I refer to the letter headlined 'Unimpressed by new postal service' (Sunday Morning Post, November 4), regarding the services of ordinary mail and Local Courierpost.
There seems to be some confusion on the part of your correspondent, about these two types of service.
For a basic charge of $1.30 under the ordinary mail service, a locally-posted letter weighing up to 30 grams is delivered to the addressee by the following working day. Our performance pledge is to achieve a service target of 98 per cent.
The Local Courierpost service (referred to by your reader as speedpost) is our premium courier service for time-sensitive mail items. For a basic rate of $25, a letter or document weighing up to 500 grams will be delivered within half a day. Items posted in the morning are delivered in the afternoon of the same day. Items posted in the afternoon are guaranteed delivery by 1pm the following working day. Unlike the ordinary mail service, a money-back guarantee is provided if we fail to meet this service pledge.
In addition, Local Courierpost, compared with the ordinary mail service, offers a number of value-added services to users, including acknowledgement of receipt by addressees, proof of delivery to senders, pick-up service at sender's premises, and online tracking of items. Local Courierpost proves that Hongkong Post is continually trying to provide new services to meet market demand.
Your correspondent thinks that Hongkong Post now collects letters from street postboxes only once a day. Nowadays, we indicate only the last collection time on postboxes, instead of all collection times, as we did in the past. We do not want to confuse people.