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Comment by Svip | Hacker News Reader

Denmark is a member of the Universal Postal Union, which requires each member to deliver letters received from abroad. It's unclear who will now have that responsibility. When the new postal act went into effect last year, it opened up the market for domestic letter deliveries, but PostNord was still responsible for foreign (both in- and outbound) deliveries.

Edit: Found a note on their website:

> You can send letters to and from abroad with PostNord for the rest of the year. PostNord Denmark has been appointed by the Ministry of Transport to handle international mail until 31 December 2025. After that, it will be up to the Ministry of Transport to decide, e.g. through a tender, who will handle the task in the future.

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In The Netherlands the traditional postal had switched to every-other-day delivery for non-critical mail, and 09:00 postbox pickup instead of 17:00.

It might feel a bit awkward for people who are used to everyday delivery, but with the low volume of mail something has to give. Either € per letter rises, or letter per € drops.

PostNord already did this in Denmark, to the extreme, which render their services pretty useless. Letters will frequently take up to 10 days to arrive.

A previously employer resorted to ask staff to take mail with them as they traveled between locations and drop of letters to clients when they either visited or drove past anyway.

Some government services didn't take the hint and mailed papers for signing, asking for them to be mailed back within 14 days, but if the letters doesn't arrive until 10 days later, how are you suppose to have it returned within 14?

Danes don't send much mail anyway, but the reduction of service just made everything worse. You can barely rely on PostNord for Christmas cards without posting them before December.

Their package delivery service is excellent though, but only in certain parts of the country.

I'd rather they subsidized it and bring back fulltime employment. It went from a uniformed government job to a part-time bring-your-own-bike "gig" job.

But I believe that if you hire full-time staff that can work with a bit more flexibility - wider area for delivery, picking up mail as well, that kinda thing - instead of min/maxing it they can keep up if not improve the quality of work.

According to TV2 Denmark, DAO (who distributed news papers and parcels) has made a bid to take over: https://nyheder.tv2.dk/business/2025-03-06-slut-med-postnord...

I don’t know about Denmark but in Norway there is a discussion to pick up letters from designated supermarkets from where packages are already picked up.

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