As part of the Communication Regulatory Authority’s (CRA) ongoing efforts to ensure the provision of smart, innovative and high-quality services in the sectors that it regulates, CRA recently conducted a short bi-lingual survey (Arabic & English) via social media platforms, to get consumers’ feedback on their experience of the postal services in Qatar provided by Q-post and private couriers.
The nine-question survey ran for two weeks in September and saw responses from around 300 consumers. The responses showed that 58% of consumers are unaware that CRA regulates the postal sector, despite that around 84% of consumers are using regular postal services through Q-post to send or receive letters and parcels and nearly 88% of consumers are using Express services through Q-post and private couriers’ services such as FedEx, Aramex, DHL, UPS, etc.
“CRA is in the process of finalizing the regulation for the postal sector in Qatar. The survey is one of the main tools adopted by CRA to help in receiving consumers’ feedback on the postal services and to better understand their needs and concerns. The survey has allowed us to collect valuable data about consumers’ behavior which will help us in ensuring that consumers’ rights are protected and their experience is improved,” said Amel Salem Al-Hanawi, Consumer Affairs Department Manager, CRA.
The survey showed that consumers have rated both Q-Post and private couriers highly in terms of service of regular and express services. Q-post regular postal services were rated by 67% of consumers as 5 or above out of 10, and in terms of prices around 55% of consumers rated it as 5 or above out of 10. For express services provided by Q-Post and private couriers, around 78% of consumers rated the service as 5 or above out of 10, and around 48% of consumers rated the price of it as 5 or above out of 10 in terms of prices.
Consumers highlighted a number of issues they faced when using postal services, the most commonly 3 issues were 29% for the delay in sending or receiving letters or parcels, nearly 26% for the unreasonable cost of using postal services, and around 9% of consumers mentioned that their letter or parcel was returned to the original address. Despite this over 55% of consumers said, they were able to track parcels, nearly 27% said they could not and almost 18% were not sure or did not know.
Only 25.73% of consumers registered a complaint in the last one year with either Q-Post (15.77%) or the private couriers (9.96%) and out of the total percentage (25.73%) over 65% were not satisfied with the resolution of their complaint.
To commemorate the World Postal Day, CRA recently has held the World Postal Day Forum, aims to enhance effective collaboration between international regulators and industry players. International, regional and local speakers had high-level discussions on matters related to the development of postal sector.