Geek in progress

The Belgian Postal Services introduced a prior(ity) stamp a few years back. The goal was to make a distinction between letters that had to be delivered the day after, and those that had not. Obviously, mail sent using the priority stamp costs more (€0.52 vs. €0.46). At the time, this introduction seemed weird to me, because about ten years ago, almost (say 98%) of the letters I sent (and I sent at least two per week), arrived the day after they were posted. But since then, the postal service degraded, and most letters suddenly were only delivered two to three days after posting them. Hence the prior(ity) stamp.

Now, they want to abolish the non-priority stamp, according to the VRT news. Hence, they retain the more expensive stamp, effectively upping the cost for sending mail, without any added value, compared to say eight to ten years ago. Of course, one can ask, if they now can have machines that sort the mail this efficiently, and it used to be quite efficient years ago as well, why they could not keep that up during the time in between.

It seems like a very unsavory way to increase revenue to me.