Post Office Box charges up by 100%

Waimarino Bulletin, Volume 4, Issue 39, 17 March 1987, Page 4

Post Office Box charges up by 100%

Post Office boxholders have been hit with a 'savage' 100% increase in rental charges for the 1987-88 year. Each box will in future cost a box-holder who lives within Ohakune's free postal delivery area $90 per year while for those living outside

the free postal delivery area the annual rental will be $30. Last year the charges were $45 and $22 respectively. This is the second time in three consecutive years the NZPO box rentals have increased substantially for box-holders living within the free postal delivery area

— in 1985 it was $30, in 1986 it was $45 and now, a year later, it costs $90. Since 1985 the rental has trebled. The Bulletin questioned several PO box-holders whose reactions included: "disgusting"; "criminal"; "ridiculous"; "it's a rip-off"; "typical" and "they can stick it." "A savage and unjustifiable increase which only a government monoply such as the NZ Post Office can get away with," said one irate PO box holder who had just received his latest account. "They (the Post Office) ought to be paying us for renting a box because it saves them from having to deliver mail — letters and parcels — to every house and business address in town," he said. "I wouldn't mind paying an inflation-adjusted increase plus GST which would have added about another $10, making the total rental about $55 but to increase it to $90 is a rip-off ... that sort of money is bet-

ter in my pocket than in theirs," he added. The Ohakune Post Office has a total of 240 post-boxes. Each box measures 5 inches x 6 inches x 15 inches deep (13cm x 15cm x 38cm) and they cover a vertical wall area of approximately 5ft x 1 1ft (1.5m x 3.3m) — a total frontage of 55 sq. ft. (5 sq. metres). If all boxes were rented out to businesses and individuals within the free postal delivery area at $90 each — and most of them are — that 5sq. metre area of wall at the Ohakune Post Office could generate up to $21,600 per year. At an annual rent of $4320 per square metre that must make it the most expensive piece of real estate in town ... if not the country! Most businesses and many private individuals have used the PO box system over the years ... while the charges remained reasonable. How many will continue to do so remains to be seen.

particularly since it costs nothing to have mail delivered to individual residences or business premises. As one former PO boxholder told the Bulletin: "Why should 1 pay the Post Office $90 a year for putting my letters and parcels into a box down at the Post Office, from where 1 have to collect them, when 1 can have all my mail delivered free to my home address ... after all that's what postage stamps are for, aren't they?" Said another: "l'm not renewing my rental. It's ridiculous ... and just imagine what delivery problems the Post Office,are going to have if all PO box-holders were to pull out ... they are going to have to deliver all that extra mail around town in all sorts of weather." Yet another box-holder said: "If the Post Office go on increasing their charges as they have been doing — postage stamps have gone up to 40 cents since Christmas — people are going to find some alternative ... you can only go on fooling some of the people for some of the time!" "What's to stop all local 'mail' — without postage stamps — being distributed through a pidgeon-hole system in a local bookshop for instance and thus by-pass the Post Office altogether?" "For example, there are already 325 pidgeon-holes in the Kapai Bookshop," he said. "Now if these were all named and numbered as

most of them are, local businesses and individuals could become their own do-it-yourself 'posties' by placing letters, messages, accounts and payments directly into these pidgeon-holes without paying postage ... and without paying the exorbitant PO box charges." "People could then collect their 'mail' and pay their bills through this system when they collected their newspapersand magazines." "And just imagine what this would do to Post Office revenue if this idea caught on and local people — particularly businesses — adopted this system of 'free post'. After all it costs nearly a dollar to post a couple of letters these days." The Bulletin approached Ken George (proprietor of the Kapai Bookshop and himself a former employee of the Post Office) to sound him out on this idea. Having just received an account for his own PO box rental he seemed, not entirely surprisingly, enthusiastic! Asked about the security of such 'mail' he said he would even consider having a completely new set of lockup pidgeon-holes made or people could supply their own padlocks if the idea received sufficient public support. When the Post Office was asked about the 100% increase the reply was: "People have the option ... we can't force anyone to rent a Post Office box."