THE decline of Australia Post in the wake of social media and the digital era was outlined to customers in Cleveland last week.
Australia Post representatives spoke of the company's approaching first annual loss in more than 30 years.
It is set to release a first-half profit of $98 million, down 56 percent from last year's figures, with a forecast of a full-year loss.
Delivery operations manager Mark Horton told customers the fall in profit was driven by growing losses of $151 million in postal services this year.
He said Australia Post was seeking government approval to change its regulations to enable it to introduce new services and adjust prices to better reflect the cost of running the letter service.
"We are only looking to cover the cost of delivery; we are not even concerned as a business about making a profit out of letters," he said.
"I don't know how the process will work, but what we are looking at doing is making a speedy letter service."
He proposed to customers that Australia Post would like to introduce a priority letter service and a regular letter service.
Currently it took four days to deliver a letter nationally, but two days would be added to the regular service if customers chose the cheaper price.
He said at this stage there were no details on what the changes to prices would be for the new service if the new service was approved.
"External factors dictate our pricing and I am sure we won't be outside that structure," he said.
"I'm sure we will still have to go through those hoops for price rises."
