from Hacker News

Denmark postal service to stop delivering letters

by sixhobbits on 3/6/25, 11:29 AM with 69 comments

by Svip on 3/6/25, 11:57 AM
Denmark is a member of the Universal Postal Union, which requires each member to deliver letters received from abroad. It's unclear who will now have that responsibility. When the new postal act went into effect last year, it opened up the market for domestic letter deliveries, but PostNord was still responsible for foreign (both in- and outbound) deliveries.
Edit: Found a note on their website:
> You can send letters to and from abroad with PostNord for the rest of the year. PostNord Denmark has been appointed by the Ministry of Transport to handle international mail until 31 December 2025. After that, it will be up to the Ministry of Transport to decide, e.g. through a tender, who will handle the task in the future.
by afandian on 3/6/25, 12:08 PM
The general decline in paper copies of official documents is scary.
The recent Conservative UK government put in place the "hostile environment" policy (official name!) and expelled and denied rights to people who had lived here for years, and had the right to. People were asked for documents going back years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windrush_scandal
If your government suddenly asked for your electronic payslips from a job 10 or 20 years ago, could you provide them? Does everyone print them out or store them in secure electronic storage?
by ghssds on 3/6/25, 12:41 PM
To operate a postal service, we need, as a strict minimum:
- A workforce with a pulse.
To operate a digital network, we need, as a strict minimum:
- A constant supply of electricity;
- Lot of complex tools built far away from lot of exotic material from all around the world;
- A workforce with lot of education and specialization.
We're making our civilization brittle and call that progress.
by emptysongglass on 3/6/25, 12:48 PM
Having lived around the world and now residing in Denmark for a decade plus, I can confidently say PostNord is the worst postal service I've ever seen in my entire life.
If you Google r/copenhagen PostNord you will see countless horror stories, mostly focused around delivery drivers simply refusing to do their job by purposely not delivering packages. I doubt freeing them of their obligation to deliver letters is going to improve things.
We also have the full might of the state behind them who will happily charge you multiples of the value of your item coming in from out of country because they "inspected" it.
People in the US don't understand how good they've had it (well until very recently with tariffs), as you could get any item you wanted delivered to your doorstep with no additional fees and better customer service at a fraction of the price it costs us.
by fnordian_slip on 3/6/25, 12:32 PM
Well, back to /r/fountainpenpals in order to send more letters, so that this doesn't happen in my country. I love letters and postcards, but I've become lazy recently.
While I'm not luddite, there is something special in sending and receiving a handwritten letters, even if the handwriting is as poor as mine. And it gives you an excuse to spend time with high quality writing implements and the opportunity to share something unique. The texture of proper paper is just so radically different from standard printer paper [0].
Btw. if anyone else is similarly inclined to get back into writing letters, I can recommend letterlocking [1]. Even though it's a bit of a gamble if the seal makes it through the post unharmed (I sometimes cheat and send the letter inside an extra envelope), the recipients are usually delighted, and that's what counts.
[0]: https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/forum/36-paper-and-... [1]: https://youtu.be/KMsuFaMoT28
by bell-cot on 3/6/25, 11:54 AM
Ungood. Whatever you think about the economics of letter delivery, or the advantages of all-digital - a good, old-fashioned postal service is an important part of a nation's social and trust networks.
by beardyw on 3/6/25, 12:10 PM
In the UK we regularly get small packages delivered by the postman which would otherwise need a trip by a delivery company.
by jemmyw on 3/6/25, 7:27 PM
I've lived in Denmark. You get a digital mailbox when you move there which is used by every utility and public service to contact you. There was very little paper mail to deal with. That was 10 years ago, so I'm not surprised that by now they'd be cutting letter delivery.
by vinni2 on 3/6/25, 10:22 PM
Why don’t they focus on delivering packages which are increasing in volume. They make us pick up packages from supermarkets and complain that there are not enough letters to deliver. I don’t know what obvious point I am missing.
by xigurat on 3/6/25, 2:27 PM
If you do that here in Germany the whole country collapsed under a week.
by CharlieDigital on 3/6/25, 12:52 PM
One underrated thing I appreciate about the USPS: postal fraud is serious business so I know that if it's important, it will always show up in my mailbox.
Easy to avoid email and SMS scams.
by jfengel on 3/6/25, 12:38 PM
Do Danes send Christmas cards?
by zoobab on 3/6/25, 12:48 PM
What about old people who can't master computers?
by unixhero on 3/6/25, 12:45 PM
Huh? The Danish postal office is not named PostNord, that is a private for profit company.
Sidenote: Having lived in Denmark, dealing with Posten and receiving packages was not a positive experience. I was taxed 100 euro on my used shoes being sent me from another country for importing goods.
by dsnr on 3/6/25, 12:05 PM
Please do this in Germany. Good luck.
by jnsaff2 on 3/6/25, 12:08 PM
You had one job.
by m00dy on 3/6/25, 12:42 PM
Alright, folks, I lived in Denmark for quite a while, so let me be straight with you.
It’s probably the best country to live in Europe definitely a step above Germany and its Nordic neighbors.
Now, when it comes to street drugs, the quality isn’t great. I know some people who prefer ordering from the darknet and having it shipped straight to their mailbox. Since most transactions are done with Monero, the legal system can’t do much even if a package is intercepted. They can’t prove the payment. So, there’s a loophole in the system. If your package gets seized, it usually doesn’t lead to serious consequences.
That said, authorities recently introduced special X-ray scanners for mail. They see what’s happening, but it looks like a lot of darknet orders are still slipping through.