A postal service is vital for a society to function. A couple of things I’ve sent in the past few years: marriage forms to the registry office, returning old drivers’ licenses and passports, sending signed docs to my solicitor when buying a house. Less relevant - birthday cards, thank you cards, xmas cards; I think these things have a “personal touch” value which is lost in an email.
I think the prepaid business envelopes make sense when you are receiving post but private individuals need to be able to send things back without having bespoke, bulk postage deals with Royal Mail. Have noticed that employment contracts are now done with e-signatures if not in person these days but many legal docs require the same piece of paper to be signed.
Stop using your own personal experiences to talk for an entire nation of people, I send my sister postcards all the time and even buy specific stamps for them.
The mail volume is decreasing quite quickly though. Letter volume has decreased by 65% since 2010 and most of those letters are probably not from private individuals.
The national postal company recently decided to only empty postal boxes every other weekday instead of every weekday to the boxes often being empty.
Before that they also decided to only deliver mail every other weekday instead of every weekday. First class parcels are still delivered every weekday.
Sending letters is uncommon so I’m just surprised that there is a black market for stamps.
Also a lot of people who do use computers! Lots of people selling their stuff of eBay or Etsy will be sending things in the post. Way less letters than the old days, but way more parcels (I think).
And yes people send way less letters now.
Our national postal company has been scaling back on letters and normal posts for quite some time now. Because suprise suprise no one sends letters anymore except different governments and even then there are now electronic ways to receive those letters.
My postal agency dislikes when you send objects that aren’t small in letters for example keys. The odds are quite large that the automatic sorting machines will tear the letter open and/or the letter will get stuck in the machinery.
They take pictures of the letters as they come in from all angles, and then a computer algorithm builds a 3D structure of the letter so they know how big it is and which machines it can and can’t go through if it’s too big to go through a particular machine it gets redirected to another process. Also they have metal detectors so the keys would be detected right away.
Maybe in the '90s this was a problem with large items in envelopes but not anymore because they can detect it before it gets anywhere near the problem machine.
They have a whole list of things you can and can’t post and one of the things you can post is live insects so obviously they’re not mangling everything to an auto sorter.
Lol, is the UK like that? Where only computer people have figured out SMS, email, chat apps, telephone and so on?
Here the only letters that actual people send are the very occasional Christmas/birthday card and maybe an event invitation for something like a wedding. No one writes letters that actually tell something important. I can’t see why anyone would bother with pirating stamps.
Hell we can even send letters without buying a stamp, we can buy a postage in an app which gives us a code to write on the letter.
They still sell stamps to people? What for?
To send things in the post?
You do that in the UK?
We do absolutely buy a fuck ton of shit online and post some parcels here and there, but actual letters are extremely rare nowadays.
And I don’t think anyone uses stamps for parcels. Not sure if that’s even possible.
Pretty much everyone uses prepaid boxes or a printed label like companies do.
A postal service is vital for a society to function. A couple of things I’ve sent in the past few years: marriage forms to the registry office, returning old drivers’ licenses and passports, sending signed docs to my solicitor when buying a house. Less relevant - birthday cards, thank you cards, xmas cards; I think these things have a “personal touch” value which is lost in an email.
I think the prepaid business envelopes make sense when you are receiving post but private individuals need to be able to send things back without having bespoke, bulk postage deals with Royal Mail. Have noticed that employment contracts are now done with e-signatures if not in person these days but many legal docs require the same piece of paper to be signed.
Stop using your own personal experiences to talk for an entire nation of people, I send my sister postcards all the time and even buy specific stamps for them.
The mail volume is decreasing quite quickly though. Letter volume has decreased by 65% since 2010 and most of those letters are probably not from private individuals.
The national postal company recently decided to only empty postal boxes every other weekday instead of every weekday to the boxes often being empty.
Before that they also decided to only deliver mail every other weekday instead of every weekday. First class parcels are still delivered every weekday.
Sending letters is uncommon so I’m just surprised that there is a black market for stamps.
People that live in the world outside a computer. They send birthday cards and things. And write with pens.
Step outside, sometimes it’s quite pleasant.
Also a lot of people who do use computers! Lots of people selling their stuff of eBay or Etsy will be sending things in the post. Way less letters than the old days, but way more parcels (I think).
Can you send parcels with stamps?
And yes people send way less letters now. Our national postal company has been scaling back on letters and normal posts for quite some time now. Because suprise suprise no one sends letters anymore except different governments and even then there are now electronic ways to receive those letters.
You can, yes. Also a lot of the time the things you’re sending are small enough to fit in a letter or large letter.
My postal agency dislikes when you send objects that aren’t small in letters for example keys. The odds are quite large that the automatic sorting machines will tear the letter open and/or the letter will get stuck in the machinery.
They take pictures of the letters as they come in from all angles, and then a computer algorithm builds a 3D structure of the letter so they know how big it is and which machines it can and can’t go through if it’s too big to go through a particular machine it gets redirected to another process. Also they have metal detectors so the keys would be detected right away.
Maybe in the '90s this was a problem with large items in envelopes but not anymore because they can detect it before it gets anywhere near the problem machine.
They have a whole list of things you can and can’t post and one of the things you can post is live insects so obviously they’re not mangling everything to an auto sorter.
Maybe, I was just thinking about a video our postal company released a few years ago that said what I said.
Royal Mail list the thicknesses that are allowed, but they all go in the same letterbox so I assume their machines can handle it
Lol, is the UK like that? Where only computer people have figured out SMS, email, chat apps, telephone and so on?
Here the only letters that actual people send are the very occasional Christmas/birthday card and maybe an event invitation for something like a wedding. No one writes letters that actually tell something important. I can’t see why anyone would bother with pirating stamps.
Hell we can even send letters without buying a stamp, we can buy a postage in an app which gives us a code to write on the letter.
Money.