2023-10-08 12:22:56
Election
La Poste ignores the “Stop ” sticker and it pays off big time
The Swiss receive electoral propaganda in their mailboxes, even if they expressly refuse . This allows La Poste to earn a lot of money.
PublishedOctober 8, 2023, 2:22 p.m.
Even if we put a sticker to refuse , the postman comes to drop off political leaflets and flyers in the mailboxes.
20min/Justine Romano
Federal elections on October 22 mean that there isn’t a day that goes by without the postman dropping political propaganda in our mailboxes. And this even though many households have put up a “no , thank you” sticker.
In fact, La Poste deliberately ignores these requests. It is justified by explaining that it treats prospectuses and electoral flyers in the same way as ordinary electoral materials or official letters. In short: she considers them an “official sending”. And in this case the sticker is not valid, explains the “SonntagsZeitung”. The yellow giant also claims that the Swiss do not actually want to give up unaddressed “important or interesting” mailings, such as “political party information”.
Three times more gain
The real reason would be mainly financial. Because political brings in much more for the yellow giant, notes the newspaper. Who did their calculations? If a private customer wants to distribute a commercial flyer to as many households in Switzerland as possible, La Poste offers to send it taking into account the “Stop ” sticker. The flyer will then land in 1.7 million homes for a price of 256,000 francs. But if a party wants to distribute the same so-called political flyer, La Poste can then send it to 4.5 million households, regardless of the sticker. And she thus earns 667,000 francs.
For the German-speaking consumer protection association SKS, there is no doubt: “La Poste wants to earn more money by distributing mailings to more households. She wants to save her mail business,” says her manager Sarah Stalder. As a reminder, the yellow giant was already singled out in May by the FRC in an attempt to encourage the Swiss to accept leaflets in their mailboxes.
La Poste defends itself by relying on an agreement of more than 20 years concluded with consumer protection associations. An agreement which stipulates that the yellow giant can ignore the sticker in the event of electoral propaganda. But Sarah Stalder is now doubtful: “We are no longer entirely convinced that the wishes of many customers regarding political can simply be ignored.”
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