An extra tour for newspapers
The postal service is testing whether it can deliver mail to residential customers only in the afternoon. With one exception: It is now making a special morning run for newspapers.
In recent weeks, various newspapers have reported that letter postmen in the Vaud municipalities of Epalinges and Montreux and in three districts of Lausanne have been making two rounds a day on a trial basis since last August: After the early delivery of newspapers, business customers and P.O. boxes are served in the early morning, followed by private customers in the early afternoon. After this pilot and further tests, Swiss Post management will decide whether the new contract model should be extended to other regions.
However, one question was left out of the reporting on the French-speaking Switzerland pilot: what will happen to those newspapers that were previously not delivered to private customers by separate early delivery, but by letter post in the morning? Will weekly newspapers, vacation detour, out-of-town subscriptions or large print runs only reach recipients' letterboxes in the afternoon in future? "This question has not yet been definitively clarified," says Swiss Post spokesperson Oliver Flüeler, "but in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, we are making an extra trip for newspapers so that both private and business customers have their favorite paper in their letterboxes early in the morning." This does not apply to private magazine subscribers, as magazines will continue to be delivered to households by letter post - and therefore later than today. To make it concrete with an example: A Heinwehbasler who lives in Epalinges and subscribes to the Lausanne daily newspaper 24Heures, the Basler Zeitung, the Handelszeitung and the magazine Bilan will now receive mail three times a day: 24Heures is placed in his letterbox by the postal subsidiary Epsilon SA (early delivery organization) by 7 a.m., in the early morning the postman brings him BaZ and HandelsZeitung on an extra tour and in the afternoon the same postman may come again with the letter post (including Bilan). "The newspaper publishers have an advantage with this contract model: their titles are delivered to subscribers earlier than by letter post today," says Flüeler.
But is the extra tour model also worthwhile from Swiss Post's point of view? This is now the subject of further technical and organizational tests, says Flüeler. This is because the model can only be implemented in other regions and without additional staff if early newspaper delivery is already offered there. In addition, it must be possible in future to sort the letter post by house number (and by household in the case of apartment buildings), apart from the individual delivery rounds. Today, fine sorting is still carried out by postmen by hand: In the afternoon after the errand, they sort the B Mail for the following day and early in the morning before the errand, the A Mail still has to be sorted. "If sorting is no longer necessary, the postmen and women would have time for the various routes," says Flüeler.
In any case, the focus for Swiss Post is less on saving money and more on the question of whether and how it should adapt its services to people's changing needs and living conditions (more single households, more double earners). "The majority of our private customers want the newspaper early in the morning, but they are no longer at home during the day when the delivery man arrives," says Flüeler. "Companies are completely different: They expect the post shortly after they start work."
This assessment appears to be correct. According to an initial survey, 43 percent of the 17,000 private households affected in Vaud want to retain the model, while 23 percent have not yet expressed an opinion. Moreover, 47 percent did not even notice the changeover, although they had been informed several times by Swiss Post.
Markus Knöpfli
However, one question was left out of the reporting on the French-speaking Switzerland pilot: what will happen to those newspapers that were previously not delivered to private customers by separate early delivery, but by letter post in the morning? Will weekly newspapers, vacation detour, out-of-town subscriptions or large print runs only reach recipients' letterboxes in the afternoon in future? "This question has not yet been definitively clarified," says Swiss Post spokesperson Oliver Flüeler, "but in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, we are making an extra trip for newspapers so that both private and business customers have their favorite paper in their letterboxes early in the morning." This does not apply to private magazine subscribers, as magazines will continue to be delivered to households by letter post - and therefore later than today. To make it concrete with an example: A Heinwehbasler who lives in Epalinges and subscribes to the Lausanne daily newspaper 24Heures, the Basler Zeitung, the Handelszeitung and the magazine Bilan will now receive mail three times a day: 24Heures is placed in his letterbox by the postal subsidiary Epsilon SA (early delivery organization) by 7 a.m., in the early morning the postman brings him BaZ and HandelsZeitung on an extra tour and in the afternoon the same postman may come again with the letter post (including Bilan). "The newspaper publishers have an advantage with this contract model: their titles are delivered to subscribers earlier than by letter post today," says Flüeler.
But is the extra tour model also worthwhile from Swiss Post's point of view? This is now the subject of further technical and organizational tests, says Flüeler. This is because the model can only be implemented in other regions and without additional staff if early newspaper delivery is already offered there. In addition, it must be possible in future to sort the letter post by house number (and by household in the case of apartment buildings), apart from the individual delivery rounds. Today, fine sorting is still carried out by postmen by hand: In the afternoon after the errand, they sort the B Mail for the following day and early in the morning before the errand, the A Mail still has to be sorted. "If sorting is no longer necessary, the postmen and women would have time for the various routes," says Flüeler.
In any case, the focus for Swiss Post is less on saving money and more on the question of whether and how it should adapt its services to people's changing needs and living conditions (more single households, more double earners). "The majority of our private customers want the newspaper early in the morning, but they are no longer at home during the day when the delivery man arrives," says Flüeler. "Companies are completely different: They expect the post shortly after they start work."
This assessment appears to be correct. According to an initial survey, 43 percent of the 17,000 private households affected in Vaud want to retain the model, while 23 percent have not yet expressed an opinion. Moreover, 47 percent did not even notice the changeover, although they had been informed several times by Swiss Post.
Markus Knöpfli
