Denmark will abolish its pick-up and delivery of letters at the end of 2025, citing a 90% decline in volume since 2000. They will only handle parcels from now on. They’ve already removed most public mailboxes.
Several other countries will change their postal services in the next few years, as they’ve become financial burdens.
I’m ambivalent on this. On the one hand, letters are a ridiculous form of communication in the 21st century, where only a small fraction of the population doesn’t have some sort of email. Letters take a long time to get to their destination and waste a lot of resources (especially with today’s low volumes) just to convey information.
On the other hand, they’re legally (often constitutionally) protected in most countries, so that you have some assurance that no private person will steal or read your mail between the moment it’s dropped in a public box and the time you pick it up from your own mailbox. That makes them suitable for sending cheques, tax forms, initial passwords for online resources, some legal notices, etc. The current email or direct-message systems don’t have these legal protections. Once we’re only communicating electronically, there will be very little to stop governments from reading content or even censoring it.
Speaking for Canada, not enough. Canada Post is effectively bankrupt and has plans to end home letter delivery and close some post offices in an attempt to stay afloat.
A big thank you, Denmark, for doing this. I suggested the US do this a while ago, and was told it would never happen here. The main reason the USPS exists today is to distribute massive amounts of junk mail. I get little email spam these days. Case closed.
A few years ago, several of the smaller post offices around here were closed. The one that was closest to us is now The Babe Cave - a salon/spa business. And, like others, pretty much all I get in my mailbox goes directly into the recycle bin, unopened. I wouldn’t miss it at all.
My kids (in Canada) used a service where they wrote letters on pre-printed stationary with a QR code. The camp then scanned it in and it was sent to us an email attachment. We could reply online and the camp would print it out and give it to the kids. It gave us a 48 hour turn around on mail vs. closer to 7 days with Canada Post.
Note two things: 1. After PostNord exits letter delivery, another company, Dansk Avis Omdeling (DAO), is expected to take over domestic letter distribution from 2026, while PostNord will continue to focus on parcels and logistics services.
Postage is extremely expensive in Denmark. would you believe roughly $4.50 a letter (29 DK):
They must not have enough junk mail to pay for delivery.
I like the junk mail. I mean, not all of it. But i read some of the catalogs. I ask charities to send their begging letters physically. We keep it in a stack and review the stack from time to time. I like to see what politicians have to say about themselves. And i don’t want any of that clogging up me email. And i like that someone is paying the letter carrier to come to my door every day.
Ever since they stopped printing lots of newspapers we’ve been forced to rely on using junk mail for lining bird cages, painting furniture in the garage, and starting fires in the fireplace and backyard grill. Would hate to lose the last bastion of free paper.
That’s the real meat of the issue. Right now, the decentralized and relatively insecure way that emails are sent and routed means that there’s always the possibility that it can be tampered with, read, blocked, etc. without the rather extreme difficulty that it takes to do so with physical mail. That’s why official correspondence is pretty much either sent via physical mail or set up with one of those “Message Center” type functionalities where you log into the corresponder’s site and read the message there without it actually being sent.
That said, I can’t remember the last time I sent a letter that wasn’t compelled by some organization who required a physical letter. Most everything is emails, texts, or those message-center type schemes.
I think at some point, someone’s going to integrate some sort of digital signature functionality and secure messaging into smartphones as a default, and that’ll start to chip away at a lot of the remaining physical messaging. But until that’s something that you just set up automatically as a mandatory part of setting up the phone/account, we’ll still require physical mail because there are a lot of people who are ignorant of the security aspects, or who are just lazy and won’t bother setting it up.
One benefit of paper mail is that can help figure out a person’s accounts when they are deceased or incapacitated. With email billing, if some dies or can no longer take care of themselves, it’s hard for the family to figure out where the person’s money is and what bills need to be paid. However, if statements and bills are showing up in the mailbox, the family will be able to better figure out the person’s financial situation. Just being able to go into the person’s office and see stacks of paper bills will let them know what accounts they have. If it’s all locked behind the person’s email, the family won’t be able to access it without a lot of trouble.
Curious about how official government notices will be handled. Here in the US, agencies such as the IRS constantly warn us that they will NEVER send notices by text, telephone, or email. Only via snail mail. To help protect against fraud.
Speaking as someone who runs a nonprofit, we get better responses from snail mail campaigns than email campaigns. Speaking as someone who receives both snail mail and email, I open more snail mail than email; I rarely check my personal email anymore.
Last week we got a letter from a (large non-local) nonprofit begging for donations. To entice you to open the envelope, they included three ! nickels, clearly visible in the envelope’s window. If you chose not to donate, they would appreciate that you send the three nickels back to them.
I had my mother’s computer and email passwords long before she died. My husband and i share that info with each other. One of the kids will get it when one of us stops being able to use that.
On the gripping hand, in the USA at least there’s a religious freedom issue. Old Order (Amish, some Mennonites, Hutterites, I think some other groups) don’t have and won’t use email.
Plus which, as has been said, email’s not private.
Or who are broke, and dependent on old insecure or borrowed insecure equipment.
