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- cross-posted to:
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The introduction of a new Postal Act in 2024 opened up the letter market to competition from private firms and mail is no longer exempted from VAT, resulting in higher postage costs.
“When a letter costs 29 Danish krone (£3.35; $4.20) there will be fewer letters,” PostNord Denmark’s Managing Director, Kim Pedersen, told local media.
What a mystery as to why nobody is using the letter service.
But… writing things down is the only reliable way to communicate in Denmark.
Privatization of the postal service in Denmark (and Sweden) was a terrible mistake, and the perpetrators should be held accountable.
It’s not privatization since the government(s) still owns PostNord, it’s called corporatization (Sweden owns 60% and Denmark owns 40%)
Technically correct, yes. Still has all of the hallmark negative effects of privatization.
Also Germany
And Australia
And the UK, anywhere else?
US soon
Yeah, postnord fucking sucks. We could have gotten lucky with something better, but it was pretty clear from the start this wouldn’t go well, IMO.
This is so sad. I thought the whole paper mail infrastructure was essentially eternal due to its importance.
Letter numbers have fallen since the start of the century from 1.4 billion to 110 million last year.
110 million is still A LOT of paper letters. Shame the service will be gone.
PostNord has weathered years of financial struggles and last year was running a deficit.
Again, I thought this was a national strategic resource, regardless of profit. Over here in europe’s armpit the national post has been running at a loss for nigh on 40 years, and it’s still kept afloat, for better or worse.
This concept of ‘deficit’ is just a construct for them to make it look like waste … and then kill it.
Do we run similar profitability metrics for the army? For transportation and infrastructure? For water filtration and waste processing? No.
Someone decided the mail wasn’t as important as a highway and set about gutting it intentionally.
I agree with what you’re saying and also it feels worth pointing out how pervasive the rhetoric of profitability has become.
We don’t talk about the military running at a loss, or the department of transport, or any other part of the government. We talk about their cost, because that’s really what it is. Services don’t “lose” money, they cost money.
Yeah, every public service now has to turn a profit except for highways and extra lanes
really well put and i like your quotes i mean, essesntially due to its importance , yes i cannot say it better myself
I wrote it already when the article popped up in !europe[email protected]
I think it is a strategically bad idea to remove the infrastructure for physical mail, while Russia is waging Hybrid warfare, which also targets electronic communication.
It’s deemed no longer a national strategic resource since it’s now used so little, and plenty of alternatives exist. That’s why they decided to privatise it, and subsequently close it down when the privatised letter delivery was unable to turn a profit.
Yeah but now much of the 110 million is just spam, scams and advertisements?
This is bad for any card secondary market, think magic the gathering or pokemon. Usually you send or receive singles or maybe 5 cards at most as a letter, now this needs to be a package i guess.
I would also echo the fears of a throughly digitalized society
Letters can be send as packages instead. They already are, because the letters are more expensive. This is the main reason for why the postal service is no longer financially viable. It was privatized and outcompeted.
I believe the price for shipments is artificially low. It’s not reasonable that I can order boxes from China cheaper and faster than delivering a letter across town.
The postal service is a SERVICE the goal was never profit.
Besides, it was profitable until Bush made utterly absurd changes to their pension fund.
It WAS a service, then people stopped needing the service so it was privatized to see if the remaining users would pay for it. It seems the answer was no, so its smart to cut it.
When I lived in Korea, it was cheaper for me to ship something in from the US than it was to ship something from the US to just across the border in Canada.
It’s cheaper to mail a package or letter from US to Canada than it is to mail that same package within Canada (taxes notwithstanding).
Are there any danes here, that could chime in? The idea of having an almost entirely digitized society feels so scary to me. Everything having mobile apps, no cash? Feels like a horror story given the implications on privacy. I couldn’t even run most of the the so called secure apps on my lineageOS. My bank knowing exactly when I payed how much money for what would be so dystopian to me. Are there other methods available to protect your privacy in Denmark? Or does there truly not anyone give a shit about their digital footprint?
There is still cash, as well as a national credit card provider.
Digital footprint is not something many people are concerned about. Possibly this has something to do with the strict protections offered by GDPR. Digital processes have also been normalised after all interactions with the state became digital. Trust in the state is high.
Not saying people shouldn’t be concerned, they just don’t seem to be.
You can use cash for everything below $3000, this limit is to prevent things corruption and whitewashing.
Cash is legal tender, and can’t be refused as payment.
It’s true we are very digitized in everything like communications with public systems like Tax etc. and also businesses like banks.
Almost everything is done digitally. An we have a secure system for electronic mail, which is also used for signing papers.It is a requirement to have these systems, But there are exceptions, if you for some reason can’t use the digital services, you can be exempted.
PS: It will still be possible to send letters after “Post Nord” stops the service. There are other companies that still have this service.
But Post Nord is the old Monopoly company that was traditionally used for it exclusively.PPS: Personally I’d really like to get rid of the physical mailbox, I very rarely check it for mail, because in the 6 years we’ve been living here, I think We’ve gotten about 5 letters, 2 of which were for the previous owner!!
Same here. My country is a lot more analog, so everything from bills to ads still gets delivered via mail regularly. But I would love to have a digital infrastructure for mail delivery. However the costs to make it secure and private seem too high, every attempt by the state to make progress on that gets shut down due to concerns and therefore lack of adoption. Additionally, with the rise of the right and looming threats to your privacy, like chat control, a lot of people have no trust whatsoever in the government
We don’t even receive much digital mail either.
Payments are automated, and includes invoice and receipt. Removing all mails that have to do with payments.
Most is SMS and e-mail, because it’s good enough for most things.
But where security is needed, like signing a bank loan, we have the system for that too.
Dane here.
Indeed it’s essentially impossible to minimise your digital footprint because there is no cash.
there is no cash
This is false. Cash still exists and can be used in a wide range of businesses. It may not be the norm, but it definitely still exists.
And, what if the US block MasterCard and visa in Europe?
They have their own national credit card provider, DanKort.
Then people will just do direct bank transfers.
We have a national system called danlort, which is used by most people.
We also have a 100% danish phone payment system called MobilePay that is almost universally accepted,So Visa is only necessary for international trade.
And we absolutely still have cash, which is legal tender, meaning cash can’t be refused as payment.
Danlort is actually a hilarious misspelling 😂
OOps, don’t tell the others, it’s our little secret right?
Can the USA even do that? They’re global companies. As whacky as the United States is right now even attempting to do so would be immensely irrational even by Trump’s standards.
I’d guess that Mastercard and Visa would shift their headquarters to somewhere like Switzerland or Singapore pretty quickly after that.
This is so blatantly false, IDK how any Dane could believe this???
We do absolutely have cash, and it’s legal tender, which means cash can’t be refused as payment.
Except we also have an anti corruption law, which states we can’t make cash payments above $3000.
So that’s kind of weird?I imagine OP isn’t saying that there literally is no such thing as cash in Denmark but something more nuanced like “cash is becoming rare.”
No idea about Denmark’s laws but there are companies (edit: I mean “countries” not companies) where cash is yes still the legal tender but payment at some businesses can only be made cashless. Denmark may have a law stating businesses must accept cash, but you can certainly have systems where cash is legal tender but some businesses will not accept it.
you can certainly have systems where cash is legal tender but some businesses will not accept it.
Not by normal laws, legal tender means you have to accept it. It’s not just that it’s not illegal to use. Credit cards for instance are NOT legal tender, meaning a business does not have to accept them, but you can use them almost everywhere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_tender
Legal tender is a form of money that courts of law are required to recognize as satisfactory payment
Traditionally legal tender means that a person / entity has to accept it for the payment of a debt - i.e. they can’t refuse cash and say you didn’t pay them because you didn’t use some other method.
However, in many retail scenarios there is no debt - there is an exchange of payment for goods, and so the traditional common law legal tender rules do not prevent retailers from refusing that exchange (i.e. customer doesn’t get the goods, retailer doesn’t get the money, the transaction just never happens) on the grounds of payment methods.
Some places have additional laws on top of legal tender that might require retailers to accept cash.
And just in case you think I’m BS’ing here is an actual government policy explicitly stating that stores can refuse cash payments
Eh OK so Singapore have rules that are different. But as I clearly linked, that is not the “normal” definition.
I do agree it’s “not normal,” especially in the West. It does seem to be significantly more common across Asia.
And I suspect it’ll become more common across the West.
And I hate it. Cash is still king for me for whatever reason.
My friend I’ve been to countries where businesses don’t accept cash and the currency is still considered legal tender.
Like, I’ve (literally) turned up at coffee shops, tried to pay in cash, only to be told “we don’t accept cash, only credit card or digital payment.” (the latter in my experience is often via QR codes and the system sucks because 10 second transactions become 25 second transactions)
The legal frameworks in such jurisdictions may be very different than Denmark’s.
Edit: Beyond which, does Amazon accept cash? eBay? I’ve never heard of them doing so and don’t recall ever seeing the option.
OK then per the user isomorph post I responded to, we have better options to minimize digital footprint than such countries.
cash is becoming rare.
That is absolutely true, but as I mention it’s still legal tender, and you can use it everywhere, with very few exceptions.
You should not be much inconvenienced if you want to use cash, as OP stated for privacy reasons. And you can also still use and receive snail mail.
Damn. I know mailing actual letters has been going the way of the dinosaur and this outcome is in some ways predictable, but it’s still a big shift.
