Danish postal service to stop delivering letters

[arbirk]

Just to clarify. There is at least one chosen and contractually bound Mail Service provider in Denmark. Their terms are set in public tenders. The old state owned company - Post Nord - basically decide not to compete for the contract. A newer company - DAO - won the tender. What this means in legal terms:

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"

[dmix]

And the reason the existing public corporation shut down service in Denmark

> citing a 90% decline in letter mail since 2000

[wolvesechoes]

Postal service is a public service, thus there shouldn't be any contracts, TOS or competition.

Sad to see civilizational damages caused by neoliberalism, even in such countries as Denmark.

[crazybonkersai]

It’s striking that while many states push citizens toward digital-only public services, almost none provide a state-run email service. Instead, official communication is effectively outsourced to foreign, commercial platforms with uneven privacy records (e.g. Gmail). If governments are serious about digital sovereignty and data protection, they should operate their own email infrastructure and issue each citizen an official address, much like a social security number. Whether people actually use it or prefer a private alternative should remain a personal choice—but the state shouldn’t depend on third-party platforms as its default communication layer.

[spicyjpeg]

It is actually much worse than that. Much like banking, the push for digital government services in many countries has ended up more or less requiring every citizen to own an up-to-date, non-jailbroken iOS or Android device. If you blocked your phone from accessing Apple or Google servers (or if it's 6 years old, a dumb phone or runs GrapheneOS), the support staff will just tell you to walk to your closest Best Buy equivalent and grab the cheapest Android device you can find; in the name of "security" there often is no fallback option, and when there is one it's SMS 2FA which is (understandably) rate limited to three uses per year.

If your phone gets stolen, meanwhile, you may find yourself unable to log into the police's portal for reporting it.

[harrisoned]

This is something that worries me. I know that the laws/constitution that guarantees the rights of somebody may vary from country to country (and may not even be enforced by the letter), but lets say: All commercial companies will have a ToS, data sharing agreements, etc. You, as a user, i assume is not obligated to agree to that ToS at the expense of not using the service. If a government body requires you to use their service to access basic services (and offers no 'offline' alternative) required by law, are they, by proxy, coercing you to accept a commercial ToS? I would very much like to hear a lawyer opinion on this.

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.

[_djo_]

The Dutch government has one approach to the email service issue, by having a website and app, Berichtenbox, where you can receive official communications. They're regularly extending it to include municipalities as well.

However it's one-way only at the moment, there's no way to use it for two-way communication.

[halJordan]

The post was only state run because it was necessary. The Romans and the Sassanians for instance did not provide mail service to their subjects. I think you're big picture is still too small. The world existed fine on private mail carriers, it will in the future to.

[anal_reactor]

> state-run email service

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.

[ursAxZA]

We keep optimizing systems, but human life doesn’t necessarily optimize along with them.

When a society becomes fully efficient, people start craving the slow, the physical, the intentional.

[zeristor]

It could be worse.

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.

[bigfatkitten]

So if I’m in Denmark and I want to send my friend a piece of paper with something written on it, what happens now?

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.

[CrossVR]

From the article:

> 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.

[bill38]

In Denmark the physical post offices have been closed since a few years (cost reduction). Even stamps aren't printed anymore (you have to pay online to get a code that you print or write on the letter or parcel).

[mkroman]

What I don't see mentioned here or in the article:

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_.

[Aeolun]

Denmark is tiny though? Why does it cost $5 per letter?

[jmclnx]

So, all they did was privatize their postal service. There will still have a postal service, but run by a private company.

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,

[dmix]

It was already a corporate entity running it, just one owned by both Swedish and Denmark governments

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.

[bingo-bongo]

It’s been privatized for the past 15 years or so. It’s just change of contractor.

[hulitu]

> There will still have a postal service, but run by a private company.

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

[jacobgorm]

Denmark has an official system for sending digital mail, which is how we receive letters from the government, bank statements, pay slips, and so on. Without this base load of paper mail, the economics of delivering paper mail stopped working.

[foolserrandboy]

Will companies be willing to pay more to send junk mail if it is no longer largely subsidized? In this regard it could be a good thing assuming they don’t already have a regulation against junk mail there.

[FarmerPotato]

Fifty years ago, I was given a coin bank styled after the red Danish Post letter box. That was in Solvang, CA. As these Danish immigrant-character communities (look also in Elkhorn, Racine, Greenville, etc) are little time capsules, you may have to travel to America to find a replica red slot to drop your letter.

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...

[ChrisArchitect]

When this came up earlier in the month (Denmark gets ready to cancel Christmas cards https://www.economist.com/europe/2025/11/27/denmark-gets-rea... ) it seemed more like PostNord was just stepping back opening the market up to other 'rivals' to continue service.

[Beijinger]

There is nothing worse, than a rotten mail delivery system:

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!

[SilverElfin]

I know some people are mentioning a private provider who will be around. But they will charge a lot I’m sure, and this will continue to kill the practice of writing letters or sending greeting cards. It’s a bit sad knowing people will forget the value of a personal touch, and they’ll not know what they lost when all they do is send each other a text message or whatever.

[ChrisArchitect]

Previously when it was announced earlier this year:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43278934

[WalterBright]

It's been decades since I wrote a letter and mailed it.

[Tiktaalik]

Writing some xmas cards right now and going to mail them in a bit. It's fun. You should try it out.

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.

[petra303]

Which makes taking the time to send a letter have a lot of importance. I wrote a note to my mother and it meant a lot to her to get a hand written correspondence.

[kingofmen]

How long has it been since you needed to mail a physical document to a bank, a government department, or something similar?

[torcete]

I can send one to you if you want :-)

[dmd]

Hours, for me.

[grugagag]

Mail will arrive straight at the museum

[usr1106]

Slightly related: In Finland all official mail from authorities will become electronic by default starting Jan 1st, 2026. There is the possibility to opt out. I am not convinced this is a wise direction. When Putin cuts a couple of sea cables again we are not able to access official communications. Yes, even elections are stored offshore.

[Jhsto]

Counterpoint: because most Finns think about Russian interference, the likelihood there's a tentative plan is high. Or you know, they call you. And in a country of 5m people, you can probably ask someone, who knows someone else, who knows whoever has that information in the government.

[hulitu]

> When Putin cuts a couple of sea cables again we are not able to access official communications.

Do you route all your mail through other countries ?