‘Online shops unhappy with Czech Post’

More and more ecommerce customers in the Czech Republic are complaining about Czech Post. According to them, the state-owned company doesn’t deliver goods at consumers’ homes.

In the Czech Republic, Czech Post is the most popular logistics service provider. The state-owned enterprise has over 3,200 services points across the country and recently announced it will increase it annual parcel network capacity from 45 to 60 million.

But now there are many complaints about the delivery service. It enticed APEK, the Czech ecommerce association, to carry out a survey on these allegations, Radio Prague wrote. It’s said more and more customers in the Eastern European country didn’t receive the goods they ordered online at their home, but instead only got a pick-up slip in the mailbox. Nevertheless, they still had to pay the same price for delivery.

Half of online shops received a complaint

According to APEK, one in two online shops in the Czech Republic (there are over 40,000 active ecommerce websites) received at least one complaint in the past three months. Spokesman Matyáš Vytík from Czech Post commented by saying he didn’t know the survey results, but that the postal company is ready to negotiate about the direct delivery to the customer.

According to APEK’s managing director Jan Vetyška, in the past individual parcel service providers would only have left a notification out of negligence. “But today it looks more like a systematic approach”, he says.

Vytík however believes Czech Post will always try to hand over the parcels. “If the order is then dropped at the postal service, it’s because the consumer wasn’t at home at the time of delivery”, the spokesman explains. APEK looks critical at this development. “If the goods aren’t handed over directly, the customer will keep the retailer responsible and not the delivery service.”