Number of parcel complaints rises significantly

Whether it's incorrectly posted letters or damaged parcels: So far this year, the Federal Network Agency has received more complaints about mistakes made by postal and parcel service providers than last time. In the first half of the year, 8921 complaints were received, the Federal Network Agency announced in Bonn on Monday. In the same period last year, according to the data, there were 7663 critical word reports, so it was an increase of about 16 percent.

Although the complaint numbers increased, they were still significantly below the value of 10,012 from the first half of 2020 in the first half of 2022.

German citizens can contact the network agency to vent their anger about what they see as the poor quality of service providers. It also deals with delayed shipments and post office opening hours that are inconvenient from the customer's point of view. A complaint can be followed by a conciliation procedure by the authority, but its effect is limited. If the service providers stick to their stance during the proceedings and reject the criticism, the consumer only has the option of going to the district court - the outcome is uncertain.

The complaint figures cannot be clearly interpreted. For example, the postal and parcel industry argues that the number of complaints is very low in relation to the 12 billion letters and 4.3 billion parcels sent in Germany in 2021. In addition, it probably also plays a role that the possibility to complain to the Bonn authority is becoming increasingly well-known and that many citizens are only now writing angry letters because they did not know about this complaint channel before.

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