Australia Post price increases

[gweidion]

Might be worth buying some prepaid 10 packs before the price rise. I still have some prepaid envelopes from the days when they were 40 cents, still work fine. Clearly I don't post enough.

What the hell is Clean Mail? I don't send dirty mail, oh, maybe to my mistress.

[jens coins]

Just a reminder that Australia Post letters, Registered post labels and tracking envelopes are goin up on 3rd April 2024.
Maybe worth buying some prepaid packs before the price rise.

https://auspost.com.au/disruptions-and-updates/pricing-updates/bpr-letter-pricing-update

[Tanecoins]

Your postage is cheap compared to ours. July 1st our postage will increase to $2.30 per letter and we now have stamp sets with a top value of $6.90. 10 years ago, postage was 70c going to 80c and the top face value in a stamp set was $2.80.

No wonder I switched to coins back in 2020.

Every year the postage goes up 30c, it was $2 last year, $1.70 before that, then $1.50, $1.30, $1.20 and so on back to 2007 when it was 45c and had been since 1991.

[jens coins]

Postage for parcels and international parcels and letter are increasing from July 1st 2024.

https://auspost.com.au/disruptions-and-updates/pricing-updates/apr-letter-pricing-update

[redlock]

Geez, postage in Australia and NZ is very high.  :shock:
And I thought postal rates in Germany were high.

Here in Germany, I must pay

letter up to 20g
domestic: €0,85
international: €1,10

letter up to 50g
domestic: €1,10
international: €1,70

letter up to 500g
domestic: €1,60
international: €3,70


international: every country or territory that is not Germany
So, a letter to France or Austria costs as much as a letter to NZ or Australia. Parcels and packages are an entirely different story, however.

And, yes, Deutsche Post/DHL has been complaining that the postal rates are too low. They want a rate increase which is currently on hold though.

[Tanecoins]

If it helps, every July 1st, NZ Post just increases prices, with very few announcements.
Hardly anyone uses post anymore now, other than for parcels. In 2001, NZ post handled 1.1 billion items of postal mail. In 2022 it was 165 million and last year around 120 million (Numbers have not been released yet).

NZ post, a private company (Although the govt has some shares in it), always blames email, fuel prices, vehicle rpices, population pressure (In a tiny country with under 5 million people), covid 19, global warming, Donald Trump, my wife burning the eggs, shedding cats, heavy rain, snow on Mt Cook, Vladimir Putin fronting and Mars in retrograde (Some of those were made up like Global warming).

Since 2010 postage has gone from 60c to $2.30 for a standard letter, they have fired 2/3 of their staff, closed most of the post offices and made most stationery shops and general stores "Postal agencies", eliminated the banking and billpaying parts and cut mail delivery from 5 days a week to 3 days. Also stamps are almost never used and only buyable in some limited packets with unwanted First Day Covers from the Bureau in Whanganui, which is our equivalent of you guys buying yours from say Meekatharra.

The stamps themselves are laughable, the latest set about Splitz Enz showed the same album cover with four colour schemes (Designed in 1979) with face values of $2.30, $3.80, $5.10 and $6.90!  In 2010 the stamp sets were 2 x 60c, $1.20, $1.80, $2.40 and $3. In 1975 it was 3c, 5c, 10, 18c!

And we wonder why so many ex philatelists collect coins now?

[Triggersmob]

It's a shame coins are going the same way as stamps.

[gweidion]

I can understand the decline in postal mail though. The only person I write to these days is my 94 year old great aunt.
Pretty much everyone else has email.
And then you get the idiots at iiNet (Internet Service Provider) who say email isn't their core business and outsource it to some dodgy third party company to handle who will want to charge for it. After 20 plus years I am looking for a new ISP who still does email in-house.

[Basilstate]

It's a shame coins are going the same way as stamps.

Yes,young people/kids are not collecting Stamps or Coins anymore,especially Pre-Dec. Oz Coins.

Its not just recently,local dealer contacted both the Primary & High Schools up here on the North Coast of NSW 20 years ago,early days of Ebay Oz., to have a talk for a period a week and they were not interested,not even slightly.

[Triggersmob]

I keep telling myself to go back only collect pre-21st century coins. Maybe one day soon.

[jens coins]

Australia post are increasing letter and parcel prices from July 1st 2025

https://auspost.com.au/disruptions-and-updates/pricing-updates/apr-letter-pricing-update

[gweidion]

Well we knew that was coming.
Ehh, standard postage HASN'T gone up??? Unless I missed it.
Amazed.

[Tanecoins]

Meanwhile NZ pushed the greed button harder, they have like 3 post offices left, and everything is a postal agency.

Postage went from $2.30 to 2.90 on July 1st 2025 and then zoomed up to $3.60 this year on July 1.

NZ Post delivered 115 million letter mail items in 2025, compare this to 1.1 billion in 2001 and even 580 billion in 2011.

Parcels and courier services have gone through the roof. In the last year I maybe got 12 posted items, 5 were newsletters from a stamp club, who advised they were going digital this year, so don't get them anymore and others were mainly stupid letters from banks whose computer was still sending me "paper" statements.

I sent Christmas cards out last year, 8 and was laughed at for being archaic, I got 2 back - all were from commercial companies. I also sent 2 secret santa letters to Europe.

In 2000, I probably sent at least one letter a day.