Munich: Post closes fourth branch this year – Munich
For a few more days, residents of the Glockenbach and Gärtnerplatz districts have the chance to deliver their letters and parcels to the post office on Fraunhoferstrasse. You can buy stamps there and withdraw or deposit money at the Postbank. But on November 25th at 1 p.m. it will be over. This Thursday the branch will close its doors for good. Like three other locations in Munich this year, where Swiss Post, as a cooperation partner and sub-tenant, shared the premises with Postbank.
All three contact points were extremely frequented, both in Schwabing on Angererstrasse and Agnesstrasse and the branch in Westend on Bergmannstrasse. Now they are closed. And according to information from Postbank, the branch on Romanplatz should also close in the second half of 2022.
The reason is economic considerations. “We are noticing that our online offers are being used more and more, across all age groups,” explains Postbank spokesman Oliver Rittmaier. A trend that the corona pandemic has intensified. In recent years, the bank has therefore reduced its sales network to around 750 branches nationwide.
The austerity course should continue: by the end of 2023 there should be only 550 inpatient positions nationwide
And the austerity course should continue: they have “agreed with Deutsche Post DHL to bring forward the 100 branch closings planned for the years 2024 and 2025,” says Rittmaier. This is in addition to the center closings planned for the future by 2023. At the end of 2023 there will only be 550 stationary contact points for the financial service provider in Germany.
The spokesman does not want to say which locations are at risk. “We only close a branch when it can no longer be operated economically,” he says. The decisive factor is not the customer frequency, but the type of services requested. The relationship between pure service such as postal services and cash payments on the one hand and “value-adding new business” in the form of deals on the other hand must be right.
Gudrun Piesczek from the CSU says that anyone who cannot conduct their banking business digitally is left alone
At least Romanplatz, but citizens and politicians have not yet completely written off. At the most recent meeting of the Neuhausen-Nymphenburg district committee, guests ventured and protested against the planned closure of the branch. “The whole place has been beautified, but there is now no bank,” grumbled a resident. “The announced closure,” confirmed Gudrun Piesczek, was “a major blow”. The end of this branch, so the spokeswoman for the CSU parliamentary group in the district committee, posed “very big problems” especially for older people and people with restricted mobility. Anyone who cannot conduct their banking business digitally will be left alone.
The citizen’s representative cast her urgent request to keep the branch because of the “general interest” in a bipartisan motion. “We are aware that the free cash supply is an important issue, especially for younger people,” says Rittmaier. But in many supermarkets and drugstores there is the cashback procedure, with which you can usually have up to 200 euros paid out.
The Social Democrats in the City Council had previously asked Lord Mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD) to work at the federal level to maintain the post office on Romanplatz. “A station point”, demands the SPD politicians, demands the SPD politicians, should be reachable within a maximum of 1000 meters instead of the current post 2000 meters away. “It should be replaced at partially less reliable partner branches”. An online petition addressed to the head of the Deutsche Post, Frank Appel, calls for the Nymphenburg post office to be preserved. 300 people have now signed it.
Customers of the previous locations will be referred to post offices in other shops
“We have opened a second counter in the shop of the company Schaumstoff-Fischer,” says Post spokesman Dieter Nawrath. Since November 7th there is also a post office in the Rewe-Markt at Müllerstraße 3.
Alternatives for Romanplatz are still being sought. Deutsche Post, Nawrath puts the debate into perspective, currently has a good 300 sales outlets in Munich. In 2006 there were only around seventy. The average weekly opening times also improved, increasing from 45 to 58 hours in this period. The increase can also be seen in this year’s statistics, despite the Postbank closings. “We will have four more post offices in Munich in December than at the beginning of the year,” said the spokesman.