Half-life of postal service?

[p.dath]

I was looking at a red post office box that you get in the street for putting letters in today, and thought there is a business on the way out.

If you consider the year 2000 as a baseline, how long do you think it will be before the business of delivering letters is halved?

Parcel delivery is not likely to be affected that much, but email and online communications is surplanting posted letters.

So I'm guessing that the Post Office will be around in a couple of hundred years, but has a half life of say 30 years.

What's your guess and why?

[Winston001]

I think you are right. I'm old fashioned in that I want and expect original signatures and letters in business but Generation Y won't believe in that.

Recently I helped someone who had a legal problem based on two year old emails. They suspected the emails had been tampered with because they couldn't find received copies of the email produced to the court.

By pure good luck the original email chain was discovered on a old computer and a forensic computer specialist proved the tampering.

It cost this person $4000 plus another $4000 of their lawyers time. You might think the creep on the other side of the case would have had to pay for this but NO. It couldn't be proven that he did the tampering.

Electronic information is very insecure.

[p.dath]

Producing a fake email and producing a fake document are just as easy. Documents are no more secure than emails.

I could print out one side of a $20 dollar note on a $300 domestic colour printer, and apart from the paper being obviously different you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference.

[Usarka]

It cost this person $4000 plus another $4000 of their lawyers time. You might think the creep on the other side of the case would have had to pay for this but NO. It couldn't be proven that he did the tampering.

Electronic information is very secure.

Yes it is very secure.....

[p.dath]

Yes it is very secure.....

Haha. I hope people read the first post to get the joke.

[YellowDog]

Well I do work for NZ Post delivery services, so I do know a bit about this.

Mail volumes have on average dropped around 12% over tha past couple of years but if you look back even further, you will see that there have been many fluctuations. Whilst the volume of letters has dropped, other types of mail volume have increased many fold.

At the end of the day there does needs to be a service in place to facilitate the transportation of mail over the entire network. You can't just pick and choose where to deliver the mail. If the mail service does not have sufficient volume to sustain itself, then we will all have to pay courier rates to get out letters and items from A-B. Trademe purchase in Auckland $5.00. Delivery to Dunedin $320 I don't think so.

The push bike delivery guys cycle around 20km each day to delivery their round. Sometimes they have to cycle another 10-15km to make up some time and fill in for others. There is only so much cycling you can humanly do.

There will certainly be a need for a lot more Motorcycle Posties (like me) to enable the delivery of lower volumes over a larger distance.

You are wrong about documents being as easily forgable as electronic ones. The legal profession has used: Signed, Witnessed, ID verified for centuries.

[p.dath]

So YellowDog when do you think the half life of letter volume will ocurr relative to the year 2000 - or are you thinking that mail volume wont half over the long term?

Comments about the legal profession accepted.

Consider some other sources. The IRD no longer require paper copies of records to be kept. In fact a lot of IRD "forms" can be done comletely on line now. The burden of legal proof has been met.
Once Governemnt agencies are happy with not using paper then it will become more and more acceptable in commercial law.

I would say that more than 80% of our suppliers we deal with have email being considered as legally binding in their terms and conditions. It makes no difference weather I post, fax or email in a purchase order.

But I do agree, the legal profession do like witnessed signed paper documents this decade.

[Swoop]

If you consider the year 2000 as a baseline, how long do you think it will be before the business of delivering letters is halved?

I personally believe that we have already hit that mark. My suspicion is that the local postie makes a choice to not deliver unless on a certain day.
A week can pass without any mail and then a load all arrives at once. My suspicions are fully aroused.

[YellowDog]

Sure some mail volume types are declining however lots more are increasing.
There is no doubt that there will be a lot more eBusiness in the future but there is a limit as to how far this can go. Many have tried this and failed miserably. How likely are you to click on the link on the email from your bank to update your details? There are some safe systems however how do you educate clients not to be complete dicks and to recognise legit from phoney? How many of your legitimate emails go to spam and visa versa? It can't be done. There are good systems around however <50% will use them.

There are still some huge mailruns to deal with. Rates and tax bills will not stop. Essentially, the bills that YOU want/need to pay can managed online however the bills you need to be served with will HAVE to be posted to commence the mandatory debt recovery process.

So far as increasing volumes, there will always be a Skywatch magazine run; regardless as to whether it is available online or not. And as for all the other junk like EZBUY and FlyBuys etc, that just jets more and more.

If you didn't have junk mail thrust into your face, you just wouldn't ever look at it.

IMO - Your half volume prediction just won't happen. In Jan & Feb of this year, I was home on most days by 10:30am. Sometimes a lot earlier. But last Sep, Oct, Nov, were really pigs to deal with. The business managers get pissed off about paying workers to 1:30pm, when they go home 3 hours earlier, but then they have to be able to respond to the dynamic demands placed upon the business. So this begs the question, either you want a postal service or you don't?

It will be a sad day when you are no longer able to post a letter from anywhere to anywhere in NZ.

[Spuds1234]

There will always be a need for a postal system.

Its always great to recieve a letter or card that someone has taken the time to write, then post. Its the hard work that goes into doing it, the personal touch.

I dont mind recieving bills through email because they arnt personal, but if you have ever recieved an e-card you will know how poos they are.

Give me a post card, a birthday card, or even just a plain old letter though the post any day over email.

Also though the post you dont get chain mail everyday, just once or twice in your life if your lucky (hell are there even chain letters now that email has grown so big?)

[p.dath]

Interesting twist this weak. I got a letter from Express Couriers (aka, what was formally called Courier Post - aka NZ Post) advising they were increasing their prices by 3.2% because of reduced parcel volumes.

[vtec]

Push bike couriers do between 40 and 100km a day, depending on how busy they are and if they cycle from home. I know I've done 100km days as a pedally (Started at 6.30am and got home at 7.30pm). I've done 320km in 2 days with 40kg on the bike during my journey from San Fran to LA. Postie cyclists are generally soft compared to the couriers. Depends how poor the economy gets as to how cheap you'll be able to transport documents by bicycle.

But apart from that I agree with you.

Well I do work for NZ Post delivery services, so I do know a bit about this.

Mail volumes have on average dropped around 12% over tha past couple of years but if you look back even further, you will see that there have been many fluctuations. Whilst the volume of letters has dropped, other types of mail volume have increased many fold.

At the end of the day there does needs to be a service in place to facilitate the transportation of mail over the entire network. You can't just pick and choose where to deliver the mail. If the mail service does not have sufficient volume to sustain itself, then we will all have to pay courier rates to get out letters and items from A-B. Trademe purchase in Auckland $5.00. Delivery to Dunedin $320 I don't think so.

The push bike delivery guys cycle around 20km each day to delivery their round. Sometimes they have to cycle another 10-15km to make up some time and fill in for others. There is only so much cycling you can humanly do.

There will certainly be a need for a lot more Motorcycle Posties (like me) to enable the delivery of lower volumes over a larger distance.

You are wrong about documents being as easily forgable as electronic ones. The legal profession has used: Signed, Witnessed, ID verified for centuries.

[Beemer]

There will always be a need for a postal system.

Its always great to recieve a letter or card that someone has taken the time to write, then post. Its the hard work that goes into doing it, the personal touch.

I dont mind recieving bills through email because they arnt personal, but if you have ever recieved an e-card you will know how poos they are.

Give me a post card, a birthday card, or even just a plain old letter though the post any day over email.

Also though the post you dont get chain mail everyday, just once or twice in your life if your lucky (hell are there even chain letters now that email has grown so big?)

I agree. Getting an email birthday card just doesn't cut it for me! We get quite a bit of mail here, both at home (rural delivery, fantastic service) and our PO box. Power, phone, rates, insurance, etc all get delivered. I find it easier to get hard copies than have to muck about printing them off when I do my tax return.

The other half works for NZ Post and says while some things have changed, people will still want a mail delivery service.

As for chain mail, haven't seen one of those for yonks - but I do get the odd one from 'friends' who predict tragedy if I don't forward their crap on to 20 other suckers!