Buying a single stamp from the post office - Germany

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Yeti, you're having us on, now.

Never look at the news?

The market in postal services all over Europe is getting more and more liberal.
The limit by weight and price below which the post offices enjoy a monopoly is sinking and IIRC that monopoly will dissappear totally in a couple of years time.

So in theory ANYONE can set up a postal scheme.

In Sweden IIRC there already mini rival post systems working in the major cities and of course in business stuff goes with UPS, FedEx etc etc.

But from a profit point of view, individually selling single stamps for 55 cents, collecting them from various locations, sorting them and delivering them to ANY domestic address (no matter how remote) for a flat fee isn't attractive.

That is why DP, like Britain's Royal Mail and I guess 101 other postal organisations are reducing socially welcome but costly / non-profitable services. The selling of single stamps looks like the basic function of a post ffice but falls into that category. Similarly there was a mass thinning out of post boxes a couple of years ago. Lucky I still pass one on the way to my local.

Slanderous accusation. Have you ever known Yeti not be serious?

Yeah, you had to send in a singly-stamped selfaddressed envelope to counter 7.5 of your local post office ?

Before the 12.12.2005, I think it was.

(Moi, unserious ? Never !)

I'd like to know when stamp automats stopped being about the convenience of the customer and started being about the convenience of the Post?

I know, I know, silly question, this being the Poor Customer Service Capitol of the World, but really. This is getting ridiculous.

At the very least, if selling stamps via automat is more cost-effective for the Post (and I doubt that it is), then stamps at the automat should cost less than buying one from the counter.

According to post office branch Unsöldstrasse you are allowed to use them through the 31st Jan. instead of € 1.45.


I have had them handed to me before, but I had the letter/s on me. It has to do with them weighing the letter and the machine spitting out the amount.

Sheez. Had me worried there for a moment..

I agree that there's no money to be made on single letter delivery and probably no private company would want to do it. Which is why I assumed it was and will remain a service provided by the state. For the communal good, and all that sort of stuff...


Yes, I was aware of the liberalisation, but didn't expect that the monopoly would disappear for standard letters.

So, does die Post currently receive subsidies from the government for providing this service (stamp sales and single letter delivery)?

If the market is to be totally liberalised, and no subsidies are provided, this could mean the end to the service as we currently know it. I'm not sure how desirable this is, or how it would even work. I mean, if you have to go to the post office to pick up your post, how do you know you have post. At present the postman posts a receipt in my mailbox if I miss a parcel delivery. Would be funny if you got a receipt in your mail box saying you had to collect a letter

I suppose it could be built in to the conditions of a licence to operate a postal service that single letters must still be accepted and delivered, which would obviously reduce the attractiveness of such a licence.

Well Cinzia, ATMS have long stopped being about the convenience of the bank customer, it is the same principle.

Deutsche Post AG is not subsidised by the government, it operates as a private company although it is wholly owned FOR THE MOMENT by the federal government. They are looking at an at least partial flotation in 2008 (?) which means getting costs DOWN and profits UP. that is why they have this policy.

There is a trade off to be made becaue single letter delivery to all adreses is not attractive for a business.

Damn my addle-brained co-worker (not the garlic-sensitive one, the other one). She now says that you have to have them stick 1cent stamps on the letters at the PO. Not what she said last week.

Monkstown, if it truly was a free-enterprise company, you would be able to buy stamps at Walmart for 30% cheaper and use them to mail your letter. Whether you buy one, two or 78.

Yeah, what I said.

In a true free market Wal-mart could indeed charge what it liked for its own service at 30% less.
But 55 cents is already at best a break even price, there's loss leaders but...

A discount at another stamp outlet is currently not legally possible but they do steer you by for example offering you the "bonus" of single stamps at a machine. Similarly I don't get a "discount" if I make a bank transfer via a service terminal but it costs me 75 cents in the bank to do it on paper.

I suspect none of this is going to be good for me in the end.

An ATM or Post stamp machine is not going to be paying taxes toward my eventual retirement.

as i posted earlier, there is no money to made from single normal sized letters. If the postal service is completely de-regualated you would see and end to many many services (however crap) we currently have.

How many people would be happy to sacrifice mail being delivered to their door to save 10 cents on the price of a stamp?

Owain Glyndwr in crazy loony lefty reds under the bed communist shocker!
Wanna buy a copy of the Grauniad matey?

the money saved and resulting profitability could lead to a share price increase which may boost your pension fund though

...always a silver lining somehow you know

I should point out here, though, that the US Postal Service manages to do it a lot cheaper. Current first-class, domestic, normal-sized letter goes for 37 cents, last time I checked. It's a lot further from Miami to Anchorage than from Berchtesgaden to Kiel, too.

God bless America

and is the US Post subsidised?

Well, boomtown rat, it's nice to be able to say something nice about the gummint every once in a while.

According to their website, the US Postal Service does "not receive tax dollars from the federal government for operating expenses. We use the revenue from sales of postage-related products to pay these expenses."

http://www.usps.com/communications/organization/whoweare.htm

No.

It's called "economies of scale". The USPS hasn't been subsidised for more than 20 years. They move 40% of the world's total mail volume. They deliver more in a day than FedEx does in a year -- last year they delivered more than 200 billlion-with-a-B (200 thousand million) pieces of mail.

Remember that in the US, along with your bills, magazine subscriptions and the birthday card from Aunt Lucy, you get loads of junk mail. It costs the USPS almost nothing additional because of how junk mail is sorted and handled and they make a piles of money off it. To cut down on the amount of it you have to go to your local branch and ask them to deliver only first class and periodicals and there's still no guarantee that you won't get a ton of leaflets. This massive additional revenue is what keeps overall shipping costs down.

woof.

Dandy. But they won't whinge about buying a single stamp at the counter, either. And they won't be closed on Saturdays, or between 12 and 3, like my Post branch is.

Just returned from my Post branch, by the way.

A normal letter to the US now costs €1,70. Up from €1,45 or €1,50, I can't remember.

Also had to wait in line 15 minutes.

I remembered this thread fondly while queueing at the Goetheplatz post office one day last week, so I thought I'd resurrect it for the benefit of all those currently contemplating a move to Munich from London, New York, elsewhere in the US, etc. and seeking advice and information via TT, just as an example of the many joys awaiting them.

Never had a problem buying one stamp at our quaint Post Office in Trudering but then I am Irish and the Germans just love us so they do.

I have just read through this discussion for the first time, what a great read.
Here in Markt Schwaben the Post Office staff are extremely friendly, helpful and polite. They even manage a joke and smile when they see me sending another bottle of whisky (back) to Scotland.

As for single stamps, I never tried that as I always take my letter(s) and they use the funny little machine thingy to print the stamp.
I will enquire but as they only have two counters, it could be interesting if they say counter 3 sells single stamps!

hi franB! that thread sounds familiar :-)

Absolutely... I had the pleasure of this in the post office on Sonnebloemstrasse around a month ago - I stood in queue to ask for five stamps for letters to send overseas and was pointedly told to go to another counter and join the queue again or use the machine outside -

The following week - we had DHL try to deliver a parcel to the apartment whilst we were out (not to be confused with the international courier service but this being part of the elite Deutsche Postal system) a card was duly left for us on Sat morning requesting I go to the Frauenhofstrasse Post Office to collect it. I duly did this at 10am on the Monday morning - in that short space of time they had lost the parcel - no apologies - no smiles - just don't call us, we'll call you, if and when we can find it!!! 48hrs later I did receive a call and managed to retrieve said package... but it was such a fun experience... and naturally in working hours of course as bless their hearts they love to close the Post Office at lunch time...

Actually yeah, if you go to the post office in GErmany or the UK, they don't often have single stamps at hand. They frank it on the spot when you pay of put a sticket on.

Normally only one window will dispense single stamps. You wait in line, you get to the counter without the single stamp dispenser, you get sent to the window which has it, you wait for whoever is there to finish the transaction, you get your stamps. What's the big deal?

Because of stamp collectors, the Post will always sell printed stamps. They love collectors because they're paying for service they'll never actually use. They pay anything from €0.01 to €10 for a little piece of paper that doesn't cost €0.001.

I needed to send a postcard to my nephew a couple weeks ago. It was one of those Edgar cards with the 3D effect, something a 6-year-old kid would love. I waited, got sent to the counter to the left, waitied for the idiot woman to stop arguing that she shouldn't have to pay the additional cost of the weight of the packaging, and bought printed stamps. The guy was ready to machine-print a €1 tag but I stopped him. I asked him politely for pre-printed stamps, preferably two or three. He showed me all the loose stamps he had on rolls and Jake got a his card with €0.90 and €0.10 stamps. I coulda had three or four stamps but I didn't feel like giving the Post even more than the already expensive €1 for a damned postcard.

The Post sell single stamps. You have to buy them their way which means buying them from one particular till. Welcome to Germany. The Post is more efficient than they used to be. Pain-in-the-ass grannies who want single stamps no longer hold everyone else up with their silly special requests for single, pretty stamps. Instead they (and I) wait for the person who gets stuck dealing with such PsITA and the entire queue is served more quickly. Where's the problem?

woof.

there are two DHL? afik, the one and only DHL was bought by deutsche post a few years ago in their grand scheme to go "global". Unfortunately, instead of bringing the Deustche Post parcel service up to international standards, DHL has dropped to DP levels.

The big deal, as several people pointed out (yours truly among them), is not being allowed to move to the "magic" window/counter once it becomes free but having to go to the back of the queue. In addition, in my case it wasn't even a matter of wanting a single stamp, I was trying to buy a dozen of them.

Monsieur Dawg,
problem is that they do not write this information anywhere. There are no signs anywhere saying which queues sell single stamps. It's like playing Russian Roulette. There is no chance of jumping the queue once you get told you are in the wrong queue.

What happend in my case, what also made it so very mind-boggling, was that one of the two counters for selling single stamps was right next to the counter I was standing. There was nobody behind the counter. The guy serving me(*ha*ha*) refused to just quickly take a stamp from the role right next to him! It wasn't, after all, his job to sell single stamps and whether or not the person selling the stamps was at their post or not meant nothing to him. Zero initiative.

I see your counter and raise you two . I had them on either side.

I have just been to the local Post Office and unfortunately, forgot to ask about single stamps.
My forgetfulness was caused by the shock of finding that the cost of a "Paket" sent within Germany has been REDUCED!

That's correct, the price has gone DOWN from €7 to €6.90 (or should that be €6,90?).
Even better, the price was €7 for a 'Paket' up to 5kg weight, then around €10 for up to 10kg.
It is NOW €6.90 (€6,90) for UP TO 10kg!

Excellent!
MT

No.

I find it incredible that the post office doesn't sell single postage stamps at all counters - isn't this their core business?
given this ridiculous service, I suggest we pay for our single stamps, at the appropriate counter of course, with ec card ... teach them a lesson !!!

I don't have a problem with getting a single stamp at my post office in Arabellapark. I never know what I need for postage, and they are always nice about it.

ah, but the idea is that you can buy postage for the letters, or postcards you bring to the post office, but you cannot take single stamps home with you (as in: I need 3 stamps for letters to go to the U.K.).

why this is remains a mystery to me. thinking about starting a post office blog site but there must already be one.

anyway - 3 months to go in the lower countries and have yet to go to a post office there

never had a problem with that either, usually go in and find out how much it costs, then buy the stamps I need for my christmas cards.

and your post office is in münchen bogenhausen? am willing to travel

Same for me too Carm, but at my local one there is only 1 counter, so of course they can't send me anywhere else!

its in Arabella park, mostly businesses in the area, so saturdays are not too busy there. And there is only 2 windows, and the women are friendly there.

i was at that post office on friday at about 4:30pm. it was empty. first time i've been to a post office and it was empty. shock horror!

yeah, as most of the offices around here shut about 1 on fridays so there is nobody there in the afternoon. Only problem is they are shut from 1-3 during the week for lunch- and that is when I have lunch, but they are open til 6pm. And noon on saturdays.

the postoffice at Ostbahnhot is a nightmare ... never ending queues.
wouldn't it make much more sense if they sold booklets of stamps at petrol stations, newsagents & convenience stores like back in the UK. hmm .. that would be just too convenient!!

I think this is being expanded...BUT, the SAME as the UK it will be a multiple buy of stamps that are valid for standard DOMESTIC mail only.

All of you who have been crying out for prirvatisation, core business, efficiency, targettingof resources etcetc: The death of separate single stamps is the direct result of it.