The Hague, the Netherlands, 3 February 2022 – PostNL will lodge an appeal against a €2 million fine imposed on it by the Dutch Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM by its Dutch acronym). The law requires that at least 95% of all letterbox mail must be delivered the next day. At the end of 2019, PostNL was – only just – unable to achieve this percentage. This was caused by a force majeur situation, which the ACM should have taken on board.
Upon completion of the transaction of PostNL and Sandd in October 2019, the Sandd network proved no longer able to deliver all its mail. Because of legal competitive restrictions, PostNL was not and could not be aware of the operational state of play at Sandd.
PostNL delivered Sandd’s undelivered mail via its own network much sooner than had been planned, well before the integration of both networks was completed. This mail volume included important letters from hospitals and government bodies. These are letters that are of great value to consumers, even if the 95% delivery requirement does not apply for these categories. By the end of 2019, PostNL missed the delivery requirement by 0.3 percent.
PostNL considers that ACM has insufficiently taken on board the one-time circumstances in 2019. The only alternative open to PostNL at the time was to leave untouched a large proportion of the Sandd network mail, which would have resulted in many undelivered letters. PostNL chose not to go for this alternative, as consumers expect an accessible, reliable and affordable postal service. That is why PostNL is appealing the decision issued by ACM. The fine will be included in the financial results of the year 2021, and will not impact the preliminary normalised EBIT for 2021 as published on 25 January 2021