Printers grilled AusPost representatives at the PIAA AusPost breakfast in Sydney this morning, with the questions focusing on the fall out of AusPost putting their prices up and seeing volumes go down, with printers wanting to know what Australia Post is doing to help?
Frustrated printers asked about the price rises, asking if there will be another one soon. The AusPOst reps Mark Roberts, general manager mail products, and Mark Pollock, general manager mail business unit were in to talk about the current mailing crisis and how the mail giant plans to address it.
Pollock says they are not expecting a price rise in January and the company has no plans of a rise anytime soon.
This answer made a lot of printers sceptical, one claiming he would bet if there is not one in January, there will be in March.
[Related: AusPost figures clouded under restatements]
One question got the room fired up: Does the USA have lower volume numbers with the answer being yes, but some printers did not believe that answer, even retorting with a few expletives.
One printer said, “If the price goes up and the volume goes down the price pushes people to go digital.”
Another suggested to trial reducing the price to see if the volume goes up, Pollock assured that printer the volume would go down as they trialled that during the introduction of the GST in 2000
The morning began with a presentation by Roberts and Pollock discussing the three pillars to the letter network, commercial and community obligations, mail channel support and trials underway at AusPost including water meter reading, street posting box technology trial, and a national trial of a electronic delivery vehicles.
They also spoke about the upcoming Campaign Targeting Tool (CTT) that will be introduced early mid-September, it is for targeting customer areas and sending them mail related campaigns.
Various questions printers asked included, Does AusPost get revenue from international parcels and does that make up for the decline in letters? How will you improve unaddressed mail booking? And how will you promote the CTT to customers?
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