UK question: In addition to the postcode, why not have your email address added to the address label of?

Question

letters and parcels sent to you.
(This information would probably need to be added to a scannable barcode which can easily be printed by the sender from a website)

Then the person who has the email address could specify a destination on a website where all their letters are to be delivered, such as their workplace.

This would cut down, and eventually eliminate the need for time-consuming daily postal rounds in residential areas, and open the postal market effectively to competition, thus eliminating the negative influence of postal unions on this service.

Jamand: I take your point, but the vast majority of spam comes from a small number of people, and having your email address on every letter sent to you is not going to increase this much.
Or you could have a second email address for this purpose.

Jonathan: The point is that there are far fewer places of work than residential addresses. So the postie would only have to deliver the mail once to that location. It would also make it economic to have more than one postal worker from different companies delivering to companies at different times, hence competition.

You details on the web site would be held securely - only staff can access them.

Answer 1

Oh! YEAH! THAT WOULD BE FANTASTIC - can you imagine all the spam then - bad enough now without having your email spread across the Post Office labels.

Answer 2

I don't know why you limit this question just to UK citizens.

Regardless, your statement that "You [sic] details on the web site would be held securely - only staff can access them." is irrelevant, considering the increasing amount of identity theft in the world, including from that of supposedly secure government facilities.

You seem to have put a lot of thought into this, so, I'll say the following with all due respect: It's absurd. For one thing, you have not considered the chaos that would occur when someone changes their e-mail address but forgets to tell the post about it? Furthermore, many e-mail addresses are cryptic and easily misspelled or misunderstood, such that one person's, "[e-mail]" may be misconstrued as "[e-mail]". It's one thing to misspell a well-known street name, or even give a wrong number (e.g., 123 Main St versus 321 Mane St), which an intelligent postal clerk may be able to rectify, easily, but it's a completely different story with e-mail addresses.

Let's face it, the only thing that postal (snail) mail and e-mail have in common is the word "address". The concept of using one for the other is like the difference between apples and rutabagas! ;)

"A" for effort, though! Now, go do your homework before I call your parents! ;)

Answer 3

Eh? You'd still need someone to deliver the physical mail. Besides, do you realise what placing your email and postal address on a website does in terms of increasing spam and junk mail? We're talking astronomical levels of the shite!

Hold on, reading your question again about the workplace delivery... not everyone has a workplace, also I wouldn't want all and sundry at work knowing how much mail I'm getting, parcels etc, seeing where it's from (co-workers are incredibly nosey!), not to mention having to cart it all back home, and I don't think every boss would appreciate having a van load of mail dumped at his door every morning, especially for large companies.

In my opinion it's just not workable.

Answer 4

Perhaps you would like to fork out the money to pay for all the additional workload that you would like all the postmen & postwomen to take on?

Also the additional expense of new computers for every employee.

Do you realise that a single round can involve deliverying 1,000s of letters a day?

P.S. Perhaps you should also look at the way Alan Leighton is fostering a bullying culure within Royal Mail. If you think that breaking the law is right, then please move to the Q down the end of the hallway.

Just my 2p worth

Answer 5

Great idea (I think not) Do you really want everybody to know you have a live address? Lets us give out our date of births and bank account details as well.....