Australia Post will be truly screwed if stock registries like Computershare ever join the 21st century and stop using post as the default method of communication.

If I get another letter informing me that I've requested my communication preference changed to email I may truly lose my shit! It wouldn't be so bad if they bundled them but instead it's one holding per letter, one letter per envelope. Helpfully they'll include a reply-paid envelope so I can write back to them to thank them for informing me of something I already knew - given I was the one who asked for it. Truly epic lack of environmental and fiscal responsibility.

Go postal Noddy!

Lower volumes of corporate mail definitely would do big damage

But using stamps that are 30+ years old for parcels would do even more damage. As this will also easily reduce margins on on Auspost parcel services.

Remember the point about deferred revenue. I think there's still lots of stamp collections masquerading as deferred revenue waiting to hit the books!

I've noticed lots of Auspost stamps from ebay uk are selling at discount to face value. But have to remember to add GST before buying.

@edgescape

wow! I initially thought you were joking, but using old stamps hidden in a cupboard somewhere is actually a thing?!

My initial reaction was that no private individual ever posts anything anyway, and if they did the prospect of rifling through an old collection of stamps to save a couple of bucks seemed unlikely. Life is too short.

shows how much I know.

But @Noddy74 - holy shrapnel you are SO right. I even spent an hour on hold to try to get them to stop that nonsense. Didn’t work. And I still get the majority of communication via mail. I just had to give up.

@Chagsy, @Noddy74, I am sure the registries would love to stop posting things to save all that cost on postage, printing and paper that goes straight into recycling or landfill.

What's the bet they have to because of some regulation requiring a posted hard copy advising of a change of details written into legislation first drawn up in the 1970s that hasn't been updated since?

I also agree there are better things to do than sticking stamps onto a parcel unless you had the time. And parcels aren't a couple of bucks now - small package is now $9.

I also received a large parcel where the sender stuck a whole sheet of 50c stamps on 2 sides of the box! Must have been 20 bucks worth of stamps there.

Unless you are a collector, who would want them if you were inherited a large collection from an estate? Say you sold at auction (and I'm not just referring to ebay) at face value, you will still need to pay auction fees for the transaction and that would cut into your margin. As investors we know what that means from a business point of view.

As I am a casual collector I could go on and on. But some of their financial woes is self inflicted by Auspost both from past decisions bending over too much for collectors and not limiting supply and not seeing what could happen in the computer/internet age.

As the saying goes.. "Every little helps" especially in the age of high inflation.

I think you're right @nerdag about the legislation - I think there is probably an old law or rule about hard copies being sent out, and in some cases that might make sense, like if somebody else hacks your account or pretends to be you and makes changes that you are not aware of or happy about. In 99.9% of cases however it's just a huge waste of paper and postage and time, and the most obvious waste is how they can NOT manage to send multiple notifications to you in the same envelope - they always use a different envelope for each holding, even when posting them all out on the same day. The ASX clearing house manages to send you everything each month in one envelope, so the registries can obviously do it too if they wanted to, however they probably don't care too much, because all those costs are passed straight through to the underlying listed companies. The registries don't bear those costs - they pass them through - so they're probably not incentivised enough to cut those costs.

I've had months when the only stuff delivered to my letter box (apart from small parcels) was mail from share registries and one from the ASX clearing house. The rest of the world has managed to go digital. They need to as well. If it's good enough for bank statements, it's good enough for share statements, but the pushing probably needs to come from the ASA (Aust. Shareholders Association) and the companies themselves putting pressure on their registries, or else one share registry going fully electronic and passing the savings through to the companies they represent and then other companies moving to that share registry because it's cheaper to use them, and then others would follow. It has to happen, but it's taking a very long time.

Also Australia Post has to provide letter service. It is written in legislation. They can't get out even if they wanted to. But if they got out, it still doesn't solve the parcel problem.

"Changing customer behaviours are also impacting our retail network, with continuing digitisation resulting in declining retail transactions at Post Offices."

I find this statement quite interesting and surprising. Don't they know that when people find old unused stamps to send out letters and parcels, they don't need to pay at the post office? They just simply lodge the parcel at the counter with tracking number. Only exception I think is registered mail, I don't think you can pay the registered mail sticker with stamps and I never asked.

One lady at the Post office did tell me when I put a few old unused issues to send a parcel that lots of people have started doing it (I think she was being polite). Yes I put my hand up for contributing to the mess.

Yet the CEO here won't admit this whole deferred revenue issue. But bear in mind I think every postal around the world is facing the same issue and are not sure how to tackle it.

I wouldn’t be too concerned about postage sales dropping off for Australia Post. @Noddy74, If the share registries (not just Computershare) finally stop sending out snail mail to people who don’t want it, the shortfall will be rapidly filled by significant tailwinds from the real estate estate industry flooding letter boxes with offers to sell your house.

I have come across data from very reliable sources that says ‘there are at least three real estate agents hanging from every tree!”. If you do the maths on this and multiply the Total Addressable Market (TAM) by the number of Australian dwellings, by the number of trees, and then multiply that by three, you will find the runway for sales growth is staggering!

Has anyone else come across this data, or perhaps piles of letters from real estate agents in your mailbox? @Strawman??? :)

Disc: I know a number of Real Estate agents who are wonderful people and have done very professional work marketing property for me! :)

We've actually had several agents door knocking trying to drum up business. (They can't get away fast enough once they find out we're renting haha)

Ha! Yeah, we have the same thing. The disdain shines through the fixed smile on their face. They seem to have stopped coming recently though... maybe the multiple unsold new duplexes in our street aren't good for business! (And good riddance.)