[Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - shop as post-partner

[Paul Allen]

On Thu, 11 Feb 2021 at 21:39, Robin Burek <robin.burek at gmx.de> wrote:

> Am 11.02.2021 um 21:12 schrieb Paul Allen:
>
> Those don't look like post offices to me.  No mention of Deutsche Post
> that
> I could see.  They're shops offering an interface to some courier services.
>
> And there you are wrong. The problem, in germany you have already not
> only one postal service provider. I actual found six
> nationwide/suprareginal and 30 regional postal service provider (and i
> think there are some more).... And some of them use more or less such
> "postal partners".  I have the feeling that this is much more of a free
> market than in many other countries - in germany there don't exist "public,
> national postal services" - here do not exist an state monopol.   And this
> postal service provider are not an courier service...
>
In the UK we have many courier services competing with the Post Office &
Royal Mail (two independent but complementary halves of what used to be
a single entity).  But only Royal Mail has widespread letter boxes and the
Post Office offers postal services the couriers do not/legally cannot.

Is there any interoperability between your postal partners?  Can I buy
stamps
from partner 1 and have partner 2 honour them?  Can I hand a package to
partner 1, pay partner 1 and that package be collected from a shop which
only has a contract with partner 2?  Do any of your postal partners,
other than Deutsche Post, have a widespread network of letterboxes?
Can I buy stamps from partner 1, branded as for use by partner 1, and
put them in a letterbox operated by Deutsche Post?  If I ask a local
for the nearest Postamt will I be directed to a Deutsche Post or
some random postal partner?


> This is a shop with a post office: https://goo.gl/maps/T4TdmKyYjZmQBjCX6
>
> Honestly, I can't see the shop - this looks to me like a whole post
> office.... ? In OSM an in Google the is only signet as an post office...
> (Here so no "post_partner" at all)
>
Did you notice the things in the two windows?  Their facebook page has
posts promoting new lines or items on special offer.  Jotters and calendars
you might consider to be standard items at a post office.  Lollipops less
so.
Socks, not at all.  They also have a range of other (unspecified) gifts so
you can send a present to a person whose birthday you forgot until it
was almost too late.  It's more post office than shop, but it does sell
non-postal items.


> And another: https://goo.gl/maps/2icPH4E2kprWe3Ky5
>
> Here I don't see it indoor - but that's look from outdoor more like a
> "post partner" in a smal supermarket/hamlet store
>
It is an official sub-post office.  That's why it has the sign/logo saying
"Post Office."


> And a supermarket which has a shop-in-shop fashion store (not there the
> last time I visited over a decade ago) and the main post office:
> https://goo.gl/maps/1d8osiMeEkEETyrk7
>
> yes, okay, but this isn't a post partner. Thats a shop-in-shop post
> office.... so not mentioned by the proposal.
>

All of my examples were of shop-in-shop post offices.  Physical separation
between the counter handling postal services and the counter(s) handling
other items.  Strict separation of tills and computer backends for postal
services.  These are legal requirements for postal services.

But we also have courier operations of the type you describe as postal
partners.  Except we don't refer to them as postal services, because that
would confuse them with "real" postal services operated by the Post Office/
Royal Mail.

I wouldn't have any problem with your proposal if it weren't for the fact
that it keeps mentioning "post" and "postal" everywhere.  It may be
true in Germany that the two are no longer distinguishable but elsewhere
they are.  Refer to them as couriers and there's no conflict; refer to them
as postal partners and there is.

-- 
Paul
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