La Poste’s red stamp, which allows priority letters to be sent on d+1, unlike the green stamp (d+3), will be digitized from next week. As a result, they will not be found in post offices in 2023. These red stamps will be replaced by red e-Letters, 100% digitized.
The red e-letter can be written or scanned in PDF format from the laposte.fr site until 8:00 p.m., then it will be printed by La Poste near the recipient to avoid transport costs. Mail is delivered the next day in an envelope, with a printed red stamp design. “The red letter as it exists today no longer corresponds to usage and, by requiring rapid transport sometimes including a plane trip, its energy balance is very heavy” justified the group in a press release last July.
It should be noted that the drafting of urgent letters or its digitization can also be carried out in a post office. In this case, it is the employees of La Poste who will be in charge of scanning this mail. This poses confidentiality issues. Already some lawyers are alarmed by the implementation of this process. On this point, the company defends itself by mentioning work under oath which commits them to respect the information concerning privacy.
And the price of this service? €1.49, compared to €1.43 for the priority letter
And the price of this service? 1.49 €, against 1.43 euros for the priority letter today (the cost of the paper and the envelope being included). And it becomes impossible to send with this system a check or a care sheet to Social Security. It is the green stamps which for these folds will have to be privileged.
La Poste estimates that the end of the red stamp will allow it to save between 120 and 130 million euros in savings, in particular by reducing the number of rounds.
The decline of the “red letter” has been observed for ten years: households sent an average of 5 priority letters in 2021, compared to 45 in 2010, according to the group. On the other hand, the green letter remains popular with customers for “most everyday uses” such as sending administrative documents and small goods.
Twice as fast, and twice as expensive
Above all, the volume of mail has gone from 17 billion letters sent in 2008 to 7.3 billion in 2020, a drop of 60%, says Ouest France. In the first half of 2022, La Poste’s mail sector caused an operating deficit of 699 million euros.
Ouest France always recalls above all that according to INSEE 8 million people are still deprived of computer equipment at home, and that more than a third of Internet users lack the basic knowledge to perform these tasks.
Note that La Poste offers a new service, called the Service Letter Plus, designed “for the most important shipments requiring follow-up, such as sending a check or small goods for example. This mail is distributed two days after postage, and costs €2.95. The trick passes? The Service Letter Plus is twice as slow as the red stamp, and costs twice as much.