1) They do not collect mail at houses or even street postboxes - you have to find a letterbox to drop your stamped letters, and those are less frequent than bus stops. My nearest two are about 400-500 meters away from my house in a neighborhood dense enough for an U-Bahn stop (and neither is at said U-Bahn stop). A good prompt for a walk for my able-bodied, middle-aged household, but hellaceously inconvenient for our 80+ year old neighbors.
2) A regular national letter is 0.80 EUR (US$0.94) in a country that does not have houses or small neighborhoods that are miles from anything else.
3) There are a few full service post offices that are also Postbank offices, but most parcel acceptance happens at shops that have DHL as a sideline. My city of 130,000 has two full service post offices, and one of them is only open 9:00-12:00 and 14:00-17:00 (and of course that's the one I have to pick up parcels that won't fit into the automated lockers at...)
Overall, privatized Deutsche Post is quite reliable, but its stability comes with trade-offs that the USPS is not allowed to make.
1) They do not collect mail at houses or even street postboxes - you have to find a letterbox to drop your stamped letters, and those are less frequent than bus stops. My nearest two are about 400-500 meters away from my house in a neighborhood dense enough for an U-Bahn stop (and neither is at said U-Bahn stop). A good prompt for a walk for my able-bodied, middle-aged household, but hellaceously inconvenient for our 80+ year old neighbors.
2) A regular national letter is 0.80 EUR (US$0.94) in a country that does not have houses or small neighborhoods that are miles from anything else.
3) There are a few full service post offices that are also Postbank offices, but most parcel acceptance happens at shops that have DHL as a sideline. My city of 130,000 has two full service post offices, and one of them is only open 9:00-12:00 and 14:00-17:00 (and of course that's the one I have to pick up parcels that won't fit into the automated lockers at...)
Overall, privatized Deutsche Post is quite reliable, but its stability comes with trade-offs that the USPS is not allowed to make.