La Poste: Why Raising Prices Won’t Save Postal Mail?

Once again, La Poste is raising its prices. According to Le Monde, which cites statements from the company’s CEO Philippe Wahl, this is justified by « the constant decline in postal mail usage » causing an annual loss of €500 million in revenue. The postal mail business has dropped from 50% of revenue in 2010 to less than 15% in 2024 (for a total revenue of €34.6 billion in 2024).

In a purely accounting exercise, La Poste’s management plans to balance the books by raising prices to compensate for the loss in volume.

It’s well known: when demand isn’t there, you raise the price. Let’s project ourselves 10 years ahead, with an 80% drop in postal mail volume and a stamp price multiplied by 5, reaching €7.60. We can extrapolate and imagine a day when the stamp costs €1,520 – that will happen when volume has dropped by 99.9% (might as well send a courier in a limousine).

This isn’t the first time at Revbell that we’ve encountered this kind of Pavlovian reflex: demand drops, so the price is mechanically raised to compensate. Clients as diverse as ticketing services, holiday residences or parking lots have asked us about this issue, caught in a trap of declining demand and crazy prices because the Excel sheet demands it. But trees don’t grow to the sky. Neither do prices.

The first instinct should actually be to lower prices to make the product attractive again. At the same time, the offer should evolve. For example, by digitalizing it.

• Why not simply abandon the physical sale of stamps and pre-stamped envelopes that are never the right size or properly stamped for the needs at hand?

• Why not imagine solutions like a QR code integrated into the envelope with automatic billing based on weight? You create an account, buy a bunch of envelopes, and it works like on highways with electronic tolls. You’re charged according to the sections you use. Here, you’d be charged based on the weight of each envelope sent.

The offer is no longer adapted. It’s a pain to buy stamps, weigh envelopes, adjust the price based on weight, see that stamps no longer stick or don’t have the right value. We mix stamps that take up half the envelope trying to match the right postage. It’s outdated. It’s urgent to change (that’s La Poste’s slogan, isn’t it?).

In short, the product needs to evolve, innovate, not just to fit the envelope but to meet demand, and to regain this market. And if the service is innovative, charging a bit more or a small subscription fee – like for highway badges – is perfectly acceptable. Pricing can’t be considered without thinking about the product.

There are probably many solutions, and they certainly deserve to be explored. But intellectual laziness often wins. It’s a shame for everyone.