SingPost slapped with $100k fine for failing to meet quality of service standards in 2017

Singapore Post just can’t catch a break, and perhaps deservedly so. The national postal service provider has been catching massive amounts of flak for its alarmingly poor service in the past couple of months — mails and parcels have been severely delayed or even dumped in trash bins.

Even the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) has had enough with SingPost’s nonsense. The statutory board under the Ministry of Communications and Information has slapped a $100,000 fine on SingPost for not meeting its expected quality standards for the delivery of local letters and registered mail in 2017.

To meet IMDA’s standards, SingPost had been required to deliver 99 percent of local basic letters to an address within the Central Business District and 98 percent of local basic letters to destinations outside the CBD areas by the next working day. In May 2017, SingPost failed to meet the requirements.

The postal service would also have to achieve 100 percent delivery of local basic letters and registered mail by the second working day. SingPost failed at this too — letters were delivered late for five months in 2017, while registered mail were delayed for three months that same year.

IMDA took issue with how SingPost failed yet again to comply with its quality of service standards, noting how the margin of failure in 2017 alone was significant compared to previous cases of poor performances.

“The recent service lapses by SingPost indicate gaps in SingPost’s processes and we require them to implement measures urgently to meet the public’s evolving postal needs,” affirmed IMDA’s Deputy Chief Executive Aileen Chia.

If 2017 was bad enough for SingPost, wait until IMDA completes its assessment for the company’s 2018 performance. Things got so bad late last year that SingPost had to issue a public apology, acknowledging how it messed up during a “tremendously busy” peak season.

The authorities are also looking into an incident last year that saw a frustrated postman dumping letters and parcels of Ang Mo Kio residents into a trash bin.