I think the U.S. Postal Service is great. Sure, there are occasional mistakes, like the one that resulted in some of our mail still being delivered to my sister's house five years after a temporary forwarding order expired. That is an exception, however; for the most part, the USPS does its job exceedingly well, I think. I'm sure my good feelings are in large measure due to the workers at our local post office, who happen to be an amazingly friendly and helpful crew. Folks go out of their way to do business at our post office. It was one of those helpful clerks who told me, after our forwarding debacle, never to forward or even hold mail if at all possible. The very best vacation plan is still to have a friend check your mailbox for you.
Thus when a friend posted Going Postal, a long and negative article about the USPS, I barely bothered to skim it. And yet my eye was caught by this information about the Swiss postal system, which I find most intriguing. (The above-mentioned excellent clerks also told me that the Swiss mail system is the best in Europe, if not the world.)The Swiss Post is a world leader in postal business-model innovation with operations in 16 countries across three continents. Despite its home-country’s population of only seven million, it generates $9 billion in revenue and earns an impressive 10 percent profit. It has aggressively rolled-up, partnered on or internally launched a variety of Internet-ready businesses that offer services such as document imaging, electronic document signature, electronic postage that costs less than paper stamps, and an international shipping network. Its annual report states that it generates 20 percent of its revenues from outside Switzerland. It is still 100 percent government owned, and its profits go to the general fund, but it acts more like a private corporation responsible to shareholders.
That’s not all. The Swiss know that paper mail volumes will continue to decline and that the Internet isn’t going away. So the forward-looking Swiss Post has been the first in Europe to introduce a service to deliver paper-originating postal mail via the Internet, called Swiss Post Box.
Swiss Post Box is powered by technology from Seattle-based Earth Class Mail. The service emails multi-sided color images of incoming envelopes and parcels to their recipients as soon as the mail reaches the first sorting center nearest where it was collected by the post office. While the mail and parcels are held in an automated temporary cache, recipients decide which mail pieces they want to have opened and scanned to PDF inside an ultra-secure scanning center at the Post Office (where confidential documents for Swiss banks are also scanned), and which are to be delivered physically to the address on the envelope, redirected to another address, shredded, recycled or archived for safekeeping. Three-quarters of the mail ends up leaving that first sorting center bound straight for recycling, either after being scanned to PDF or discarded unopened by customer’s choice. The energy savings implications are obvious.
I thought the scanning system was interesting. I wonder if the mail then takes longer to get to you, since they have to wait for you to "ok" it before you get it?
Maybe you can "whitelist" certain senders so they don't have to scan it every time, and you don't have to check certain pieces all of the time.
It seems to me that most of our mail is regular stuff, bills and things that we need. And the weekly flyers and things that we read some of them, and skim others.
hmm. That's because I recycle most of the junk before you even see it. (: There is less junk at our new address (for now.)
Heather = Swiss Post Box for Jon
I was wondering that, but I do get the mail myself sometimes...
That's why I said "most". Also, maybe the junk is a bit more interesting here, like mail to the deceased former owner of the house.
