Danish postal service Dao summoned to explain new mail delivery failures

The Danish postal distribution company Dao must appear before the Transport Authority on Friday to explain a series of delivery failures, including a case in Fredericia where undelivered mail was found discarded among recycling, Fredericia Dagblad reports.

Special worker Johnny Poder discovered at least four sacks filled with undelivered letters at the Affald og Genbrug recycling station in Fredericia. The mail, which should have been delivered on Funen, was instead found mixed with waste—some even inside pizza boxes. Two employees from Fyns Distribution have since been dismissed over the incident.

Kim Ankjær Larsen, manager of the recycling station, filed a complaint with the Transport Authority, which oversees postal services in Denmark. Dao has acknowledged the case as “unheard of” but stated it cannot guarantee such breaches of agreement by employees will not recur.

The Fredericia incident is the latest in a string of failures for Dao, which became Denmark’s sole mail distributor at the start of the year. Previous issues include thousands of delays, letters left in snow, misdeliveries at hospitals—posing data protection risks—and incorrect distribution of election cards.

In one case, voters in Aalborg received election cards intended for residents of Bakkevænget near Storvorde, 30 km away. Former Conservative Party minister Jakob Axel Nielsen told DR he initially overlooked the error, only realising the mistake after a journalist’s inquiry. “There are simply too many errors with something as important as election cards,” he said.

Dao has attributed the Nordjylland misdeliveries to a “genuine misunderstanding” due to two streets sharing the same name. Meanwhile, Randers Municipality has temporarily required residents to collect driving licences in person due to postal delays.

The repeated failures have prompted calls from the Red-Green Alliance in Fredericia to explore alternatives to Dao, following Aarhus’s switch to PostNord. Voters awaiting missing election cards can still vote by presenting ID at polling stations.