When Dave Bevin moved to a quiet rural subdivision he noticed rural mail post boxes outside pretty much all the houses in his street.
Dave works from home a lot, and loved the idea of never having to go into town to pick up or send mail.
Then he found out that while most of his street – about 80 per cent - got mail deliveries, his end of the street – the last dozen or so houses – did not. He could get parcel and courier deliveries to his post box – but no mail.
To get his mail he has to walk down the road to a set of 20 mail boxes which were provided by the subdivision developer and were approved by NZ Post as letter boxes for all the houses at the end of the street. To send mail – Dave has to drive the four kilometres into town.
Dave and his neighbours say since they are on the same street – they should get the same service.
NZ Post says the end of the street was developed a bit later, so it's an "extension" of the road, and NZ Post rural delivery service has the right not to deliver to the door.
They cannot justify delivering to people like Dave – apparently there are thousands of similar clients – because delivering to their doors would involve about 100,000 extra kilometres, and could jeopardise the entire rural service.
They say it's simply a matter of commercial realities, with postal volumes decreasing by 10 per cent a year.
NZ Post does not believe that extending its rural service to people in situations like Dave's, would result in bigger mail volumes.
But NZ Post did recognise that Dave and his neighbours should be able to post letters, and has now installed a flagged letter box (which can be used to send mail) alongside the 20 other boxes.
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