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When you're fighting for your survival against competition from newer, faster, better providers -- what do you do?
Well most companies with half a clue would work very hard to lift their game. Improve their own speed, performance and service levels so as to eclipse their competition.
But not NZ Post it would seem.
Oh no, although they're facing intense competition from courier companies and the internet, NZ Post has opted to respond by degrading its service levels -- and not by just a little but by as much as 300%.
According to this story, NZ Post is now going to reduce its service target from 1-day delivery to 3-days.
How on earth do they figure that this will be an inducement for people to use their service?
Well obviously it's not. It would appear that they're simply going into "cost-cutting" mode, which will likely mean that more jobs will disappear at the SOE, at the very time beneficiaries are being told "find work or else".
While NZ Post has come up with some cracker new services (such as YouShop), some of their other recent ideas are crazy and scary.
Take the RealMe service for example.
This is looking very much like it will become a universal online ID service and I would not be surprised if you are forced into using it for almost every online transaction and login where services are being provided within NZ.
In order to combat "terrorism" and associated crimes such as copyright-infringement, money laundering, etc -- I strongly suspect that the government will mandate that your RealMe ID must be used when authenticating yourself to your service provider and whenever engaging in the sale or purchase of products or services online.
The data thus collected will allow "big brother" to see exactly what you're doing, where you're going, what your spending (and with who) and whether you're receiving undeclared income from somewhere.
All in the name of keeping you and other NZers safe -- of course.
Call me a cynic -- but how long before we find that even our mobile phones must be linked to our RealMe ID, so that NFC transactions can be authenticated and so that even pre-paid mobiles can be associated with a real person. All in the name of reducing crime of course.
It's then only a small step towards being required to carry a piece of technology with your RealMe ID on it at all times when you are in public -- and then we have "the universal ID card" that Jenny Shippley mooted way back around the turn of the century.
So it's a big thumbs-up for YouShop but a giant thumbs-down for NZ Post taking its eye off the ball and backing yet another big-brother data-gathering and surveillance move by the state.
First we lost our right to privacy, now we lose our right to anonymity?
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