.
To be sure, there is a turnaround plan taking shape, complete with obligatory “4IR” noises. And the “new” post office has, it says, introduced a culture of “being obsessed with the customer”, and is looking to retain “capable people who delights [sic] our customers”. I’d be delighted by someone who can find a street address.
Before we get lost in some pipe dream of “smart” post offices for Cyril’s “smart” cities, let’s just get the mail delivered on time.
The company wants ‘capable people who delights [sic] our customers’. I’d be delighted by someone who can find a street address