2025 stamp price announced at Consumentenmarkt also at Zakenpost?

On Monday morning, October 21, 2024, PostNL announced that as of January 1, 2025, an increase in postage stamp prices for franking mail is unavoidable due to declining mail volumes, with the explicit statement: “Especially in consumer mail.” Maurice Unck, Director of Mail at PostNL: “As a result, our mail carriers have less and less mail in their bags. Whereas 20 years ago they delivered 3 letters a day to every home address, that number is now 3 per week. At the same time, costs have risen sharply. A price increase is necessary.”

Digitization

Due to the use of email, WhatsApp, Instagram, and/or TikTok, communication by letter or card is constantly declining, especially among young people. Sending Christmas and New Year's cards is still carried out by people over 60. The result? Mailboxes are filled less and less, even though these boxes are required to be emptied up to five times a week according to UPD obligations.

In the period from 2013 to 2024, postage rates change every year.

2013 postage amount	0,60 €
2014 postage amount	0,64 €
2015 postage amount	0,69 €
2016 postage amount	0,73 €
2017 postage amount	0,78 €
2018 postage amount	0,83 €
2019 postage amount	0,87 €
2020 postage amount	0,91 €
2021 postage amount	0,96 €
2022 postage amount	0,96 €
2023 postage amount	1,01 €
2024 postage amount	January – June 1.09 euros
postage amount	July – December 1,14 euros
2025 postage amount	January 1,21 euros

 

• The overview above shows that a price increase of 4 or 5 euro cents was implemented per year (with the exception of 2022).
• What is clear, however, is that price increases will become increasingly substantial from 2023 (8 & 12 euro cents).
• What is set to happen regarding the portability increase in (or mid-)2025 will only become clear in the future.

Consumer mail – Business mail

According to the well-informed press / media, the Dutch postal flow (and associated mail delivery) consists of two streams: 1) Consumentenpost Consumer mail: private senders of letters / cards from me and you. This time-consuming flow of mail is collected from approximately 9.000 mailboxes (previously over 11.000).

• Labor-intensive and unsorted mail is expected to account for only 6 percent of the total mail flow this year.
• The price of Consumer Post stamps will be €1,21 from January 1, 2025.

2) Business mail Business mail from [large] corporate senders originates from government agencies (including the Tax and Customs Administration, the Ministry of Justice, and Rijkswaterstaat), the Postcode Lottery, and numerous other senders from the business sector.

• This business mail is pre-sorted by the sender from government services and the business community itself and prepared for dispatch by category. Due to pre-processing by the companies themselves, such as classifying mail items by weight, format, size, postal code, and/or priority (weekly, monthly, quarterly for magazines), tremendously large and varied discounts per mail item can result. The Tax and Customs Administration, for example, pays approximately 30 euro cents per mail item!
• The volume of this large business mail flow is considerably larger compared to consumer mail (volume only 6%), with a constantly enormous quantity of mail items to be delivered.

UPD regulations

The Universal Postal Service (UPD) obligates PostNL to visit doors and empty letterboxes five days a week. Additionally, 95 percent of letters must be delivered to a postal address within 24 hours. Unfortunately, the postal company has failed to achieve this in recent years. Therefore, PostNL intends to reduce the current five delivery days to three, and eventually perhaps two. Mail delivery could then visit district A one day and district B the next, instead of having to cover both districts every day. Communication between people is changing, but the Postal Act is not (yet), which could significantly improve the efficiency of the postal company's operations.

For some perhaps common knowledge, for others a question!

• Do the benefits (what do they entail?) outweigh the UPD obligations (what do they involve)? Should the disadvantages outweigh the benefits, what prevents PostNL from terminating the membership and allowing another party to register?
• What will the proportions of philately be like after a series of increases in the postage amount of a postal item?
• For years on end, PostNL has repeatedly been given leeway by the Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) to raise the postage price for consumer mail (it is more than inflation) under the guise of: “It remains within the margins!”

• The relationship between consumer mail and business mail corresponds to that of Tom Thumb and the giant. Yet there is a drastic difference in power and influence between the two partners: the 'unorganized members' of Consumer Mail, held together like loose sand, consist of all Dutch citizens, while those of the various postal and parcel companies of Business Mail 'collaborate' in a certain sense in an organized manner.
• The consequence? Postage rate increases for consumer mail are determined by the Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) without consulting the unresponsive constituency, whereas for business mail, the voice of the partners is clearly present, with a dissenting voice in the consultation with the ACM and PostNL.
• The result? The extremely high stamp price increase for Consumer Post is being widely reported in the press and media, but that of Business Post is not (yet) receiving any attention.
• Amount expressed in percentages? At Consumentenpost, the increase after December 31, 2023, goes from 1,01 euros to 1,09 euros, via 1,14 euros, to 1,21 euros as of January 1, 2025. This increase of 20 euro cents corresponds to one-fifth of 1,01 euros, expressed as a percentage, 20 percent.
• Has there also been a price increase at Zakenpost? Has the saying 'equal monks, equal hoods' been applied here as well? With a 50% increase for the enormous group of Zakenpost customers, the financial balance at the postal company can undoubtedly be restored to some extent.

Perhaps one of the readers of this article possesses expert knowledge on the subject and would like to share it with Postzegelblog. Thank you in advance for your response.