NZ Post confirmed the closures today after the move was signalled in October last year.
The affected Otago businesses which provide postal services are: Brighton Store, Musselburgh Pharmacy, Prince Albert Rd Dairy, Caversham Pharmacy, Maori Hill Dairy, Brockville Four Square Supermarket, Octagon Night n' Day, Albert Town Tavern and Oamaru's Lotto'n Things.*
Four Southland post shops will also close: Avenal, Newfield, Mataura and Sylvan Bank.
The southern outlets are among 142 closing nationwide from May.
The owner of Brighton Dairy, who declined to be named, told the ODT last year she was surprised and "a bit annoyed" to be on the list because the community had been growing over the past two decades.
She said she had been at the store for 22 years and the NZ Post service was still used by many customers — particularly for parcels — because the next nearest NZ Post service was about 10km away, in Green Island.
The community had a lot of elderly residents, but it also had a growing number of younger residents who had online shopping parcels delivered to the store for collection.
"I’m a bit annoyed. This is just another way the government is trying to save money," she said.
Postal Workers Union organiser John Maynard told RNZ the changes followed the removal of hundreds of roadside post boxes.
He told Midday Report that living within four kilometres of a post shop was not necessarily walking distance.
"There's all those practical, day-to-day [considerations] - getting there, walking there, parking there and all that sort of stuff. I think these hubs are quite good because you can do a lot of stuff there, but again this is NZ Post running down the access of the people and running down the services."
Stores losing their post counters would also lose foot traffic and inevitably employees, he said.
"I've had an example of one of these franchisees who is now going to lose the business. There are rest homes in the area and there are people who walk there.
"They're now going to have to go down into the city to do postal transactions, if they can find a carpark," he said.
"You go into those places and they've got specialised staff doing [postal services]. I don't know what's going to happen to those staff."
Maynard said he feared there would be more cuts to NZ Post services.
NZ Post General Manager Consumer Sarah Sandoval says the current retail network was bigger than required for today’s mail volumes.
“A lot has changed since the 1980s, when our minimum store requirements were last set. Customers now rely far more on NZ Post stores for collecting and sending parcels compared to letters."
*Kaikorai Valley Night n' Day and Weston Four Square Supermarket were previously incorrectly included on this list. They have been replaced by the Octagon Night n' Day and Oamaru's Lotto'n Things.
