I thought that nothing would surprise me anymore when it comes to the activities of Poczta Polska, but from time to time, our national operator calls – I’m checking!
Poczta Polska started its adventure with parcel machines at the end of July 2019, more than 5 years ago. It was still the right moment to fight for this lucrative parcel delivery and collection market in Poland.
Let this be proven by the fact that at the end of November 2019, InPost had “only” 6,000 parcel lockers. At that time, Poczta Polska promised to launch the first 200 machines by the end of 2019 and gradually expand its network of machines in the following years.
It’s 2024 and it turns out that these 200 slot machines were “shining” in the statistics at the end of 2023 (source: Cashless.pl). After the change of government, something really changed and their number increased significantly this year, already within their own machines (previously in cooperation with SwipBox), under the name Pocztex Automat.
Nevertheless, is today as good a time as in 2019 to effectively compete with the competition on this market?
It turns out that it is definitely too late, as evidenced by the fact that on October 25, 2024, Poczta Polska turned off all its Pocztex parcel machines throughout the country, announcing it with a laconic message, without a date for re-activation, a broader explanation, anything more than this:
These machines are not working to this day, for over two weeks now. Someone cried? Do customers ask what’s going on on social media profiles? Do you know what would happen if InPost turned off a thousand parcel lockers in the country for a few hours?
I found only two threads on the Internet devoted to this – on the forum Allegro community in case forum Bankier.pl (from yesterday).
On the Allegro Gadane forum we learn that before this modernization, the number of Pocztex machines in operation amounted to 1,600 machines throughout the country.
An Allegro user comments as a mockery that the service has been disabled for several days. However, 15 days have passed (half a month) and it is already becoming sad – apart from these two short threads on the Internet, no one noticed it.
It can be said that when the option of sending and receiving parcels in Pocztex machines was turned off, there was no parcel in them, because otherwise it would certainly have caused much more noise on the Internet.
Unfortunately, Poczta Polska’s services have been chosen as a last resort for a long time, and even parcel machines, so eagerly chosen by Poles to collect goods purchased online, will not change this. It’s definitely too late for that, even if, as a result of this modernization, free stuffed animals would pop out of them every time you pick up a parcel.
An optimistic scenario would be that this modernization results from plans to take over this business by Orlen, which is much better at handling parcel machines – The government wants to merge Orlen with Poczta Polska. It’s not that stupid at all.
However, recent reports contradict this, although Orlen does not want to get rid of its automatic machines, as was the case Polska Pressbut wants to transfer them to a new, specialized subsidiary. However, final decisions regarding the future of Orlen Paczka are to expire only on December 2, which in no way coincides with the shutdown of Pocztex machines, on October 25.
Finally, for contrast, I will quote a fragment of the results announced today for the third quarter of 2024 by InPost:
InPost continued to develop its network in Poland and at the end of the third quarter it had 24,340 machines (+15% y/y), and their number has increased since the beginning of the year 2 370. Continuous expansion led to an increase in the number of users of Paczkomat machines, which at the end of the quarter amounted to: 18,9 mln. However, the InPost Mobile application had at the end of the quarter 13,1 mln users.
Source: antyweb.pl
