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Denmark's state-run postal service is to end all letter deliveries at the end of 2025 – cites a 90% decline in letter volumes since the start of the century
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- Title
- Denmark's postal service to stop delivering letters
- Published
- Mar 6 2025
- Word count
- 355 words
This isn't like the penny, in which you could still exchange it at the bank and sometimes you get a few cents off your purchase.
In rural Canada, the elderly would have to buy a cell phone or computer, and pay for data or internet, and be able to navigate past ads, spam, phishing, porn, malware etc, in order to look at their bank statement and keep their heat/electricity on.
I wish they would replace service instead of terminate them. Pay an extra guy to work at the library, to check the elderly's electronic mail for them and send them home with print outs.
Don't make just living cost a bunch of money.
You are absolutely right - as usual.
What I would assume will end up happening is that bills, hospital appointments, etc. could either be delivered by private couriers (with an extra charge to the consumer) from now on, or that they'll start "disguising" them as parcels. However, do note that I'm pulling things out of my dorsal orifice of invention here, as I do not live in Denmark and I have zero context about exclusively-Denmark-specific issues and daily life.
In the US at least, the elderly are vulnerable to advertisements that arrive via direct mail. If the post office stopped delivering commercial mail, or at least didn't charge lower rates for bulk mail, that might be a blessing.
I don't know that I disagree, but that would be $15 billion of public revenue we would lose too.
What kind of bank/utility websites are they running up there?!
lol Ok ok, joking aside, as long as your email isn't sold it shouldn't have spam. If all they used it for were utilities and bank logins (not things like facebook), they shouldn't receive spam. I have seperate emails for things like banks (Yahoo's disposable emails) and they never receive spam (I don't use the spam filter on them either). The main email I've never given out is also spam free.
Why not do that at the post office? They'd still need one for receiving/sending parcels. They could also package a week of printed digital mail up and deliver that as a parcel.
Just as a counter example: I use a service to create completely separate emails for signing up for different accounts and such as well. I utilize multiple domains (public and ones I own) and different patterns of email address.
Based on the spam those emails get I can attest that some bank, utilities, landlords, etc are indeed selling your email. Those that might not are still vulnerable to data leaks that can end up with your email in a spam database.
Every senior I know is on some mixture of TikTok, Facebook, Little Red Book, WeChat, X (eg, they weren't on twitter before it became X). That's why.
Yeah, that's true. :/
Reminds me of my mother, totally computer illiterate and somehow she got on facebook and is always fretting over some political thing that she can do nothing about or misinformation because people she's friends with keep posting such things. She has no skills to parse internet information properly so it's a source of stress that she doesn't want to give up because it's the best way to keep in touch with her friends. Of course her email is riddled with spam too, luckily she's the type to ask before acting on things.
First I've heard of that one, interesting name.
It's a Chinese app, which should make the name make more sense. It's called "Rednote" in English on the app store (though "Little Red Book" is a more accurate translation of the Chinese name). Many Westerners joined during the brief Tiktok shutdown. I don't know many older Western people on it, but to be fair I haven't been hunting for any lol.
Rednote may have been chosen because "Little Red Book" sounds too Chinese and you know how people in the states are conditioned to distrust the Chinese.
Think I'll check it out, never know what'll be the next big thing. Thanks for the info! :)
It's Chinese IG. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiaohongshu
I hope they don't wholesale remove the infrastructure.
Like how trains are gaining a bit of a resurgence of interest in the US, the thing that's crippling the idea of trains moving forward in the US currently (aside from the batshit crazies) was the destruction of infrastructure to cut costs in the latter half of the 20th century. It will be incredibly expensive to replace what was lost, and I can't imagine the US to ever again be consistently proactive long enough to accomplish that.
But, if trains can regain interest in the US, I'm confident that the postal service can do the same in Europe at some point in the future, and so it would be prudent that they try to maintain that infrastructure for as long as possible.
If anything, the angle of communications security makes a good argument. There's security in redundancy, and inevitably the digital system will go down. If someone successfully attacks the systems and puts it down for a month or two, they will be glad to have the backup system still ready to go.
I'm now picturing a bluebox in a museum and an old man describing it to a little kid sort of like someone would describe a phone booth.
"We use to put stickers on envelopes and put them in those boxes. The stickers would prove that we paid for the envelope to be delivered to the address on them. Envelopes were containers for paper and small things. We use to send and receive all sorts of things in envelopes, but mostly letters, checks, and bills. Checks were signed pieces of paper that could be used to pay for things. No, money is similar but not the same. Money was issued by the government and could be used by anyone while checks could only be used by the person who's name was on the check."
Just the idea that in another 20 years kids might not know what envelopes are is kind of funny to me. We might not even have money, I haven't used cash in over a year. Most of my paper use has been related to mail too, if letters went away I'd rarely ever use paper which would have no real use to me except as art supplies.
I’m pretty sure you can ask 90% of people under the age of 20 to mail a letter today and they wouldn’t know what to do.
Really? Now I feel old. I guess it shouldn't surprise me, I only ever get junk in my mail since I set everything to paperless and so few people write letters anymore. Almost missed a jury notice once because I check my mailbox so infrequently.
Checks and bills in the mail are already outdated outside of the US to the point I've never used a check and I'm in my thirties. It's just Christmas and postcards. Oh and junk advertisements, those are timeless.
Always seems like the USA is slower to stop using older methods. This due to a conservative nature or something else? You'd think with how much advanced tech we have we'd be at the forefront of using that tech. :(
The US is the size of Europe. Often times it's just because we have the infrastructure already setup, and to replace it you have to have something else ready to go and installed across the entire country. And that means everywhere from downtown LA to a random Appalachian town that barely has electricity.
Banking in the US is less centralized and more local than lots of other countries. So you get situations where some larger banks are very tech forward and then you get a local bank in the middle of Wyoming that is literally three branches in small towns and barely keeps up.
As an anecdote, in the early 10s when I was consulting to a massive company, the treasurer had to get on the phone with a podunk bank because a pharmacist was hand drawing a check - like drawing in the lines and boxes and hand printing the account number with no MICR - and it was causing everyone consternation.
My experience has been that 99% of letters are junk mail. I mean I’m sure that people write fewer letters too their friends too, but even if they didn’t I suspect private letters would be a tiny portion of that volume.
In Denmark you can thankfully order a free sticker to put on your mailbox that says "no ads please" and it is illegal for them to ignore it. If they do, you can report it, and then whomever the delivery person was might lose their job.
My building of about 150 apartments recently did this for all tenants. It is quite nice.
In the US it isn't entirely clear to the receiver if something is an ad or not. I frequently get mail that looks very official and turns out to just be someone trying to get me to buy an extended vehicle warranty or home warranty. Sometimes I get tricked into opening these just to verify.
If it's pre-sorted standard postage it's trash (unless you want the specific credit card offer or whatever).
Pre-sorted first class is commercial, but is generally worth opening. At least the company paid more to get it to you and it's usually targeted. My insurance agent might send me an offer for example.
I'm in this situation right now where I'm getting junk unaddressed ad folders for three or four weeks in a row now and I have a No-No sticker.
But I also think I saw the paperboy a little while ago and he's suuuuper young. I was a bit too late to talk to him and I haven't seen him since. I'm hesitant to call it in. Unless he's dumping his folders I think he's just making an honest mistake and perhaps training is at fault.
On the other hand, it's such wasteful rubbish that I don't need..