« What the bad guys are doing with Internet Explorer | Main | Toshiba joins Sony Laptop Battery Party »
September 20, 2006
Electronic mail ... with stamps
One of the problems that arise when you have to send an actual letter - you remember, don't you, one of those things with a stamp and a postmark? - is the post office queue. You may have noticed that an Australia Post queue offers the sort of experience that you tend not to get with other queues ... the sort of experience one had in the days of corporal punishment, when one waited outside the headmaster's office for the administration of six swipes of your palm with a whippy, knotted cane.
You don't really want to get to the end of a post office queue, in our experience, because you know that the price of whatever brought you there - the need to pick up a parcel, buy a stamp or an envelope, pay a bill etc - will be the subtle diminishment of your self respect.
Post office staff seem to undergo an extraordinary metamorphosis in their training which turns them into superior, judgmental, peculiarly unhelpful beings, administering a system that appears to have been uniquely designed to never quite work. They won't be able to find your parcel, perhaps, and somehow you'll know it's your fault. Only someone as stupid as you could know people who despatch non-existent parcels. Or the particular item you want to stick in an envelope will be slighly too large for one envelope, and too absurdly small for the next. Or your envelope will require some non-standard postage fee that may even require the opening of a special, top secret manual. We don't think we're imagining this. It happens to us every time.
That's why we're so excited about this brave new postal era, initiated by Britain's Royal Mail, that promises to reduce the frequency of these humiliating experiences.
People are now able to buy their postage online, without any stamps, for the first time under a new free initiative from the Royal Mail. Customers pay for postage by credit card over the internet for first-class, second-class, recorded, special and international deliveries. Each item of mail is given a barcode, printed off at home, and regular mail can then be posted in a post box.Unfortunately, you'll still have to stand in line for registered mail, parcel pick-ups etc. But it's a start, isn't it, along a path that who knows, one day, might lead to never having to go to a post office again. If we can solve that, global warming should be falling off a log easy.
Posted by cw at September 20, 2006 10:12 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://bleedingedge.com.au/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1044
Comments
I don't which post-office you visit, but I have always found post-office staff friendly and helpful. However, there is always a queue. No matter at what time one goes into the post-office there is always a queue.
Posted by: David at September 20, 2006 03:14 PM
As a postal worker, I'm sad to say I agree with your opinion of postal workers in general. I'm embarassed to say I'm a postal worker.Working side by side with some makes me just want to cringe when I see how rude and unhelpful they are to people. I think of myself as one of the few who do enjoy being helpful and providing a service to the public. There are some of us around but not enough I fear to change public opinion. I can only apologise to you for my colleagues misdeeds.
Posted by: Tony at September 20, 2006 08:31 PM
What? They still send letters? I thought they sold cheap imported gadgets, knick knacks and other rubbish, and acted as an agency for anyone else who wants to avoid providing their own customer services. My experience with their queues (avoided at all costs) is standing in a cluttered environment of boxes and shelves selling videos, fluffy toys, pens, etc, in a queue that snakes through the mess.
Posted by: Dave at September 21, 2006 01:22 PM
I thought you were working up to refer to a service I think I heard a Australia Post rep talking about some time ago on the radio - it was a service whereby you emailed the text of your letter to Australia Post and they somehow encapsulated it into a real letter, and posted it.
I looked at its site at that time but couldn't see anything. Might be there now.
Not a bad idea for some purposes. And certainly no queues.
Posted by: Peter at September 22, 2006 05:20 PM