Kerre Woodham: The slow decline of NZ postal services

The arrival of Netflix and other film streaming services was the death knell for video rental stores. Five years after Netflix arrived in New Zealand in 2015, the majority of stores, once mainstays of our weekends —who didn't go in and spend an hour or so in the video rental store trying to decide what to choose for the weekend?— had closed across the country.  

Yet despite 99% of New Zealanders saying they used email regularly in that same year, 2015, postal services have endured. Now sure, they've reduced as mail volumes have dropped off. 2015 was a big year because that's when postal deliveries went from six days a week to three as the mail volumes declined. But at least my toll payment notices and my cards from Aunt Barbara are still arriving in my letterbox three days a week.  

The decline of video stores was relatively quick, if not painless. The decline of postal services is long and slow and may yet not be terminal. Take the announcement yesterday that New Zealand Post is to remove its services from 142 franchise partners. On the face of it, grim news. Yet in the same press release, New Zealand Post GM of Consumer announced that many of the remaining stores will be upgraded and new retail hubs featuring modern spaces designed for parcel sending, collection, and returns will be opening across the country. All well and good.  

But for the franchises, those businesses that had New Zealand Post services in their stores, they say people do still send letters and parcels. They do still contribute significantly to their businesses. The owner of Marsden Books in Karori, Briony Hogg, told Ryan Bridge this morning that having the post office in store brings in a number of people. 

BH: For us as a small bookshop in a suburban area, it's all about the people that it brings into the store. People would come in to do their posting and while they're in there, they'll buy a card and they'll buy a book and they'll have a chat and we build a relationship with these people and yeah, we're really, really disappointed that we've lost that. 

RB: Do you know what sort of impact it might have on your bottom line? 

BH: It's going to be pretty significant. It is a large portion of our revenue. So now we're going to have to think about ways that we pivot, ways that we change in the way we do business. And it's been a pretty exhausting couple of years to be a small business owner. I'm sure there's people out there that just don't have the energy to do that sort of pivot anymore. So yeah, it's going to be really, really significant, not just on me, but on all the other 141 outlets that got closed yesterday. 

Yes, it's interesting too the choice of franchise owners that NZ Post has chosen to keep. I am no NZ Post GM Consumer, but a bookstore seems to make more sense for a New Zealand Post franchise than a service station, but there we go.  

The fact remains it's a government-owned company and if it's making a loss, that's a loss the taxpayer has to wear. In the 2024 financial year, the state-owned enterprise reported a loss of $14 million. Chump change if you're a former Labour government, but nonetheless $14 million. The moves announced yesterday are part of the plan to return to profitability.  

In a way, it would be quite freeing to not have postal services anymore. I'm still hung up on sending cards to denote formal occasions, but I faff around. I still owe a thank you card to generous hosts from Christmas. A month has now gone by. Their generosity was such that I need to acknowledge it, and an email just doesn't do it. Yet I would have sent an email within days of Christmas. But because I'm still trying to find the right card and get an actual physical voucher, it'll probably be Easter before I post my thank you. And a thank you delayed is an ill-mannered ingrate. So if there was no postal service, I could use that as an excuse rather than just faffing around. But I still love sending cards and maybe that's just a generational thing. There may be those of you 30 and under who are thinking, "What? I only get my speeding tickets in the mail and that is that and I could easily do that online." But some occasions just seem to require a formal thank you, a formal handwritten "I've taken the time to acknowledge what you've done for me and I appreciate it." And I would be really, really, really sorry to see that go. 

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