USPS Newslink, Saving Money and 1890 Upstate Courthouses
By · CommentsI was unaware of the USPS newsletter News Link until today, when a colleague forwarded a copy on to me. This is apparently sent to members of the Postal Customer Councils located around the country. There are some 200 “PCC’s” with a total of 100,000 members around the country. The purpose of these councils is to provide education and updating on USPS products and services and to listen to the voice of the consumer. Since the USPS range of products and services is very complex, and mail make-up and deposit rules and procedures can be technical, and may necessarily change, they perform an important function is helping customers interface efficiently with the Post.
Some customers are pleased with their experience of the PCC meetings, others find them less useful, and their quality apparently varies depending on the city and the individuals running them. But any institution has this problem. If you mail a lot, you probably should consider joining the local PCC.
One little tidbit in their latest newsletter here caught me eye:
“BY THE NUMBERS
SOMEBODY LISTENED. Apparently, word the State Department was increasing passport fees last Tuesday (Link, 7/12) prompted customers to head to a local Post Office ahead of the deadline. Post Offices in the Western New York District processed 2,600 applications Monday and took 1,700 photos. Passport sales in the District generated $90,000 in revenue — 700 percent over the same period last year.”
Actually, the increase was due to take effect 7/13, Wednesday. Or at least they did in St. Lawrence County in northern New York, where my wife had noted the same news in the local paper several days before and insisted we get over to the County Clerk and renew our 16 year old son’s “children’s” passport a year early, in order to save having to spend $35 more a year from now. My protestations that the County Clerk was some 7o miles roundtrip away, being worth $14 in gas, and that there was a probability, no, a certainty that I would have to spring for $16 for Subway sandwiches for my two bottomless stomached children, and that the Clerk no doubt charged a fee similar to the USPS’s $25 fee, were at least ineffectual, and appeared to be unheard. The chance to save $35 right now was too overpowering, even though we’ wouldn’t even be break-even. I resisted with success making the argument that it was completely possible our son would run away from home forever in the next year, saving us the need to worry about having not saved $35 a year before. Some possibilities one does not raise to the mother of one’s children.
I’m glad the USPS made some good money on the price change. The State Department was raising the fee from $75 to as high as $135 in certain cases, to $110 in our own. Of course we had to pay the County Clerk a fee for this privilege, but it was only $11. People in northern New York don’t have much money, and there is a lot of travel to and from Canada, which is only 20 miles away. So at the end of transaction I felt all right. I supported the County, saved, maybe $35, and now I learn that the USPS benefited from State’s fee raise, and got the money this year.
I also got to see the St. Lawrence County Office Building and Clerk’s office, which is a gorgeous anachronism of 19th century carved granite, sandstone, and brick, complete with glazed tiles of green and blue and ochre set into arched arcade hallways. Stunning building. Inside the Clerk’s office is a map about the size of a barn door dated 1890 which showed nearly every house in the County (which is the largest in area in New York State) and railroads all over the place, connecting towns with names that I knew to now be mere crossroad collections of a few houses and perhaps a collapsing barn or old warehouse. There were railroads running where I new there was now second growth hardwood forest, or a little-traveled road. And so many of them were aimed at Canada. In 1890 you didn’t need a passport to go to Canada, or to anywhere else in the world, for that matter. And now we have to pay our government a huge fee to get a passport to travel.
Now, Mr. Potter, about that exigent rate increase… Why not just get some other government licensing agencies to use the USPS? I’m sure we now have to pay our government for lots of other things that we could do in 1890 without paying our government for the privilege. If so, if we have to pay a fee, why not pay the USPS to keep it functioning? It worked fine in 1890, and still does. In fact, it predated and has survived the railroad! If people aren’t mailing, they certainly are traveling, not by railroad as in1890, but by plane to everywhere on earth, with their passports.
Watch your hands – they might be insulting!
By · CommentsCultural Dos and Don’ts: Nonverbal Gestures
By: Carol Kinsey Goman
Synopsis: The wave of a hand—up or down, left or right, facing in or out—can have many different meanings in different places around the world. Understanding these differences and being conscious of them can help you avoid inadvertently offending an international colleague.
It was an important evening for the civic leaders of a city in the Midwest. The local chamber of commerce was hosting a dinner for executives from Japan who were considering whether to locate a factory in that city, and everything seemed to go wrong.
The cultural mishaps started when the chamber president was formally introduced to the top ranking Japanese executive. The president held out this hand for a shake, the Japanese chairman bowed. The president then hastily bowed, while his Japanese counterpart thrust out his hand. To the embarrassment of all, this “gestural dance” continued for several minutes.
Then things got worse …
When everyone was finally seated for dinner, the welcoming gifts for members of the Japanese contingent were opened. They were lovely pocketknives, handsomely engraved with the name of the Japanese company. Unfortunately, the gift givers didn’t realize that knives are a Japanese symbol suggesting suicide.
And, in fact, it gets worse….
Look for the rest of Carol’s wonderful tips in the next edition of The Prescott Report and here on our website in a Silver member available article.
Lost Mail & Bureacracy Forever
By · CommentsI have been trying to track down some missing mail somewhere in the Japan Post domestic system for about 3 weeks. A couple of mailers have contacted me with a very unusual problem. Fifty percent drop in responses from mailings in Japan for the last 3 months. And these are not “experiments”, but mailings to house lists using proven offer packages.
My contacts in the international department of Japan Post have been wonderfully responsive, even going to the inbound sort center to look around, and suggesting various things that might have gone wrong. Recently, we think we might have been getting close to the answer. The question arose as to whether indicia and return address were from different countries – definitely not something you should do if mailing to Japan, according to one expert.
Unfortunately, our postal friends now have been diverted by a Japan Post “own-goal”, or at least management incompetence of a phenomenal scale. Our colleague emailed to us apologizing about not finding the missing mail, yet, but he had been diverted “with all hands” to try to correct the disaster Japan Post’s so-called management has brought on themselves in their merger of their parcels business with that of Nippon Express Ltd.
According to an editorial in the respected Asahi newspaper, “Last week’s integration of delivery operations under Japan Post and Nippon Express Co., Ltd., viewed as the first step in rebuilding the group’s mainstay business arm, got off to a rocky start.
The slip-up was mainly due to management methods that are sorely lacking in consideration for either customers or Japan Post’s own employees. One can assume that current moves to reverse the privatization process of the company has something to do with the latest trouble as well as with the stubbornly entrenched bureaucratic mind-set.
Or the Japan Post management team, anxious to expand financial services, might have neglected the mail and delivery arms that comprise the enterprise’s mainstay business.
….
The response of Japan Post’s management team to this predicament is dumbfounding. The delays were downplayed. Likewise, it appeared to be in no rush to bring in reinforcements.” http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201007070411.html.
The self-destruction of a usually respected institution is a terrible thing to have to behold, but the Japanese parcel mailer is having to watch this unfold now, and the letter people are being diverted also, to help clean up the mess. As the reader can see from the above, the newspaper chronicles the incredible managerial incompetence implicated in the combining of the operations of Japan Post and Nippon Express Company. It appears that management had no clue to the complexities of this combination, which is occurring at the height of the Summer gift-giving season, think Christmas-type levels of packages and cards, and the elections for the upper house of Parliament, which brings, as in any democracy, increased letter and parcel mail. the backlog is so severe that my contact and his international mail colleagues have been seconded to the sort centers, for several nights in a row, to help with the mess.
To a certain extent, this is also part of the fault of the new ruling party. After intense study and debate and planning over several years, the last government launched a plan with a timetable to liberalize the post and break it into its constituent parts. Time frames to accomplish this were very long, and seemed quite far away. The new recently elected government announced that this plan would not be carried out and Japan Post in its entirely would remain a government bureaucracy, with minor exceptions.
If you keep government bureaucrats running a postal system and now a new, larger parcel system (which isn’t running, yet), you get government bureaucratic efficiency. But, Japan will continue to have its captive savers as the backbone of the government spending. Japan’s publicly held national debt equals 200% of its GDP. The US’s is 90%, the highest since World War II. And, unfortunately, our political players don’t have the courage, or concern, to liberalize our postal service, either.
Online Behavioral Advertising-Europe Gets Serious
By · CommentsOn June 24, the Article 29 Working Party (WP29) published an opinion clarifying how and why particular rules apply to online behavioral advertising. This was a long-expected opinion by this statutory advisory body consisting of the Data Protection Commissioners of the countries of the European Union.
Not surprisingly, WP29 concludes that online behavioral advertising networks and website publishers have an obligation to obtain affirmative and meaningful consent from individuals whose personal information will be gathered through cookies. WP29 is extremely influential in Europe, and increasingly abroad, and marketers and advertisers are advised to pay careful attention to this opinion. Its format and expertise are a new standard, in our view, and the legal reasoning impeccable.
The 24 page opinion provides a primer on the technologies involved in planting cookies and reading the data. This alone is worth the reading. In part, in addition to the carefully reasoned option, this well-informed explanation and comprehension of the technology provides an underlying credibility to what is a very sophisticated opinion.
For a complete analysis of the opinion and what it means for ad networks, website owners (“publishers of the ads”), marketers, and, of all things, browser software companies, read the exhaustive analysis of the opinion in the forthcoming June edition of The Prescott Report.
Addressing Moves to the Top of the Agenda
By · CommentsThe Editor participated on a panel last week at Triangle’s World Mail & Express Europe Conference and, opening the second day of the conference to a full room, told the audience that addressing is moving to the top of the agenda. Subsequent speakers from Estonia Post, Intermec, and DPD Gmbh expanded on many aspects of the Editor’s comments. Their presentations will be reviewed in these pages in the coming weeks. In the meantime, please feel free to download “Addressing Moves to the Top of the Agenda” and learn how and why this is so. You will be surprised why the address is getting more valuable. The presentation is a pdf of a “notes view” powerpoint and thus you can read what the audience heard.
There is an invisible problem in the mailing industry that no one talks about. Not the Posts, not the mailers, not the regulators. No one is quite sure of its size, although operations people in the Posts do, and the Global Address Data Association, which I am forming, has a pretty good inkling. I saw the size of the problem once in the international mail processing center of a major European postal system. It’s called undeliverable as addressed mail (UAA).
That postal processing center receives mail from abroad and sorts it for domestic distribution. There are several steps in the sorting process which involve some various sophisticated technologies, as well as hands-on human intervention. Suffice it to say that a substantial amount of mail stops here because the address is determined to be undeliverable.
If the postage on the mail merits it, the letters are returned to sender. This, by the way, is a major problem for Posts who did not dispatch this mail because it comes from remailers or ETOE’s (extra-territorial offices of exchange- offices set up by posts in other countries to engage in export of mail). The only place the sortation center knows to return it is the country appearing as a return address, if there is one. And that postal system wasn’t paid to receive it. But that’s another problem.
The Human Factor in UAA
By · CommentsThe Human Factor in Undeliverable as Addressed
While living in a smaller town within a large metropolitan region on the U.S., I received a letter addressed to me with the town, state, and street names but no building number or ZIP code. The local letter carrier had recognized my name.
In a South American country, a letter addressed to someone in the “white house across from the market” was delivered, correctly, to a green house across from the market. The house had been recently painted and the letter carrier knew that. It should be noted that this occurred during a test in which the carrier was followed on his rounds. Read More→
Dot Post Approved
By · CommentsIn a major development, the Postal Operations Council today accepted without discussion or debate the UPU Domain Management Policy document that will govern who will be able to obtain a dot Post domain, and how. The resolution delegated substantial continuing authority as it resolved as follows:
“Decides
– to submit the .post Domain Management Policy, as approved by Committee 4, to the Council of Administration for information and guidance;
– to delegate to the POC Management Committee, until the beginning of the next POC sessions in 2011, the authority to take any decisions within the POC’s purview deemed necessary to ensure the continued development of the .post project in a timely manner, based on the proposals agreed by the E-Services Group under Committee 4, Read More→
Today the Postal Operations Council plenary meeting under Chairman Andreas Taprantzis (Greece) began its review of the accomplishments and projects of the various committees and work groups previously established to carry out budgeted projects. We will report on some of these in The Prescott Report and this blog in forthcoming issues. Today we report on the opening presentation of Director General Edouard Dayan.
The DG opened the meeting by pointing out some quite dramatic improvements in the communication facilities in the UPU. It is now possible for delegates to observe the proceedings in the main hall, which are webcast. In all other meeting rooms teleconference facilities are available. A major renovation on the 7th floor of the building has created a multi-purpose space for receptions and large meetings with state of the art AV equipment and easily re-arranged furniture and podiums. For anyone who has attended meetings here, these changes are very welcome.
Turning to the accomplishments of the international postal system, Mr. Dayan noted that “all indicators are “green”, which is to say, they are indicating significant progress. As can be seen from the adjacent slide, there has been profound improvements in the quality of service since 2005 throughout the membership.
The increase in bar-coding of 91% of all parcels, and by 197 countries, is among the most promising developments imaginable. Related to this, of course, are the increase in electronic exchange of parcel data to 140 countries and an electronic inquiry system to track down parcels to 96 countries. This makes the international postal system remarkably more competitive with the express industry.
There has been a dramatic take up of the electronic networks of the UPU. The International Parcel Service is up 36% to 147 countries, while the Postnet letter tracking network now has 135 countries, an increase of 25%. In continuing to fulfill the strategic goal of building international financial services, 103 countries are now connected to or testing the International Financial Service (electronic money transfer network), of which 41operate regularly, a 78% increase.
These results, Mr. Dayan noted, are due to a clear strategic vision coming from the Nairobi Strategic Plan and a “permanent obsession with results”. Moreover, the International Bureau (IB) has created a totally secure network during the last three years and this functions 24/7. He also attributed this success to the confidence and support of many countries who contribute on an “extra-budgetary” basis, such as Singapore, Korea, Japan, and France, as well as a profound sense of co-operation, innovation, discipline, and the professionalism of the International Bureau.
Mr. Dayan continued to outline some of the many programs and relationship which have been built over the last year “to construct the future today”. The detail is beyond the scope of this report, but many programs and new relationships have been undertaken, as reflected in the accompanying slide. In short, member countries are telling him that “the UPU is no longer the same and has definitively entered the 21st century.” And his vision is to continue to “engage the future, throw off certain old habits, push back the frontier and obtain results.”
To this observer, progress and improvement are tangible here at the UPU, and the international postal network, and its customers, are benefiting.
Charles Prescott
This month there were so many occasions for bestowing a Border Bully award that we almost passed up the pleasure. The potential “honorees” were legion. First is probably any European nation which spent more time and money arranging to get its stranded holiday-going citizens back home from Cozumel, Antigua and Bangkok than it spent on helping much poorer visitors from developing countries within their own borders. Of course, a nation has responsibilities to its citizens, but also to visitors it has not only welcomed but enticed from abroad. One would think the authorities could have mobilized information management and assistance for serious emergencies within their own borders. Certainly, a gaggle of middle-school students on a class trip to another country with only 3 over-worked teacher-guides would constitute some kind of problem. Moreover, I ran into numerous Chinese, Korean, and Japanese tourists with little or no English ability and a dazed look on their faces.
Perhaps the “winner by a little landslide” is France, and its labor unions, who seemed oblivious to the fact there was a humanitarian crisis in their midst. Read More→