Under law: DAO must comply with its postal permit obligations (nationwide service where offered, pricing transparency, quality monitoring). But there is no absolute legal universal delivery duty for all mail anymore.
Under government contract: DAO has a specific binding duty to deliver blind mail as defined in the tender it won - this is a contractual obligation, not a general statutory duty for all mail.
Be mindful that in principle the service provider could chose to not cover certain parts of the country. That has to be clearly stated in their terms of service. The Danish government are expected by the public to continue to subsidize delivery to people with special needs, in the contract identified as "blind mail"
> citing a 90% decline in letter mail since 2000
Sad to see civilizational damages caused by neoliberalism, even in such countries as Denmark.
EU governments are cutting costs everywhere, this is the end result of recession-era policies.
Of course it could also be due to mismanagement. If Amazon is allowed to subcontract its own delivery people, and somehow that's profitable, public post companies might find ways to stay relevant.
If your phone gets stolen, meanwhile, you may find yourself unable to log into the police's portal for reporting it.
I know some government may do this with intent, but i imagine many governments simply never thought about it, or no citizen ever didn't accepted a "popular smartphone OS provider's ToS" and challenged that government requirement. I know some make offline alternatives very inconvenient, but that still technically legal.
However it's one-way only at the moment, there's no way to use it for two-way communication.
I think that companies providing certain basic services like email or messaging should eventually become branches of the government. This is the only way to provide these services with subsidies without enshittification.
When a society becomes fully efficient, people start craving the slow, the physical, the intentional.
They could rely on providing banking services via shoddy software, and prosecute people, and hound them to death rather than face up as to how crap their software is, until someone makes a TV mini series about it to highlight the issue.
I assume I have to go into the post office and send it as a parcel (at higher cost), rather than slapping a stamp on it and dropping it into the post box, but the effect is otherwise mostly the same.
> Danes will still be able to send letters, using the delivery company Dao, which already delivers letters in Denmark but will expand its services from 1 January from about 30m letters in 2025 to 80m next year. But customers will instead have to go to a Dao shop to post their letters – or pay extra to have it collected from home – and pay for postage either online or via an app.
No cash?
PostNord Denmark has been operating with massive losses for a while now, in part because they were required by law to be able to deliver everywhere in Denmark, when there were very little demand for it. The money just isn't there, which is why the law has been changed.
The cost of sending a letter was also just going up and up. In 2025, it cost $4.55 _per letter_.
I doubt this will end well, but Denmark is a small country so maybe it will work.
After a year it would be nice to see stats and compare delivery time, lost mail, cost between Dao and the old service,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostNord?wprov=sfti1#
It is still the 2nd largest company in Sweden. They just gave up on Denmarks mail contract after the vast majority of people stopped sending mail and now another company is taking over the much smaller operation.
They shall do it like in the energy sector: one company who takes it from the sender, one to transport it and one to deluver it to the receiver. /s
The article wasn't clear how letters from outside Denmark will be handled, but maybe that's implicit in the Dao contract.
EDIT: maybe Royal Mail was never the Danish term, but I thought it was on a Lego set too...
https://expatcircle.com/cms/underrated-quality-of-life-indic...
Many USPS outlets seem to be run down. But in my experience, mail delivery is pretty solid. And there is indeed a country without postal mail service. Panama!
Fun to go shopping at craft fairs and give some money to indie artists for well made art. Send in the mail with a little note and stay in touch with old pals.
As in, literally as long as I've lived here (11 years now) I mailed one thing by post and it was, somewhat ironically, a self-assessment form for an ADHD diagnosis from a company called Modigo.
I have received a lot of mail though, from the government also, so I'm not sure how that is gonna fly.
Love letterwriting — have had and regularly-used my Smith Corona [typewriter] for half my life (over two decades). Its especially helpful for tax forms and legal documents (my area courts still accept non-digital when pro se).
For Christmas last year I helped my state judge brother set up his own typewriter [a very nice IBM Selectric II]. He's not much older than me, but needs it for [reasons].
Do you route all your mail through other countries ?
