Postal services around the world are struggling to make a profit, and New Zealand is the latest country to cut their delivery service down. They are considering reducing their deliveries from 6 days a week to just 3!
Postcode Anywhere emphasised the importance of correct addresses now that New Zealand Post are considering slashing their deliveries down to just three days a week. This is an enormous drop, and the effects and delays consumers and businesses could face because of an inaccurate address would be detrimental to all parties concerned.
Jamie Turner, Chief Technology Officer at Postcode Anywhere explained that New Zealand addresses are already complex with addressing idiosyncrasies specific to the country and the requirements needed for the three different types of address; urban, rural and PO Box.
He added that “As a small, sparsely populated country distant from world markets, a failed delivery becomes a much more expensive and time consuming problem to rectify. Of course, these issues become even more prevalent now that New Zealand Post is considering slashing its delivery down from six days a week to just three. This is an enormous drop, and the effects and delays consumers and businesses could face because of an inaccurate address would be detrimental to all parties concerned”.
It’s not just New Zealand Post that are cutting the number of days they deliver, USPS announced last week it would end the Saturday delivery of letters and limit the Saturday deliveries to packages only. That sounds like good news for ecommerce packets, but in the US many online retailers use letter post which means no Saturday deliveries.
I’m still at a loss as to why eBay don’t use an address verification system at registration, it would be fairly simple for them to integrate Postcode Verification services from Postcode Anywhere, or even in the UK, direct from the Royal Mail Postal Address File (PAF).
If you want to auto-verify addresses for your own website it’s quick and simple to integrate Postcode Anywhere, Capture+ for as little as £25 on a pre-pay basis. As well as many other countries around the world, Postcode Anywhere’s address validation service, Capture+, ensures customer addresses are verified against the New Zealand PAF, which contains over 1.8 million delivery points. This enhancement will help customers ensure that mailings and shipments are correctly addressed in order to reach their destination in New Zealand as swiftly as possible.
One Response
I had never even thought about this or what USPS are doing and it would be interesting to see if sellers in the UK would consider a 3 day delivery week in return for half or a quarter off the price of postage. I don’t know if the Kiwi’s will get a reduction in postage costs as compensation?
It will be interesting seeing how much more Royal Mail will increase it’s prices this March/April.