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According to the postal watchdog BIPT, sending a parcel in Europe is much more expensive at Bpost than at the competitors on the Belgian market.
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Who with Bpost
sends a package to Italy or Finland, pays 33 euros. The Belgian market leader is therefore considerably more expensive than almost all commercial competitors in our country, according to a recent survey by the Belgian postal watchdog BIPT.
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BIPT investigated the average rates for sending a package of 1 kilo from Belgium to other European countries. With the average rate of 33 euros (except to neighboring countries), Bpost is more than three times as expensive as the cheapest player on the Belgian market, the French Mondial Relay. The former delivery service of 3 Suisses, which is now owned by the German group Otto, only asks 10 euros for the same service.
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GLS, part of the British postal company Royal Mail, is less than half as expensive as Bpost at 14 euros. The American UPS and the French DPD (part of La Poste) charge one third less than Bpost. But also the Dutch competitor PostNL
is clearly below the price of the Belgian postal company. Only the partners FedEx / TNT and DHL Express charge more money for European parcels than Bpost. These companies mainly focus on fast and therefore more expensive express shipments.
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Kilo
Bpost does not agree with BIPT’s calculations. The postal company applies one rate for parcels up to 5 kilograms, while competitors charge different prices according to weight. ‘The fact that some competitors are more expensive than Bpost if the package weighs more than 1 kg is not taken into account,’ says Bpost spokeswoman Barbara Van Speybroeck. ‘Comparing the rate for a 1 kg package therefore gives a distorted picture.’
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In addition, Bpost points out that the company ships parcels to 25 countries, which is more than most competitors. Price breaker Mondial Relay, for example, only sends parcels from Belgium to nine countries.
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Letters
Furthermore, the BIPT research shows that sending letters from Belgium to many European countries, including Luxembourg and Austria, is much more expensive than in the opposite direction. ‘For letter post, the outgoing Bpost rates (are) on average at least two to three times as high as the incoming rates,’ says BIPT. ‘The standard letter of 0.5 kilograms is even 3.6 times more expensive on average.’
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For letter post, the outgoing Bpost rates are on average at least two to three times higher than the incoming rates.
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According to Bpost, BIPT’s assertion has a ‘very limited scope’. ‘The research only concerns a’ standard letter ‘of 500 grams, which corresponds to 10 bars of Mars,’ says Van Speybrouck. ‘But a letter weighing 500 grams hardly ever occurs in practice. A letter almost always weighs less than 50 grams. For that product, Bpost’s price is below the European median. ‘
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Moreover, Bpost criticizes that the comparison does not take into account the differences in wage costs between the European member states. That explains why sending a parcel from Western to Eastern Europe is generally much more expensive than the other way around. However, BIPT does not agree with Bpost’s objection. ‘The wage costs are not the only factor to estimate differences in underlying costs’, it sounds.
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Bpost has a monopoly on letter post in Belgium. According to figures from BIPT, the postal company controls almost half of the Belgian parcel market. The competitors PostNL and DPD each account for 10 to 15 percent of the market. GLS and UPS both control 5 to 10 percent of the market.
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