Registered post with proof of delivery does not prove receipt

What the Federal Labour Court decided

The postal worker signs to confirm that he has posted the letter. Then he posts it. With its judgment of 7 May 2026 (case no. 2 AZR 184/25), the Federal Labour Court (BAG) has turned this sequence into a problem for employers. The delivery receipt that Deutsche Post produces for registered post with proof of delivery to the letterbox (Einwurf-Einschreiben) under its so-called scanning procedure does not prove that the letter ended up in the recipient's letterbox. If the employee disputes receipt, the employer is left without evidence.

The judgment builds on a decision of 30 January 2025 (case no. 2 AZR 68/24). There the court had already held that the posting receipt and the online tracking status do not establish receipt. Taken together, this means that before the labour courts, registered post of this kind is worth barely more as evidence than an ordinary letter.

The case: an invitation to a BEM meeting by post

An employee who had worked as a waste disposal operative since 2015 had been absent through illness for 40, 75 and 37 working days in the three years before his dismissal. The employer had invited him several times to company integration management, known in German as BEM. In this statutory procedure, employer and employee look together, after a longer period of illness, for ways to avoid further absences. A meeting took place in August 2022. The employee did not respond to the remaining invitations.

After the invitation of April 2023 he was again unfit for work for more than six weeks. The employer therefore had to offer a further BEM. It sent the invitation of 11 October 2023 by registered post with proof of delivery to the letterbox. The employee disputed receipt. On 15 December 2023 the employer gave notice of dismissal on grounds of ill health, effective 30 June 2024. In the proceedings the employer produced the posting receipt and a delivery receipt reproduced by Deutsche Post. On it, the postal worker confirms by his signature that he handed over the item or placed it in the letterbox. The labour court, the Hamburg Regional Labour Court and the Federal Labour Court nevertheless held the dismissal to be invalid.

Why the scan receipt proves nothing

The Regional Labour Court had established how the scanning procedure works. The postal worker stands in front of the letterbox and checks the name. He scans the barcode on the item, signs on the glass screen of his scanner and completes the process. Only then does he post the letter. The data goes straight into the tracking system. So even where everything is done correctly, the delivery receipt is created before the letter is in the letterbox.

That is where prima facie evidence fails, the principle under which a court infers the outcome from a typical course of events without the individual case having to be proved. After the scan, no particular attention is required of the postal worker. In the court's view, it would not be unusual for him to be held up or distracted after signing, with the result that the item is not posted to the correct recipient. At most, the receipt shows that the postal worker was standing in front of the right letterbox. The Federal Court of Justice had accepted prima facie evidence for a different Deutsche Post procedure. There the postal worker sticks a label on the receipt and signs only after posting. The Federal Labour Court left open whether it would follow that approach.

Witnesses and tracking status do not help either

The second route failed as well: the Regional Labour Court heard the postal worker as a witness. He had no recollection of the delivery on 14 October 2023 and could not even confirm that the signature on the receipt was his own. The court found the evidence unproductive, and the Federal Labour Court saw nothing wrong with that. It is hardly surprising that a postal worker cannot remember a single letterbox long after the event.

Anyone who produces only a posting receipt and the online tracking status is in an even weaker position. The Federal Labour Court decided that in January 2025. An employer had posted a notice of dismissal on 26 July 2022 by registered post with proof of delivery to the letterbox. The tracking status recorded delivery for 28 July 2022. The employer had not requested the delivery receipt, and by the time it needed it, the 15-month period it had itself cited had expired. The posting receipt proves only despatch, not receipt. The tracking status does not say who delivered the item, to whom, at what time or at which address. A recipient would have virtually no way of rebutting such an entry. The dismissal was treated as not having been received.

Consequences for the dismissal

Without provable receipt of the invitation, the BEM counts as not having been offered. The employer then has to set out and prove that even a properly conducted BEM could not have prevented the dismissal. It failed to do so. The fact that the employee had cited private causes of illness in April 2023 did not help the employer, because the only thing that matters for the BEM obligation is the extent of the absences. A BEM could have addressed therapies, health prevention or medical rehabilitation. In addition, the employee had attended a BEM meeting in 2022 and so was not refusing on principle. The dismissal was disproportionate and therefore invalid. Further points in dispute, such as the missing details of address and time on the delivery receipt, no longer mattered.

What employers can do now

The two judgments affect every letter whose receipt the employer has to prove, from a notice of dismissal to a BEM invitation. Anyone who continues to rely on registered post with proof of delivery to the letterbox is relying on a receipt created before posting and on a witness who remembers nothing. A messenger is more reliable: an employee who hands the letter over in person or puts it in the letterbox and can later confirm this as a witness. The Federal Labour Court itself cites the messenger as the counterpart to the anonymous tracking status. It makes sense for the messenger to know the contents of the envelope, to note the date and time of posting and to place that note on the personnel file.

As for the BEM: the invitation deserves the same care as the dismissal. Without provable receipt, the employer bears the hard-to-discharge burden of proving that the BEM would have been pointless. If an employee declines a BEM and is then absent for more than six weeks again within a year, a fresh invitation is due. A brief follow-up enquiry is reasonable to expect of the employer, as the court notes.