Australia Post

Last year, Australia Post actually lost money on a monopoly business, letter delivery, because (they claim) they can’t price the service highly enough due to government controls and international agreements and who knows what else.

How to lose money while running a monopoly? It can only be achieved by the most loopy of loopy business managers. It takes special skills and maybe also very deep ulterior motives – like a desire by some to privatise Australia Post as a non-monopoly.

In any case, there is an obvious solution to the pricing issue. Step right around it with a tiered offering. This could, for example, be as simple as charging the currently uncharged party of a letter delivery transaction.

For example, offer letter recipients an optional opt-in service where all their physical mail is opened, scanned and emailed to them. Your more techie customers are going to say ‘yes’ to this, especially if it includes a spam filter for all that junk mail.

And you could bolt shut your physical mailbox so none of that unstamped junk mail ever crossed your consciousness ever again.