Post Office to Cease Acting as Collector

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 632, 8 April 1929, Page 10

Post Office to Cease Acting as Collector

C.O.P. SYSTEM JUSTICE TO TRADERS Press Association WELLINGTON, To-day. In announcing that Cabinet had decided to abolish the cash-on-delivery system for overseas parcels, the Prime Minister, Sir Joseph Ward, said that there was no doubt that anything between £150,000 and £200,000 a year was being sent out of the country for the purchase of goods through the c.o.d. system, the Post Office acting as an agent for the distribution of parcels ordered from firms at Home.

As a matter or fact if anybody wanted to obtain goods from outside New Zealand all they would require to do was to send their orders direct and allow them on arrival to be cleared by the Customs in the ordinary -way. Under the c.o.d. system the Post Office was being- turned into an agent, imposing a tremendous amount of work on the department which ordinarily would be carried out by small traders. Moreover, it was not fair that small traders should be subject to the system of Customs examination. with all its attendant formalities, while people who were ordering through the cash-on-delivery principle had an advantage over them. In that respect it was desirable that, so far as possible, money which was being sent abroad in payment for orders should be retained and spent in New Zealand.