Posted 30 Dec. 2022 at 06:05 PM
It is the tip of an icon. From 1 January 2023, La Poste will stop selling its famous red stamps meant for sending precedence letters. They are going to be changed by a dematerialized model referred to as “pink e-Letter”. A small postal revolution that raises some questions.
· How does the brand new service work?
To ship precedence mail, you’ll now have to write down your personal mail on the La Poste web site or from a publish workplace. The doc will then be despatched to a postal heart close to the recipient, the place it is going to be printed, enveloped and distributed the subsequent day if it was despatched earlier than eight p.m. The service will value 1.49 euros, in comparison with 1.43 euros for the present pink stamp.
· Why is La Poste placing an finish to the pink stamp?
The primary motivation for this cease is ecological, based on La Poste. To ensure the arrival of those precedence letters the day after postage, the corporate should develop appreciable logistics. Three air connections and 300 others by street are made every single day to supply this service. And these journey more and more gentle. This 12 months, round 6 billion letters had been despatched in France, in comparison with 18 billion in 2008. Switching to mail that’s distributed much less shortly will make it attainable to restrict the variety of connections. The group will thus cut back the carbon footprint of its postal exercise by 25% by 2030, i.e. 60,000 tonnes of CO2 saved per 12 months.
However the financial curiosity of this reform is simply as necessary, whereas the corporate’s distribution exercise recorded in 2021 a deficit of 1.3 billion euros . With fewer however extra environment friendly connections, La Poste expects to save lots of 100 to 150 million per 12 months from 2023, and extra thereafter. This can assist it inside four years to comprise the deficit of all its public service missions to 400 million euros.
The unions, nonetheless, warn of the social value of this measure. The discount within the variety of connections and excursions might, based on them, result in the lack of 15,000 to 20,000 jobs.
· Is it prone to worsen the digital divide?
In keeping with the unions, the disappearance of the pink stamp and the discount within the variety of rounds signify an actual assault on the general public service mission of La Poste. These evoke the aged and remoted for whom the every day hyperlink with their postman is valuable.
Additionally they level out that, whereas most French individuals are more and more utilizing digital know-how for his or her administrative duties, some folks don’t grasp these instruments or nonetheless stay in white areas, the place web entry is proscribed. For many who pay their payments or full their declarations by publish, it will due to this fact be a double penalty: they won’t be able to make use of the “pink e-Letter” service and all their letters will take three days to be despatched.
To those considerations, La Poste reminds that it’ll nonetheless be attainable to fill in precedence mail from a publish workplace. However opponents of the reform counter that there are fewer publish workplaces than yellow mailboxes, which is able to penalize folks with diminished mobility who wish to ship mail. A problem to which the corporate intends to reply by providing appointments with a postman at house.
· Will the secrecy of correspondence be assured?
It’s an immutable rule of a postal service: the secrecy of correspondence should be assured. However some are apprehensive about this proper, which is taken into account a basic freedom. In reality, whereas correspondence written on-line or at an automated kiosk might be transferred and enveloped routinely, handwritten letters dropped at the publish workplace should be manually scanned by an worker. This is sufficient to fear customers who ship delicate or very confidential paperwork, for instance legal professionals or docs.
To those criticisms, La Poste responds that its brokers all take an oath to respect the secrecy of correspondence and that the enveloping of those letters might be carried out in safe areas, by specifically certified staff.
· Which stamps can nonetheless be used?
Like many French folks, you should still have a guide of pink stamps on the backside of a drawer. If that is so, bear in mind that they are going to nonetheless be usable in 2023. Nonetheless, they are going to be thought of by La Poste as inexperienced stamps and your mail is not going to have the standing of “precedence letter”.
The grey stamp (Ecopli) for dispatch in round four days may even disappear, however these bought earlier than January 1 may even stay usable. Concerning the inexperienced stamps, which make sure the supply of mail in two days, they are going to nonetheless be obtainable on the market and usable, however their supply time will improve to 3 days. Lastly, philatelists will be reassured: the attractive stamps meant for collectors is not going to disappear.
