Changing house name ( OT).

[Owain]

But they can't enclose a fiver in an email - at least not in a form that can be spent easily by a child at the local shop.

Owain

[Andy Hall]

Sure they can. At least two ways

- The child has a bank or building society account and the money can be transferred to that.

- Prepaid card. These can be set up once and topped up by granny or anyone else.

Apart from the money given, there are several educational experiences as well, which make the whole exercise much better than sending a fiver. This is all before one considers the security risk of sending cash in the post:

- During the lifetime of most under 18s today, use of cash will continue to decline and may even disappear so learning about the use of card transactions will be essential and the earlier the better

- The local shop may not be accepting card payments today. The child consumer can learn about market choice and buy from those that do. If it encourages the local shop to take steps towards being cashless, all to the good.

- Visiting a building society, queuing for half an hour because they pretend to be banks but have no clue about customer service and deciding early in life not to deal with them in later life

- Visiting a bank branch, discovering that they are almost as bad as building societies, getting the cash from a machine anyway and wondering what the purpose for the branch is anyway. During their lifetime, they will visit mockup ones in theme parks just like the Victorian sweetie shops are there today.

[Frank Erskine]

... all reducing the 'personal choice' element...

[Andy Hall]

Different personal choice. I found dozens of different products with different offerings and brandings:

- Pink ones with unicorns

- Engerland ones with flags and footballers

- Sir Richard Branson's offering (he never misses opportunities)

- Even one called Johnny Cash (I suppose that older teenagers might like to use these for condom purchase).

[Lobster]

Is it just me, or does he remind anyone else of Fred Pontin's "Book early!" TV ads of about 30 years ago?

David

[Graeme]

You are moving the goal posts - the point of the discussion was the comparatively excellent service RM provides, in spite of the built in handicaps which include the requirement to deliver anywhere, for the same price. A requirement not applicable to the competition. Yes, of course the law can be changed, but, at the time of writing, it has not been.

I didn't use Minitel, but did use Prestel extensively, and although it was revolutionary at the time, it was S-L-O-W. When was that? 1970s?

I'll archive that post for twenty years :-)

No-one gave a thought about introducing computers, home PCs, the Internet, modems or broadband, but that does not mean that everyone is capable of using them, any more than introducing motorised transport automatically made everyone capable of driving.

Let us return to your motorised transport theme. You would be happy for anyone and everyone to have access to such transport, without any form of training? You would expect anyone to be able to climb behind the wheel of a vehicle, and intuitively know how to drive? No, you would not. Ordinary people have no more idea about computers than they have about driving. Instruction is required - there was no mention of free instruction, or spoon feeding.

[JohnW]

Because it used to use more parts of the installed infrastructure so the cost of providing the long-distance service was higher. It could have been cross-charged onto those making local calls to provide a uniform tariff but, way back then, it was considered to be a premium service, originally requiring human intervention to assist with the routing of the call.

Because the local letter is probably often routed via Lands End :-) Here, everything goes via Glasgow, even if for the next street... Some "process guru" has determined it better to write one procedure for everything rather than bother to add the extra page to deal with local routing. :-)

[Andy Hall]

There is something about him that makes me feel distinctly uncomfortable...

[Andy Hall]

Nope - just discussing the subject in the broadest sense.

Compared with what? The word "excellent" could only be used for levels of comparison approaching zero.

A simple enough matter

That was because of the systems running it. Minitel was perfectly fine.

It's a pretty safe bet. Paper based mail in comparison with electronic communication is largely already irrelevant.

Exactly. As they increasingly become the only thing available people will either learn or won't be able to communicate and do other things. It isn't going to alter the march of technology.

No. *Instruction* isn't required. *Learning* is.

Actually one can use the driving analogy to a limited extent.

The requirement, in order to drive on the public roads is to pass a prescribed test. There is no requirement to go to a driving school for instructor based training, although many people do. Other people go out supervised by someone with a license, while others with access to private land can drive around on their own and teach themselves if they so choose.

[Tony Williams]

If it's the same one, we used to call him "The Man with the Pointy Finger".

"Used to" because I got so p'd off with the ustoppable flood of Viking junkmail.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Eh? I post a letter or small package in the box at the end of my road and my brother in the north of Scotland gets it the next day. No other service currently can match that for convenience and cost. And I'll bet non will ever offer public post boxes. Similarly for smaller parcels using the RM service rather than Parcel Post. To take one to my local post office easy

- not so to the nearest carrier's depot. Also the nearest carrier to me only allows payment by cheque to non account customers. They're really out to provide a service...;-)

[Andy Hall]

I order something from the U.S. and the supplier sends it by USPS. It arrives at the Mount Pleasant sorting office 3 days later.

I get a card from RM *nearly three weeks* later wanting payment for VAT and wanting identity by credit card or equivalent in order to receive my property. They won't deliver.

I have to go to the post office and stand for nearly half an hour in the pouring rain. They use credit cards for ID but won't accept for payment. They can't explain why they can't take payment on line and then deliver or better still invoice afterwards. Overall, the exercise takes more than an hour and has an opportunity cost of more than £100.

No other service matches that for inconvenience and high cost.

Actually Fedex do in the U.S.

The only thing I find them just about viable to do is to send documents to my accountant a couple of times a month.

I just call them and they show up a couple of hours later and collect. That has by far the lowest cost.

I have accounts with most of them so no problem there.

[Peter Parry]

They would probably operate somewhat quicker if they did.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Weird. I've bought several items from the US that involved duty payable and not had this problem.

[Andy Hall]

If there had been duty as opposed to just VAT or the amount of VAT had been in the hundreds of pounds and it had been the first time, I wouldn't have minded quite so much. That was certainly the last time they do it to me.

All suppliers are now checked as to who they will use for shipment. If there's a choice, I will choose the non-RM option. If there isn't and they don't want to agree to one, the business goes elsewhere and I tell the supplier why.

As to the courier firms, I receive regular shipments and both DHL and Fedex invoice me for the import VAT after delivery of the goods. Quite often this amounts to a few £000 of VAT but never any issues. Generally they get paid in 14-30 days. It isn't unreasonable to expect that level of service.

[Owain]

I'm all for early educational experiences, but when you're five years old nothing beats a nice crisp fiver.

Well, I don't know. Maybe today's five-year-olds turn their noses up at anythign that doesn't have an MP3 player in it.

When I was a child the local branch always had a christmas tree with Quality Street sweets underneath.

Owain

[Owain]

There is if you want to ride a motorbike.

Owain

[Andy Hall]

Yep.

.. and the it that your mum didn't tell you was that the bank manager charged customers for them.....

[Andy Hall]

Yes, but who would want to do that?

[Graeme]

In message , JohnW writes

It is true. Anything posted at my office goes to the nearest main sorting office, 50 miles away, and ,if local, comes back the next morning. It would certainly avoid that journey, if post collected within my area were sorted locally. Two potential problems. Firstly, there is absolutely no machinery here for sorting, and no-one to sort. Additional staff are expensive. Secondly, if the outgoing mail were delayed, that which was going further afield would miss the trucks or planes going south.