PostNL delivered 1 in 5 letters late over holiday season

PostNL has been increasingly incapable of delivering letters on time. In the final quarter of last year, one in five letters was late.

PostNL delivers an average of 7 million letters per day. Generally, these must be delivered the next working day. In the last months of 2023, this only happened 82 percent of the time.

This shifted the annual on-time average for consumer mail to 88 percent. This is considerably lower than the legally required percentage of 95 percent.

PostNL is performing slightly better in the field of business mail, where deliveries are made on time in 93 percent of cases. But that is also still below the mandatory percentage.

This could mean that fines will be imposed, as happened in 2019. At that time, 94 percent of the mail was delivered on time, and PostNL was fined 2 million euros.

A PostNL spokesperson stressed that it was busier than usual in the last quarter of 2023. “Not only because of the holidays but also because of the election mail to which we paid a lot of attention and care.”

According to the postal service, the biggest problem remains the tightness in the labor market. PostNL is struggling with insufficient staff, especially in the south of the country and in some large cities. “Unfortunately, we cannot offer the quality that people have come to expect from us.” According to the spokesperson, PostNL is doing everything it can to solve the problems.