OREANDA-NEWS. October 06, 2014. Deutsche Post plans to raise the postal rate for a standard domestic letter (up to 20 grams) by 2 cents to EUR 0.62 beginning January 1, 2015.

At this time too, the price for a Kompaktbrief (up to 50 grams) will be reduced by five cents to EUR 0.85. Domestic delivery rates for other national letter formats, including Grossbrief, Maxibrief and postcards, will remain unchanged. Rates for special services, such as registered mail or payment on delivery (COD), will also remain unchanged in Germany.

Additional rate changes will include an increase of five cents for the international delivery of standard letters and postcards, from EUR 0.75 to EUR 0.80, as well as price adjustments for certain special services, book shipments, press distribution and kilo-rate items.

Several of these rate adjustments require approval from Germany’s Federal Network Agency under the “price-cap” procedure. Deutsche Post submitted its request to the Federal Network Agency today; the agency now has 14 days to issue its decision.

Through the proposed rate adjustments, Deutsche Post is looking to offset among other things the steep rise in personnel costs. The company is also investing several hundreds of millions of euros in logistics and infrastructure to ensure its long-term ability to deliver an outstanding quality of service to its customers, even by international standards. This said, as in past years, the postal rate for a standard domestic letter will remain below the European average letter price.

The planned rate increases are being announced early so that customers have sufficient time to prepare accordingly and use up their existing stamps before the rate change takes effect. Customers who still have old stamps after the rate increase takes effect can buy supplemental 2-cent stamps in Deutsche Post's postal outlets or online. In this way, the old stamps can still be used in 2015, and customers must not exchange their old stamps for new ones. The new 62-cent stamps will go on sale in December in Deutsche Post's postal outlets and online shop. Customers also have the option of printing individual stamps at any time, and with any desired postage amount, using one of Deutsche Post’s 2,900 automated stamp machines available across Germany.

Advertising mail customers should note that the unit price for bulk mailings with identical content (Infopost Gross format) will increase by three cents to EUR 0.39 per item beginning January 1, 2015. This marks Deutsche Post’s first rate increase for this product in 18 years. Domestic rates for other Infopost formats will remain unchanged. 2015 will also see a rate increase for the Postwurfspezial product at ten percent on average. This also marks the first rate increase in the last 10 years for Postwurfspezial formats.