People find the cost of sending parcels to be high, according to a survey conducted by the Office of Electronic Communications & Postal Regulations (OCECPR).
The survey, conducted from October to December, asked the opinion of 1002 people and 508 small and medium enterprises about using postal services.
Some 95% of people have used postal services in the last year, marking a slight increase of 2% compared to October 2021.
The use of postal services for receiving letters-documents and parcels is about four times more than for sending letters-documents and parcels.
Cypriots consider the cost of sending letters to be “reasonable”, but the cost of sending parcels does not offer value for money.
However, 75% of those asked did not compare the prices offered by the various providers, but 35% of SMEs did an analysis.
At the same time, most SMEs do not consider the fees of the Cyprus Post Office to be high, while 35% of businesses believe the fees of private providers are high.
And satisfaction rating from individuals and SMEs with receiving parcels from private postal providers is higher than for state-run Cyprus Post.
Individual satisfaction increased from 8.3 to 8.4 for private providers and 7.5 to 7.6 for Cyprus Post.
But SME satisfaction with receiving parcels from Cyprus Post has decreased compared to October 2021 from 7.5 to 7.2.
And citizens’ satisfaction has increased from 8.3 to 8.5 for private providers and 6.7 to 7.5 for Cyprus Post.
The survey indicates that more SMEs are using private postal providers to send parcels compared to October 2021.
It went up from 53% to 63%, while the percentage of those using Cyprus Post decreased from 47% to 44% due to reliability issues.
The main criteria for SMEs choosing a postal provider are delivery time (52%), ease of sending (35%), cost (32%) and delivery method (19%).
The average annual expenditure of SMEs for sending parcels and letters has decreased compared to October 2021 from €654 to €612 and €295 to €288, respectively.
SMEs use Cyprus Post once a week on average, while private providers are used 2.3 times weekly, increasing from twice a week in 2021.
The main postal providers used by SMEs to send parcels to their customers are GAP Akis Express (39%), ACS Courier (36%), Travel Express (19%) and DHL (9%).
Cyprus Post remains the main postal provider for letters (97%), while for parcels, the main postal providers are ACS Courier (61%), Cyprus Post (59%), GAP Akis Express (28%) and DHL (21%).
Cyprus Post is the main postal provider for sending letters (93%), while for sending parcels, the main postal providers are Cyprus Post (61%), ACS Courier (47%), GAP Akis Express (31%) ) and DHL (13%).
The average frequency of sending letters decreased from 21 times per year in October 2021 to 19 times in November 2022, while the average frequency of sending parcels increased slightly from 11.1 to 11.5 times per year.
Source: The Financial Mirror