Bpost will be a parcel service that you can better avoid during corona times. The great strength of online stores was ordering from the comfort of your home and the delivery service would do the rest to the front door. But that has been calculated without Bpost because it will no longer deliver all parcels. Some of the customers will have to pick up the parcels themselves at a collection point, Bpost announced.
time for other delivery service
Business customers must also pay an end-of-year surcharge of 1 euro per package from next Friday and until Christmas Eve. Due to the record volumes of parcels that Bpost currently has to process, the company can no longer deliver all parcels at home. Due to the lockdown, many shops have been forced to close and can therefore only sell via the internet. That would also save a lot of travel movements, but when the consumer has to pick up his parcel at a collection point himself, this is no longer possible and the shops should open their doors again themselves.
During the open letter CEO Dominique Michel of trade federation Comeos addresses his colleague from Bpost Jean-Paul Van Avermaet, Prime Minister Alexander De Croo (Open VLD) and Minister of Public Enterprises Petra De Sutter (Groen) to complain about the services provided by Bpost that he believes rattles.
As icing on the cake, our traders have received a letter from Bpost that the cost price for shipping will increase from next week by 1 euro / shipment and that until the end of December. During the first lockdown there was already an increase of 25 cents per shipment, now 1 euro. So it is rising. Can we expect the same trend in services?
Michel, writing on behalf of Belgian merchants, ruled earlier this month that all non-essential stores should close due to corona. In the same breath, the prime minister immediately called for online ordering from Belgian traders, so that they can already realize a limited part of their turnover. But that is gradually becoming impossible, according to almost unlikely testimonies of the members.
“The six-week closure actually means 4 billion euros in turnover that our traders see going up in smoke. After all the investments in the safety of their staff and customers that they have already made. Particularly hard hit has been the clothing sector, with stocks that may never be sold again. The only straw they can hold on to is their online activities. It is all the more painful, in addition to these legal and procedural problems, to have to identify serious operational problems in recent weeks, ”says Dominique Michel
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