[HN Gopher] Postzegelcode
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Postzegelcode
Author : tdeck
Score : 127 points
Date : 2024-06-30 19:17 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| thih9 wrote:
| What happens when I share my code with others? I.e. when there
| are multiple letters with the same code found in an outgoing post
| box?
| consp wrote:
| Only the first one would be legal and the recipients would have
| to pay for the postal cost of the next one. If you put the
| origin (postal code plus home number is enough) on the back you
| get a payment proposal in your mailbox.
| Boltgolt wrote:
| IIRC the first envelope scanned at a sorting facility
| invalidates the postzegelcode immediately, any envelopes using
| it after that will be handled like they had no postzegel at all
| (receiver has to pay)
| OptionOfT wrote:
| What if you mail 2 and they are scanned at the same time and
| the database isn't up to date yet?
| dc96 wrote:
| Seems strange they would design a system that could scan
| faster than they could process the DB, no? I assume there's
| some queue in between. But the real answer is probably
| just: multiple scans happen for the same piece of mail.
| Eventually, one or both of them will be marked as due for
| payment. The question then becomes, was it worth saving the
| postage cost for what is potentially a much costlier
| penalty?
| contravariant wrote:
| You may find they will refuse service to you for
| unspecified reasons.
| molf wrote:
| For all mail except the first, the same thing that happens if
| you send a letter with no postage: the sender will receive a
| request to pay after delivery. If the sender is unknown the
| recipient will receive a request to pay (which can be
| appealed).
| miunau wrote:
| I mail a fair amount of physical media using the
| postzegelcode. If you put a return address, PostNL just
| returns the letter with a sticker on it saying the postage
| was not enough. They won't deliver it.
| lancebeet wrote:
| If they deliver the letter to the return address, what
| prevents you from writing the target address as the return
| address and getting it delivered for free?
| hananova wrote:
| They know approximately the area the return address
| should be at, and they also know who used the app to buy
| the code.
| cedilla wrote:
| It's also some kind of fraud in most jurisdictions, or
| subject to an extra fee if discovered.
|
| Germany's new stamps aren't stamped any more - a QR code
| gets scanned and logged instead - so people thought they
| were lucky when they received unstamped letters and
| decided to re-use the stamp. They got hit with a fine.
| 6510 wrote:
| In my experience it will be delivered and the sender will be
| politely asked to pay for it. They don't have to pay for it but
| it's rude not to.
| dmurray wrote:
| > They don't have to pay for it but it's rude not to.
|
| Given that this is the Netherlands, that sounds like "they
| won't pay for it".
| miunau wrote:
| Hmm. When was this? I've had the code read wrong a few times
| and they just have returned the letter. Then I've gotten a
| refund for the postage through their customer service.
| skrebbel wrote:
| It works real well for people like me who don't send physical
| mail often. Just pay online and write the code onto an envelope
| with a pen.
|
| I love the simplicity.
| berkes wrote:
| For me too.
|
| I used to have a sheet of stamps lying around. Often only one
| was used. Then those would "expire" after years, in the sense
| that (yearly?) tariff-increasments would invalidate the "now
| too cheap" ones. I then had to buy additional special ones to
| compensate for the price.
|
| Digital is the way forward and this is a perfect example of
| simple digital to analog. It works fantastic.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Generally there are also non-denominated "forever" stamps
| available whose real value will remain the same despite
| changing rates.
| saghm wrote:
| I assume you're talking about the US? I thought that
| nowadays all US postal stamps are "forever" ones as of
| several years ago, but maybe it's just the post offices
| around where I've lived that don't bother selling the
| "temporary" ones.
| Sharlin wrote:
| I'm talking worldwide (I only have first-hand experience
| about Finland, but they seem common according to
| Wikipedia)
| ohmyiv wrote:
| > maybe it's just the post offices around where I've
| lived that don't bother selling the "temporary" ones.
|
| Are we talking about US? If so, it might be your office.
| The one near me tries to sell me all kinds when I
| actually go in to do stuff. USPS still sells varying rate
| stamps ranging 1 cent additional postage to $30 priority
| mail express stamps.
| consp wrote:
| The old stamps with a monetary value you would have to "add"
| value by adding a stamp if the cost increased (and people
| were adding 5ct coins as a result). The new ones (1/2
| numbered) do not expire and keep their relative value. [1]
|
| 1. https://www.postnl.nl/klantenservice/tarieven-
| postzegels/gel...
| theginger wrote:
| Ok now I get it. Somehow despite all the detail the Wikipedia
| article doesn't seem to capture the point of it.
|
| This does lead me to wonder what happens when something gets
| held up and it's an older code (sir) but it checks out.
| timvdalen wrote:
| You (if you wrote a return address) or the receiver (if you
| didn't) get a bill that you can either pay or ignore
| alkonaut wrote:
| I wonder if any of the 9 characters are checksum (the example
| math indicates none is), or if the validation scan allows a
| search without one of the characters e.g AB1?3XYZ in case of
| sloppy writing.
|
| If not, then the system relies on people being able to write 9
| consecutive legible characters. With postal codes and addresses
| it's less fragile because the context helps disambiguate (a last
| name helps a postman tell if a street address has a 7 or 1)
| dark-star wrote:
| Since there is already a framework for returning letters with
| invalid/unreadable/damaged addresses, I'd guess the overhead of
| returning wrongly-written postzegelcodes is negligible.
| molf wrote:
| In the case of sloppy writing, the letter will be ejected from
| the sorting machine and reviewed by a human (same process as
| for illegible addresses).
|
| If a human cannot find a match then the sender will receive a
| request to pay for the missing postage (presuming the code is
| invalid). If the sender is unknown the recipient will receive a
| payment request (which can be appealed).
|
| Speaking from experience you would normally want the letter to
| arrive at its destination so I take care to write the code very
| clearly. I imagine this is true for most people.
| kr2 wrote:
| You massively underestimate the care or thought some
| Americans give to anything including legibly writing an
| address; very cool look into how USPS handles that situation
| (link free to read without subscription)
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/04/us/where-mail-with-
| illegi...
| pacifika wrote:
| I wonder why they wouldn't take the address at the time of
| payment so it's not needed on the actual letter. That seems more
| convenient. Backwards compatibility?
| Kiala wrote:
| Or, you know, the mail man?
| Sharlin wrote:
| Clearly mailmen would just be expected to use their phones to
| decode the addresses on demand, because everything is
| supposed to require a phone and an internet connection these
| days.
|
| A bit more realistically, the address could be printed on a
| sticker by the sorting machine, the way address redirections
| are handled.
| dfox wrote:
| For a mail/parcel carrier relabeling anything is (somewhat
| surprisingly) a significant added cost (and there is not
| that much of margin), so they will do everything in their
| power to not do that unless absolutely necessary.
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| PostNL relabels approximately all parcels addressed to me
| (I almost always have to change either the delivery date
| or location to one convenient to me), completely free of
| charge.
| sodality2 wrote:
| If mail gets lost for longer than 5 days, it won't be known who
| it goes to, since these codes are reused.
| pacifika wrote:
| Then you can write any code down and wait 5 days to send it
| afro88 wrote:
| Probably the sender has to be linked to the current code
| for it to be accepted
| t0mas88 wrote:
| You can, but an invalid code is treated as if there was no
| postage stamp on it at all. So your letter will be returned
| or the receiver is asked to pay.
|
| A code that's past the validity date is probably considered
| an invalid code as well.
| ale42 wrote:
| Not sure about NL, but in Switzerland you can buy those codes
| with an SMS. I guess many people want to do it quickly, and
| they might have already written the address of the recipient.
| So just getting a code it much faster, you don't have to enter
| the address somewhere.
| dfox wrote:
| When we started our own parcel service in 2015 we thought that
| everything that is needed on the actual parcel is the unique ID
| of the parcel (generated by a system reminiscent of twitter's
| snowflake and intentionally printed with digits shuffled around
| as to increase the chance of the prefix being unique). Pretty
| quickly we found out that various operational concerns need
| additional data on the label, with routing info (for manual
| pre-sorting on the depots) and recipients phone number (the
| courier locates the parcel in the trunk by that) being pretty
| important.
|
| Also, cool design of the label is one thing, but on both laser
| and thermal printers the resolution repeatability is much
| better in the direction perpendicular to the paper travel, so
| you do not want to do cute design things with vertical
| barcodes. And you want to have a huge margin below the barcode
| if it is aligned to the bottom of the label as some printers
| will occasionally get misaligned and part of the barcode will
| get on the next label... and the imaging scanners in Zebra
| terminals will happily read half a milimetre high code-128
| barcode instead of the correct one on the bottom of the label.
| gglnx wrote:
| Germany has this too: #PORTO and the code.
| https://www.deutschepost.de/de/m/mobile-briefmarke.html (and
| valid for 3 years after you bought it)
| ahartmetz wrote:
| Cool, I didn't know that. I still have a few self-printed QR
| code-type stamps. #PORTO is a nice option.
| intothemild wrote:
| Same here in Norway.
| lucb1e wrote:
| It is only purchasable if you install their software, can't
| just buy such a stamp on the website if I'm reading the page
| correctly?
|
| I seem to remember Deutsche Post also had a thing you could
| just write on the letter, or maybe it was DHL's parcel service
| instead. Those were purchased simply online like any other
| product/service and, after paying, it told you what to write in
| the corner. Or maybe I misremember and they only have this
| system where you can take the pdf to a parcel shop and have
| them print your label.
|
| Edit: found the "print in store" option, it's not for letters
| but for parcels https://www.dhl.de/de/privatkunden/pakete-
| versenden/angebot-... "Don't have a printer? Let your stamp be
| printed at [places]."
| cedilla wrote:
| There used to be a premium number you could send an SMS to.
| It was more expensive than a normal stamp to cover for the
| expensive billing.
|
| "Handyporto" replaced this and that's probably also why you
| can't buy it on the website. Deutsche Post probably can't
| conceive of people who don't own a printer so they heavily
| advertise "Internetmarke" which requires one.
| fhackenberger wrote:
| There's a very similar system in Germany with a hashtag code from
| Deutsche Post since 2020, called #PORTO:
|
| https://www.deutschepost.de/de/m/mobile-briefmarke.html
| vitplister wrote:
| This is available in Sweden as well
| https://kopfrakt.postnord.se/service/digitalt-frimarke
| timvdalen wrote:
| Works pretty well, definitely less work than having to go to a
| store to buy a single stamp whenever I need to send a letter
| atemerev wrote:
| Also works in Switzerland.
| banish-m4 wrote:
| Americans ought to petition USPS to do this. It sounds extremely
| convenient because it doesn't require a Pitney Bowes printer or
| printing anything from Endicia.
|
| PS: Are those tiny, cheap, desktop laser engravers powerful
| enough to "print" on paper without starting a fire?
| tichiian wrote:
| > PS: Are those tiny, cheap, desktop laser engravers powerful
| enough to "print" on paper without starting a fire?
|
| Yes, you can modulate their power. It usually takes a few
| experiments if the manual doesn't have a material table.
| fullspectrumdev wrote:
| A similar system (that I have not used yet) has been adopted in
| Ireland, and apparently it works really well?
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