The Royal Mail, the UK’s postage service, has started a service which allows users to buy and print off barcodes which act as stamps. These barcodes cost the price of standard postage (32p for a first class stamp). It also supports Special Delivery, airmail, recorder, second class, and many other different types of postage. Sounds great? There’s one downside I can see: you must use the stamp within a day of purchase.
Using the service seems simple enough, though I must admit I have not yet. It appears to be a case of buying the postage (through a pre-paid account, credit or debit card), printing the stamp (along with the address) out and then posting it. It seems that the barcode is only valid for one address, which you specify when you purchase it; the product doesn’t give you the flexibility of stamps, and it also requires you to use the barcode within a day (as I mentioned above).
Though the product has many disadvantages, I’d personally find it easier to print a stamp than to go to a shop, or post office, in order to purchase one. Also, I expect the way in which it prints the address and stamp to be time saving for eBay, and Amazon Marketplace, sellers (and buyers who use cheques!).
If the service was to make improvements, such as loss of the time restriction, it might replace stamps in a decade or so. Naturally, this wouldn’t be a good thing in many ways as it would result in the closure of post offices. I see the use of this product being minimal, partially due to the problems I’ve mentioned.
Tags: royal mail, post, mail, package, packaging, web2.0, web 2.0, web2, web 2, postage
Big flaw with this service is that once you purchase the postage you are told you have to post it at a post office, as it is a tracked product. Madness. Still, the refund functionality seems to be easy to use once you find this out.
These days everything goes through Emails, who cares about snail mails
What was that thing called, was it E-mail I think
Very nice to know this though, its pretty cool!
It’s a very good idea. I hope the french postal service will launch it in the future
While I can see the practical aspect of it, especially if they get rid of the time restriction, I think it would be sad if these came to replace stamps. I feel we see enough barcodes on a daily basis on other products.
- Mathieu.