Director-General of POST Luxembourg, Claude Strasser and Director of POST Courrier, Hjoerdis Stahl, today presented the simplified pricing structure, as well as new product range, of POST Luxembourg which will come into effect on 1 September 2015.
According to Stahl, the changes were initiated after it was discovered that customers found the previous pricing system too complicated, leading to a lot of confusion. The entire pricing process has therefore been simplified and redesigned, through a reduction in the number of weight classes and destination zones from 198 to 24 itmes and the merging of 'mail' and 'parcel' products into a unified range of available services.
The new denomination contains six classifications dependent on weight and measurements of the package to be sent, these being XS, S, M, L, XL and XXL. For example, three separate categories previously classed under 'non-standard letter' have now been tidied into one classification, S. This information is outlined in the form of a pictographic table which will be available in all POST offices.
POST Luxembourg also announced its first price adjustment since 1 September 2010. The cost of a standard letter sent within the lowest classification of XS will be increasing by 10 cents to domestic and European destinations, whilst international shipments in this category will see a rise of 20 cents.
According to the POST Luxembourg Group, the price increase was necessary in order to keep abreast of the competition, stating that despite the price hike the cost of sending a standard letter within the country is still 6-7 cents cheaper than Luxembourg's neighbours of France and Belgium. A standard letter sent within Europe will cost 95 cents, making it 14 cents cheaper than the postal average in the EU.
Other categorical prices have also risen, as in the case of the €1.20 increase of domestic shipments classed as 'L'; but equally other price bands such as 'M' have seen a fall in prices across all three recipient zones, with the current price reduced domestically from €3 to €2.80, within Europe from €8 to €4.75 and internationally from €12 to €6.50.
A new range of products has also been developed by the postal service, all of which wull be made available to purchase from post offices, cactus supermarkets, PostShop partner companies or online.
One such product group is 'Ready2Post', a pre-paid range of envelopes and packages which allow customers to avoid separately buying stampsand instead directly send their post, with all the packages fitting easily into POST letterboxes. Hjoerdis Stahl explained that the intention had been to cater to time-conscious clients by creating a more streamlined process and minimising the amount of time needed to be spent in the post office. The Ready2Post range comes at a single price for Luxembourg and Europe.
The PostPack line of boxes has also received changes following customer demand. The number of available sizes has been adjusted and the design redeveloped in different colours of increasing size, from grey as the smallest, to yellow, blue and finally the largest green. POST Luxembourg has also added a creative element to this range with the limited-edition so-called 'Crazy Boxes', of which the 'Draw My Box' version allows customers to use special provided pencils to add their own personal design to the package exterior.
The final new product available is a novel tracking method entitle 'FollowMe', which dispels with delivery signatures and can be attached to any letter of parcel weighing up to 2 kilogrammes. Once these are dropped into a letter box they can then be tracked online at www.trackandtrace.lu. This process is available in over 50 countries, including France, Germany and Austria, for the price of €2.
The Directors of the POST Group stated that the adjustments had been made according to customer interest and as a means of preventing problems such as items placed in a box that could have been sent by envelope. "We wanted to make clients understood," commented Stahl, who went on to explain that informative flyers will be distributed and offered in several areas to prepare customers for the changes before they come into force in early September 2015.
Photos by Sarah Graham (Top: Director General of POST Luxembourg, Claude Strasser. Middle L-R: Head of Depertment, Regulation&Processes, Claude Hansen ; Director of POST Courrier, Hjoerdis Stahl ; Director General of POST Luxembourg, Claude Strasser. Bottom: New PostPack Boxes)
