The Post Must Get Through

Posties have been instructed by NZ Post that letters and cards addressed to the street addresses of hospitals must be returned to the sender.

Until NZ Post’s latest cost cuting and service reduction exercise, the posties would write the box or bag numbers of the hospital on the envelopes. The mail would hen be redirected internally by NZ Post to ensure that it reached the hospital patients. 


NZ Post’s new ‘return to sender’ policy also applies to all businesses and institutions. The policy has seen mail addressed to the street addresses of medical centres and doctors being returned to sender.

Letters, cards and flowers are universally recognised as an important partof the support and recovery process of hospital patients.

The Postal Workers Union has made clear to NZ Post the Union’s strong opposition to its return to sender policy, including how it affects hospital patients and medical services.
The Union wilbe vigorously defending any postie facing disciplinary action for continuing to deliver mail to hospitals or for redirecting mail to hospitals in defiance of NZ Post’s policy


Editor’s note: John Maynard has also requested that we include the following letter, which was sent to NZ Post’s Chairperson by John with regard to the issue:


Kia Ora,


We write to draw to your attention a policy introduced by NZ Post which requires posties to return to sender mail which has the correct postage and has been addressed in good faith to a deliverable address.

Posties are very unhappy that they are being instructed to not deliver mail as it is addressed.
Instead, and where they are able to do so, posties are disobeying management instructions and delivering the mail rather than return it to sender. 


In a recent case, following a fatality, a large number of condolence cards from around the country we delivered to a street address against NZ Post policy, rather than the posties marking them all up as return to sender.

Large amounts of Mail now being retained to sender daily under NZ Post’s new policy includes mail addressed to the street addresses of Courts, Police, Government Departments, doctors, medical centres, hospitals and hospital patients, lawyers, accountants, universities, schools and boarding schools, retirement villages and many individual businesses and institutions.

This return to sender policy may drive more NZ Post customers to private sector mail operators.

The policy also risks a backlash against posties who attempt to deliver to the sender mail with the correct postage and a clear address which has been marked up as Return to Sender.

Posties who follow the long standing mail service tradition introduced by the Pony Express in 1860 in the USA–”The mail must get through”–now risk disciplinary action from NZ Post management for attempting to maintain the proud postie tradition. NZ Post had its own variation, exhorting posties with wall posters to “go the extra mile”.

We believe that NZ Post’s State Enterprises Act obligation to have regard for the interests of the community, and the company’s own public contract set out in the Postal Users’ Guide invalidate the company’s current Box Mark Up/Return to Sender Policy. 

We seek an instruction from the Board of NZ Post to senior management to revoke its current Box Mark Up/Return to Sender Policy. We also seek from the Board an expression of support to NZ Post employees who are acting to honour the postie tradition–the mail must get through.