On Tue, 19 Sep 2006 20:53:16 +0100, Mark wrote:
So they've designed a broken system and then dropped the broken pieces
on the general public. I can't see how this is any better than a book of
stamps.

You have a package - a present maybe. It's getting close to the last
collection for the day. You have a book of first class stamps, but the
postage value required for your package isn't an integral number of
32p multiples.

You can:

- use yout first class stamps and subsidise Royal Mail the difference
- take a trip to your local post office and queue
- print your own stamp to the correct value

Which requires you to know the precise weight of your present in order to
figure out postage costs, surely, even with the new charging system? So
for anything other than a letter that's obvously within single first class
rules, surely a trip to the post office is needed anyway to make sure that
the correct postage is put on the item?

Of course if RM issued every individual with a set of calibrated scales
(and paid for their maintenance) there wouldn't be a problem :-)

On Wed, 20 Sep 2006 15:37:36 +0100, Andy Hall wrote:


AND when the postman trudges along your street with the rain ****ing down .

Thats why I usually put sellotape over the address if I have printed out a
label,although usually I just write it with a pen .

Stuart

Good grief

What a palaver.

This is why professional delivery organisations supply little plastic
stick on envelopes to take the label and any other documents.

Why is it a palaver ?
As I said .
" although usually I just write it with a pen "

I shouldn't need to worry about their logistics issues. It should be
possible to read their specs. for delivery requirements (e.g. weight,
dims, value, origin) write it on the address label, call them and
that's it.

Ha..You don't want much ..You prepared to pay for all that ?

These people are paid to deliver a service. The customer should not
have to think about the postman's wet weather arrangements.

Well some of us DO think about other things apart from themselves and anyway
it's my letter so if I choose to protect it's delivery details from getting
obliterated by rain then that's my choice .


All the time that customers go on accepting this nonsense from Royal
Mail, they will never improve. In reality, they are the Austin Rover
of the communications industry. Trading on past glories and living on
delusions of grandeur. It would be far kinder to kill them off
now rather than to see their inevitable slide into oblivion.


Nonsense .


Stuart

On Tue, 19 Sep 2006 17:10:41 +0000, Bob Eager wrote:
The bar code can be printed as many times as you wish. Use it more than
once and only the first letter to be franked will get through without
postage due charges being raised. Seems a solid solution.

That's an interesting one, though - the idea of "item has been delivered"
must presumably be done at some sort of final sorting office - it says
nothing about whether an item gets lost between final sorting office and
final destination. In other words, it's still not without flaws.

On Wed, 20 Sep 2006 16:05:14 UTC, Jules
wrote:

On Tue, 19 Sep 2006 17:10:41 +0000, Bob Eager wrote:
The bar code can be printed as many times as you wish. Use it more than
once and only the first letter to be franked will get through without
postage due charges being raised. Seems a solid solution.

That's an interesting one, though - the idea of "item has been delivered"
must presumably be done at some sort of final sorting office - it says
nothing about whether an item gets lost between final sorting office and
final destination. In other words, it's still not without flaws.

I don't think delivery comes into it. It's the 'logical franking' that's
the point.

With conventional stamps, they are cancelled by a 'rubber stamp' and at
that point become non-reusable. This doesn't happen on delivery, but at
the initial sorting office. I would guess that barcode scans (and thus
'logical franking') happen at the same time. Whether the item is
delivered or lost is irrelevant in BOTH cases.

--
The information contained in this post is copyright the
poster, and specifically may not be published in, or used by
Avenue Supplies, http://avenuesupplies.co.uk

On Wed, 20 Sep 2006 06:25:38 +0100, Mark Goodge
wrote:

Is the recipient address definitely coded into the barcode? It isn't
on the similar SmartStamp product which has been available to
businesses for a while.

How do you *know* it isn't ?



--

On Wed, 20 Sep 2006 17:33:25 +0100, Matt put finger to keyboard and
typed:

On Wed, 20 Sep 2006 06:25:38 +0100, Mark Goodge
wrote:

Is the recipient address definitely coded into the barcode? It isn't
on the similar SmartStamp product which has been available to
businesses for a while.

How do you *know* it isn't ?

Because you can print SmartStamps without an address, if you want to.

Also, the Royal mail website has a page giving details of SmartStamps,
and one of the items is about the barcode. It says about the barcode
that:

All information in the postage mark is encoded into a barcode
which read by Royal Mail sorting technology to prevent the
posting of fraudulent or duplicate items.

http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/c...3&catId=600023

It doesn't mention anything about the address also being in the code.

OK, so that doesn't prove that it isn't encoded if you do print them
with an address label, but I'd be very surprised if it was.

Mark
--
Please help a cat in need: http://www.goodge.co.uk/cat/

The message
from Stuart contains these words:

Thats why I usually put sellotape over the address if I have printed out a
label,although usually I just write it with a pen .

I've found that if you print labels they slip through the post much
quicker. The machine readers can do the postcode more successfully if it
isn't hand-scrawled.

--
Skipweasel
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

Guy King wrote:
The message
from Stuart contains these words:

Thats why I usually put sellotape over the address if I have printed out a
label,although usually I just write it with a pen .

I've found that if you print labels they slip through the post much
quicker. The machine readers can do the postcode more successfully if it
isn't hand-scrawled.


There are two sorts of people in this world. Those that look for ways to
break human derived systems on the basis that 'they ought to be better';
and those that have better things to do, and print labels on a machine
that another machine can read.

In message , Mark
writes
On Tue, 19 Sep 2006 16:39:34 +0100, Brian Morrison
wrote:

Simon Morris wrote:

Strange, so does this mean that if you use a stamp multiple times they
will charge your account or credit card?


A bloke on "Today" implied that they'd consider the postage to have been
not paid on packages whose stamp barcode has previously been scanned.

So they've designed a broken system and then dropped the broken pieces
on the general public. I can't see how this is any better than a book of
stamps.

You have a package - a present maybe. It's getting close to the last
collection for the day. You have a book of first class stamps, but the
postage value required for your package isn't an integral number of
32p multiples.

You can:

- use yout first class stamps and subsidise Royal Mail the difference
- take a trip to your local post office and queue
- print your own stamp to the correct value

- take the correct selection of 1p, 2p, 5p, 10p, 20p and 50p stamps from
the stamps tin.


I know which I will do when this happens (and it does).

Yup.

--
bof at bof dot me dot uk

In message e.net,
Mark Goodge writes
On Tue, 19 Sep 2006 18:13:47 +0100, Brian Morrison put finger to
keyboard and typed:

Mark Goodge wrote:

Except that they're not unique if they can be printed multiple times.

The barcode is unique to the purchase. Once scanned on its way through
the postal system, it will generate an error if scanned in again and
hence prevent re-use of the same code.

Yes, but with the inconvenience on the addressee rather than the sender.

They can refuse to accept it.

Unfortunately 'they' don't know who it's from or what it is until
they've gone to the sorting office, at which point they've already spent
£2.00 on petrol and half an hour of their time, so might as well pay the
1p shortfall + £1.00 fine to get it while they're there anyway.


--
bof at bof dot me dot uk

In article ,
Brian Morrison wrote:
Michael Hoffman wrote:

And this will stop them from using a driver that prints to a file that
can be repeatedly printed? Or photocopied?

Perhaps not, but that takes more effort to do that simply clicking print
again.

Not if you're using a Mac, where you always get the option to print to file
(PDF).

In message , Guy King
writes
The message
from Stuart contains these words:

Thats why I usually put sellotape over the address if I have printed out a
label,although usually I just write it with a pen .

I've found that if you print labels they slip through the post much
quicker. The machine readers can do the postcode more successfully if it
isn't hand-scrawled.

I discovered how much more expensive a larger than DL env3elope costs to
post now

*******s !

--
geoff

On 2006-09-20 16:47:11 +0100, "Clive George" said:

"Andy Hall" wrote in message ...
Good grief

What a palaver.

This is why professional delivery organisations supply little plastic
stick on envelopes to take the label and any other documents.

I shouldn't need to worry about their logistics issues. It should be
possible to read their specs. for delivery requirements (e.g. weight,
dims, value, origin) write it on the address label, call them and
that's it.

How much do you expect such a service to cost?

It's very competitive in comparison to the cost of me going to the post
office, waiting in a queue, dealing with incompetent morons behind the
counter who don't understand the meaning of the word "service"


When do you want it picking up? Are you going to hang around for this?

This can be specified and arranged as well.


clive

On 2006-09-20 17:03:34 +0100, Stuart said:

On Wed, 20 Sep 2006 15:37:36 +0100, Andy Hall wrote:


AND when the postman trudges along your street with the rain ****ing down .

Thats why I usually put sellotape over the address if I have printed out a
label,although usually I just write it with a pen .

Stuart

Good grief

What a palaver.

This is why professional delivery organisations supply little plastic
stick on envelopes to take the label and any other documents.

Why is it a palaver ?

Because you are having to put in extra effort and thought to cover the
shortcomings of an organisation who couldn't organise a **** up in a
brewery with the glasses laid out and the taps turned on.


As I said .
" although usually I just write it with a pen "

I shouldn't need to worry about their logistics issues. It should be
possible to read their specs. for delivery requirements (e.g. weight,
dims, value, origin) write it on the address label, call them and
that's it.

Ha..You don't want much ..You prepared to pay for all that ?

Absolutely. In comparison with titting around with the shortcomings of
Royal Mail it is extremely cheap.



These people are paid to deliver a service. The customer should not
have to think about the postman's wet weather arrangements.

Well some of us DO think about other things apart from themselves and anyway
it's my letter so if I choose to protect it's delivery details from getting
obliterated by rain then that's my choice .

It's not an issue of being selfish.

This is a business transaction, not a charitable arrangement.

They are being paid to deliver a service. That's it. The boundaries
of that are collection, delivery and a means of tracking properly in
between, not worrying about whether the postman's bicycle has a flat
tyre.

If you want to do stuff to accommodate the shortcomings of these
buffoons then fine, but at least recognise that there is a cost
associated with it.



All the time that customers go on accepting this nonsense from Royal
Mail, they will never improve. In reality, they are the Austin Rover
of the communications industry. Trading on past glories and living on
delusions of grandeur. It would be far kinder to kill them off
now rather than to see their inevitable slide into oblivion.


Nonsense .

You may think that now. You probably thought that Austin Rover was a
viable business as well. It's all just emotional nonsense, supporting
untenable business models and outmoded ways of carrying them out.
This is the 21st century, not the mid 19th.

I'll make a prediction. Royal Mail will not exist in anything close to
its present form 10 years from now.

raden wrote:
In message , Guy King
writes
The message
from Stuart contains these words:

Thats why I usually put sellotape over the address if I have printed
out a
label,although usually I just write it with a pen .

I've found that if you print labels they slip through the post much
quicker. The machine readers can do the postcode more successfully if it
isn't hand-scrawled.

I discovered how much more expensive a larger than DL env3elope costs to
post now

*******s !

I have not found much difference unless it is thick
The normal letter weight has gone up to 100g
Roger

On Wed, 20 Sep 2006 23:24:53 UTC, Jules
wrote:

I'm sure it's a beneficial system to some people - I just have a feeling
that to many more it'll be less convenient than stamps (so I hope RM
aren't going to remove the ability to use the latter any time soon, or use
it to justify closure of more post offices!)

I think I'll use it occasionally, but for small packets rather than the
usual 'letters'. I am pretty geared up to check costs, so as long as it
fits in a post box I'll use it. For normal stuff I have a stock of
adhesive stamps.

Unfortunately, they closed two good sub post offices near here (one on a
large estate, with the next nearest to the estate being the one at the
bottom of the road). This has increased queues unacceptably. The main PO
for the town now means struggling into the Co-Op and parking is
dreadful. And it's really busy; I'm not sure the Co-Op are so happy now
as the changed access arrangements have resulted in an increase in
shoplifting!

--
The information contained in this post is copyright the
poster, and specifically may not be published in, or used by
Avenue Supplies, http://avenuesupplies.co.uk

In message , Roger Hume
writes
raden wrote:
In message , Guy King
writes
The message
from Stuart contains these words:

Thats why I usually put sellotape over the address if I have
printed out a
label,although usually I just write it with a pen .

I've found that if you print labels they slip through the post much
quicker. The machine readers can do the postcode more successfully if it
isn't hand-scrawled.

I discovered how much more expensive a larger than DL env3elope costs
to post now
*******s !

I have not found much difference unless it is thick
The normal letter weight has gone up to 100g
Roger
Actually, yes it was about an inch thick

--
geoff

"Andy Hall" wrote in message
...
On 2006-09-20 16:47:11 +0100, "Clive George"
said:

"Andy Hall" wrote in message
...
Good grief

What a palaver.

This is why professional delivery organisations supply little plastic
stick on envelopes to take the label and any other documents.

I shouldn't need to worry about their logistics issues. It should be
possible to read their specs. for delivery requirements (e.g. weight,
dims, value, origin) write it on the address label, call them and that's
it.

How much do you expect such a service to cost?

It's very competitive in comparison to the cost of me going to the post
office, waiting in a queue, dealing with incompetent morons behind the
counter who don't understand the meaning of the word "service"

You don't half make life complicated for yourself! What proportion of RM's
traffic requires that? The majority of our posting needs are handled by
'take stamp out of little booklet obtained from the supermarket, apply to
envelope, stick in postbox'. No queueing, not even any need for interaction
with people. Cheap too.

(Ok, I'll admit I'm not best pleased with courier companies at the moment,
one of them just having taken three days to find my house on a 'next day'
delivery. On the third day he actually made the effort to find out where it
was rather than just fail to find it in his map book and then give up.)

clive

On Wed, 20 Sep 2006 16:09:50 +0000, Bob Eager wrote:

On Wed, 20 Sep 2006 16:05:14 UTC, Jules
wrote:

On Tue, 19 Sep 2006 17:10:41 +0000, Bob Eager wrote:
The bar code can be printed as many times as you wish. Use it more than
once and only the first letter to be franked will get through without
postage due charges being raised. Seems a solid solution.

That's an interesting one, though - the idea of "item has been delivered"
must presumably be done at some sort of final sorting office - it says
nothing about whether an item gets lost between final sorting office and
final destination. In other words, it's still not without flaws.

I don't think delivery comes into it. It's the 'logical franking' that's
the point.

With conventional stamps, they are cancelled by a 'rubber stamp' and at
that point become non-reusable. This doesn't happen on delivery, but at
the initial sorting office. I would guess that barcode scans (and thus
'logical franking') happen at the same time. Whether the item is
delivered or lost is irrelevant in BOTH cases.

Oh, absolutely. I just mean to say that, as a consumer, there's no real
improvement over the physical stamp process - items still need to be
weighed in order to know correct postage, things can still get lost in the
system etc.

On top of that, from what I've read here, you can't even buy one of these
things as you would a physical stamp and then use it as and when you see
fit, because both the date and the recipient are encoded in the new
version.

I'm sure it's a beneficial system to some people - I just have a feeling
that to many more it'll be less convenient than stamps (so I hope RM
aren't going to remove the ability to use the latter any time soon, or use
it to justify closure of more post offices!)

cheers

J.

On Wed, 20 Sep 2006 19:10:47 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Guy King wrote:
The message
from Stuart contains these words:

Thats why I usually put sellotape over the address if I have printed out a
label,although usually I just write it with a pen .

I've found that if you print labels they slip through the post much
quicker. The machine readers can do the postcode more successfully if it
isn't hand-scrawled.


There are two sorts of people in this world. Those that look for ways to
break human derived systems on the basis that 'they ought to be better';
and those that have better things to do, and print labels on a machine
that another machine can read.

Add to that a third class who expect a system used by humans to also be
operated by humans, rather than by a machine (which, for certain classes
of operation, can have a far higher error rate - handwriting recognition
is undoubtedly one of those categories :-)

In message , Clive
George writes
(Ok, I'll admit I'm not best pleased with courier companies at the
moment, one of them just having taken three days to find my house on a
'next day' delivery. On the third day he actually made the effort to
find out where it was rather than just fail to find it in his map book
and then give up.)

Name and shame


--
geoff

"raden" wrote in message
...
In message , Clive
George writes

(Ok, I'll admit I'm not best pleased with courier companies at the moment,
one of them just having taken three days to find my house on a 'next day'
delivery. On the third day he actually made the effort to find out where
it was rather than just fail to find it in his map book and then give up.)

Name and shame

Amtrak.

cheers,
clive

On 2006-09-21 00:17:09 +0100, "Clive George" said:

"Andy Hall" wrote in message ...
On 2006-09-20 16:47:11 +0100, "Clive George" said:

"Andy Hall" wrote in message ...
Good grief

What a palaver.

This is why professional delivery organisations supply little plastic
stick on envelopes to take the label and any other documents.

I shouldn't need to worry about their logistics issues. It should be
possible to read their specs. for delivery requirements (e.g. weight,
dims, value, origin) write it on the address label, call them and
that's it.

How much do you expect such a service to cost?

It's very competitive in comparison to the cost of me going to the post
office, waiting in a queue, dealing with incompetent morons behind the
counter who don't understand the meaning of the word "service"

You don't half make life complicated for yourself! What proportion of
RM's traffic requires that?

Ever less I would imagine.


The majority of our posting needs are handled by 'take stamp out of
little booklet obtained from the supermarket, apply to envelope, stick
in postbox'. No queueing, not even any need for interaction with
people. Cheap too.

I deliberately use their services as little as possible.

In general I have no need to send letters and the like because I can
achieve the same communication by email or fax.

I don't send printed literature to customers. They receive an email
with a PDF which works far better.

I don't write cheques except under very unusual circumstances.
Financial transactions are handled by BACS, credit card or direct
debit. If I find a supplier is unable or unwilling to deal with any
of these then I will find another.

The only regular use that I make of RM's services is to send copies of
invoices to my accountant once a month by Special Delivery. That's it.

Everything else is handled by overnight couriers, international
couriers and occasionally delivery van services. These have
tracking, accountability and if necessary compensation.


(Ok, I'll admit I'm not best pleased with courier companies at the
moment, one of them just having taken three days to find my house on a
'next day' delivery. On the third day he actually made the effort to
find out where it was rather than just fail to find it in his map book
and then give up.)

OK, so you should be pursuing your supplier for compensation. If you
let it go, then they will think that the service was satisfactory and
take no action. If you inform them, and a reasonable number of others
do as well, then there is an opportunity for improvement or change.
Really there is absolutely no excuse for not being able to find a
delivery address. GPS systems and mobile phones are quite cheap.

On Wed, 20 Sep 2006 21:23:20 GMT, raden wrote:

In message , Guy King
writes
The message
from Stuart contains these words:

Thats why I usually put sellotape over the address if I have printed out a
label,although usually I just write it with a pen .

I've found that if you print labels they slip through the post much
quicker. The machine readers can do the postcode more successfully if it
isn't hand-scrawled.

I discovered how much more expensive a larger than DL env3elope costs to
post now

As a bit of a genealogist I fairly regularly send a sae of C4 size
folded in another C4 envelope with application forms and cheques for
civil registration certificates, and have been hit by this new
charging scheme. Obviously it's nice to get a certificate unfolded -
that's why the C4 envelope. Royal Mail told us that most postage
should cost less, but when I sent mail recently it was received with a
sticker attached "..... On this occasion you have not been surcharged
but in future you may be. Please contact the sender.", so most of my
posting will cost more than hitherto.

If I use a smaller envelope I'll have to be careful of the thickness
limitation...

What puzzles me is that the Royal Mail, as it faces direct
competition, reduces its standards. One wonders whether this is being
imposed by HMG to make "competition" easier for the newcomers.

--
Frank Erskine

Brian Morrison wrote:

Yes, I can. Ensure that the same bar code cannot be printed more than
once by doing the printing from inside a custom application in Java or
possibly something that is downloaded and installed?

*very* bad idea!


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

Brian Morrison wrote:

Thus forcing RM to have a constantly increasing database unless they
have other means of limiting validity.

Like expiring records more than a month old perhaps? Thus even valid
stamps will "time out" if not posted within a resonable time after
purchase.



--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

bof wrote:

Yes, but with the inconvenience on the addressee rather than the sender.


They can refuse to accept it.


Unfortunately 'they' don't know who it's from or what it is until
they've gone to the sorting office, at which point they've already spent
£2.00 on petrol and half an hour of their time, so might as well pay the
1p shortfall + £1.00 fine to get it while they're there anyway.

How is that different any from the current situation when the sender
fails to affix the correct postage?

--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On Thu, 21 Sep 2006 00:41:11 UTC, John Rumm
wrote:

Brian Morrison wrote:

Thus forcing RM to have a constantly increasing database unless they
have other means of limiting validity.

Like expiring records more than a month old perhaps? Thus even valid
stamps will "time out" if not posted within a resonable time after
purchase.

They time out after a day anyway.
--
The information contained in this post is copyright the
poster, and specifically may not be published in, or used by
Avenue Supplies, http://avenuesupplies.co.uk

In uk.d-i-y, Frank Erskine wrote:
As a bit of a genealogist I fairly regularly send a sae of C4 size
folded in another C4 envelope with application forms and cheques for
civil registration certificates, and have been hit by this new
charging scheme. Obviously it's nice to get a certificate unfolded -
that's why the C4 envelope. Royal Mail told us that most postage
should cost less, but when I sent mail recently it was received with a
sticker attached "..... On this occasion you have not been surcharged
but in future you may be. Please contact the sender.", so most of my
posting will cost more than hitherto.

Most of my posting is CDs in jiffy bags. The price has gone down for me.

Also (not connected with the above) I've seen mention in this thread of
dodgy kitchen scales. They needn't be. Modern digital kitchen scales are
perfectly adequate for 99.9% of postage purposes.

--
Mike Barnes

On Wed, 20 Sep 2006 23:24:53 +0000, Jules put finger to keyboard and
typed:


I'm sure it's a beneficial system to some people - I just have a feeling
that to many more it'll be less convenient than stamps (so I hope RM
aren't going to remove the ability to use the latter any time soon, or use
it to justify closure of more post offices!)

I have a feeling that the new system has been introduced as a result
of two different, but complimentary, pressures:

1. Individual users, particularly in rural areas far from a post
office, who want something of the functionality of the existing
SmartStamp product without needing to pay a subscription for the
software.

2. Royal Mail's web development team who have looked at the SmartStamp
product and said "We could write an online version of this that
individuals could use for one-off printing. Wouldn't that be cool?".

Mark
--
Please help a cat in need: http://www.goodge.co.uk/cat/

In uk.d-i-y Mark Goodge wrote:

Also, the Royal mail website has a page giving details of SmartStamps,
and one of the items is about the barcode. It says about the barcode
that:

All information in the postage mark is encoded into a barcode
which read by Royal Mail sorting technology to prevent the
posting of fraudulent or duplicate items.

I'd be surprised if the Royal Mail sorting offices have instant online
communication country wide. If you use the same SmartStamp for
posting items in several different places will they really catch it?

--
Chris Green

On 21 Sep 2006 07:52:42 GMT, put finger to keyboard
and typed:

In uk.d-i-y Mark Goodge wrote:

Also, the Royal mail website has a page giving details of SmartStamps,
and one of the items is about the barcode. It says about the barcode
that:

All information in the postage mark is encoded into a barcode
which read by Royal Mail sorting technology to prevent the
posting of fraudulent or duplicate items.

I'd be surprised if the Royal Mail sorting offices have instant online
communication country wide.

Why not? All it takes is an Internet connection at each office.

If you use the same SmartStamp for
posting items in several different places will they really catch it?

They don't need to catch it every time. They just need to catch it
enough times to make it not worth the risk.

Mark
--
Please help a cat in need: http://www.goodge.co.uk/cat/

In message , John
Rumm writes
bof wrote:

Yes, but with the inconvenience on the addressee rather than the sender.


They can refuse to accept it.
Unfortunately 'they' don't know who it's from or what it is until
they've gone to the sorting office, at which point they've already
spent £2.00 on petrol and half an hour of their time, so might as
well pay the 1p shortfall + £1.00 fine to get it while they're there


How is that different any from the current situation when the sender
fails to affix the correct postage?

I don't know, it seems just the same to me.

--
bof at bof dot me dot uk

In uk.d-i-y Mark Goodge wrote:
On 21 Sep 2006 07:52:42 GMT, put finger to keyboard
and typed:

In uk.d-i-y Mark Goodge wrote:

Also, the Royal mail website has a page giving details of SmartStamps,
and one of the items is about the barcode. It says about the barcode
that:

All information in the postage mark is encoded into a barcode
which read by Royal Mail sorting technology to prevent the
posting of fraudulent or duplicate items.

I'd be surprised if the Royal Mail sorting offices have instant online
communication country wide.

Why not? All it takes is an Internet connection at each office.

Plus a lot of software and databases to be able to match things
appearing on opposite sides of the country quickly.

--
Chris Green

On 21 Sep 2006 09:29:41 GMT, put finger to keyboard
and typed:

In uk.d-i-y Mark Goodge wrote:
On 21 Sep 2006 07:52:42 GMT, put finger to keyboard
and typed:

In uk.d-i-y Mark Goodge wrote:

Also, the Royal mail website has a page giving details of SmartStamps,
and one of the items is about the barcode. It says about the barcode
that:

All information in the postage mark is encoded into a barcode
which read by Royal Mail sorting technology to prevent the
posting of fraudulent or duplicate items.

I'd be surprised if the Royal Mail sorting offices have instant online
communication country wide.

Why not? All it takes is an Internet connection at each office.

Plus a lot of software and databases to be able to match things
appearing on opposite sides of the country quickly.

Any client-server application with a central database can do that. As
a coding exercise, it's trivial. The only problem is what happens when
the connection goes down. But that's solvable by various means, so
it's not a major issue.

Mark
--
Please help a cat in need: http://www.goodge.co.uk/cat/

raden wrote:
In message , Guy King
writes
The message
from Stuart contains these words:

Thats why I usually put sellotape over the address if I have printed
out a
label,although usually I just write it with a pen .

I've found that if you print labels they slip through the post much
quicker. The machine readers can do the postcode more successfully if it
isn't hand-scrawled.

I discovered how much more expensive a larger than DL env3elope costs to
post now

*******s !

pardon - I thought the change over was larger than B5? (and not exactly
a secret)
http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/j...equestid=56324

In message e.net, at
10:30:06 on Wed, 20 Sep 2006, Mark Goodge
remarked:
Take a look at any commerciallly posted letter that
you've received lately, and wonder how Royal Mail manage to avoid the
franking mark being used repeatedly. But, because it's a long-standing
problem, it has a number of long-standing solutions.

The main element of the solution at the sending end was that the
franking machine only produced one "stamp" for each transaction. If you
messed it up (for example, franked the print roller rather than a
letter, it was just tough luck.
--
Roland Perry

On Thu, 21 Sep 2006 11:44:52 +0100, Roland Perry put finger to
keyboard and typed:

In message e.net, at
10:30:06 on Wed, 20 Sep 2006, Mark Goodge
remarked:
Take a look at any commerciallly posted letter that
you've received lately, and wonder how Royal Mail manage to avoid the
franking mark being used repeatedly. But, because it's a long-standing
problem, it has a number of long-standing solutions.

The main element of the solution at the sending end was that the
franking machine only produced one "stamp" for each transaction. If you
messed it up (for example, franked the print roller rather than a
letter, it was just tough luck.

That's only the case with a traditional, pre-paid franking machine.
Other systems allow multiple prints, and then validate after posting.

Mark
--
Please help a cat in need: http://www.goodge.co.uk/cat/

In message , at 00:47:27 on Thu, 21 Sep 2006, Andy
Hall remarked:
The only regular use that I make of RM's services is to send copies of
invoices to my accountant once a month by Special Delivery. That's it.

How come you haven't switched to an accountant who will accept scans of
your invoices by email? That would be a logical part of this crusade you
appear to be indulging in.
--
Roland Perry

In message , at 08:37:57
on Thu, 21 Sep 2006, Mike Barnes remarked:
I've seen mention in this thread of dodgy kitchen scales. They needn't
be. Modern digital kitchen scales are perfectly adequate for 99.9% of
postage purposes.

I have a modern set of non-digital scales. They are adequate to +/- 50g,
which is OK for cooking, but not for posting. Are you saying I should
use up some more of the earth's precious resources upgrading, just
because of the Royal Mail?
--
Roland Perry