OT. New online postage stamps?

[The Natural Philosopher]

I think this is rather cunning...actually.

[john2]

screws up and tears up the envelope. They say there's a fix for this.

john2

[Grunff]

online barcode generation for discount vouchers, gift vouchers etc. for a good few years now. Several of the parcel service companies have also been using it.

So the technology is not at all new, the only new thing is applying it to Royal Mail post.

[Grunff]

You put a new envelope in and print it again?

[Roland Perry]

In message , at 14:01:34 on Tue, 19 Sep 2006, The Natural Philosopher remarked:

I don't quite follow to reference to eBay, as many eBay items won't fit in a postbox, and some sort of proof of posting is often useful. And especially with the new rules (and dodgy kitchen scales) I'd normally want to visit the Post Office anyway to get an item priced.

In the USA they have a better system: a set of scales in an open area at the Post Office so you don't have to join the main queue, and a vending machine with many different denominations of stamp in it. Of course, you then need a "fast drop" scheme if the resulting item doesn't fit a Postbox.

[Christian McArdle]

However, if you had an eBay business selling large numbers of small items, it could be very useful.

Christian.

[manatbandq]

And even that's not new. They've been doing "Smart Stamps" for a while.

MBQ

[manatbandq]

They do in all the POs I've been into in the UK, on the public side of the counter. I've never had a problem going up and weighing things and then joining the back of the queue if I determine I haven't got the correct stamps.

MBQ

[adder1969]

I looked into it but it was a subcription service. I haven't looked yet but the news makes it sound like the service itself is free.

[Guy King]

The message from Grunff contains these words:

Seems reasonable. After all, the whole point of using unique barcodes is so you can't reproduce them fraudulently. Printing it again should be easy.

[Grunff]

With it being browser based, you can print it as many times as you like. The anti-fraud system will have to kick in when two identically-coded packages are scanned through the system.

[Tony Sumner]

(CB25) postcode. Grr!

Tony

[Jules]

Presumably the RM save a bundle on printing and distribution costs, whilst collectively the consumers pay for the ink / printer wear. BBC website doesn't say that the stamps are any cheaper to account for this - anyone know?

I went into the PO recently for that very reason and the person behind the counter drooled for a bit whilst they figured out why someone would want to weigh but not send an item...

Have since found some proper letter-pricing scales that were being thrown out (presumably because the recent changes in the pricing system made them useless) so the dodgy kitchen scales can go back in the cupboard.

[Brian Morrison]

I suspect that it will involve some sort of Java applet that will only print what it is allowed to, the browser's direct printing ability will have to be suspended for this to work.

[Roland Perry]

In message , at 14:39:00 on Tue, 19 Sep 2006, Christian McArdle remarked:

How difficult is it to buy a book of 100 First Class Stamps (if what you are selling is small items)? Much easier (and cheaper) than printing lots of these new thingys onto [presumably] label paper then peeling them off and putting them on the item.

[Roland Perry]

In message , at

06:42:19 on Tue, 19 Sep 2006, [e-mail] remarked:

I've never seen one. There are scales at my local sub-post-office, but they are operated from the "inside", and I'm not even sure that the punter gets to see the weight. You'd also have to shove past the queue to get anywhere near them.

[Mark Goodge]

They're the same price as ordinary stamps.

The process of buying them looks a bit convoluted - you need to enter the recipient address when purchasing, which then forms part of the label that you print. There's no explanation on the site as to why this is necessary, or what happens if you cut that bit off and use the printed stamp part on an envelope which already has a (different) address label. This also means that you can only print off one at a time, which is likely to be a pain if you've got more than one item to send.

Also, they have to be used before the end of the day after they're printed (eg, any printed today have to be posted by the end of tommorrow), so you can't store them up for later use. I can understand why this is the case (it stops people hoarding postage just before a price increase, and presumably they also have the posting date encoded into them so that the PO can know how long the package has been sitting in their system without needing to frank them first), but it adds to the general hassle.

I can see this system being handy for the occasional unusual item, or for people who regularly send small packages by post and have the facility to weigh them accurately at home (such as regular eBay sellers), but I can't see any benefits over simply buying a book of stamps for ordinary letters.

Mark

[Grunff]

No, just tried it - it generates a pdf which you can print as many times as you like.

[Stephen Gower]

It generates a PDF for you to print.

[Mark Goodge]

SmartStamps is an offline, software-based service that's essentially a franking machine without the machine, if you get my drift - it does what franking machines do (as well as having a few other nifty functions such as adddress label printing and mail merge), but allows you to use a computer and your own printer instead of needing separate hardware. This new service is online and web-based, so you don't need any additional software in order to use it.

It's effectively SmartStamps Lite - it's the single envelope option from SmartStamps running standalone in a hosted environment.

Mark