4 ms·

That would only work if all post-services would work together. Otherwise it would still be relayed to your redirection-service first, where it receives a new ad

That would only work if all post-services would work together. Otherwise it would still be relayed to your redirection-service first, where it receives a new address-label and gets send out again. I think those services exist in some countries, but not from postal services themself, so delivery-time is still rather slow.

nybble41 8y ago
> That would only work if all post-services would work together. That's the idea: the redirection would be handled by the carriers, not some third party. In place of the current system of (a) scan address; (b) route package; (c) deliver package the process would be (a) scan recipient ID; (b) translate ID to address; (c) route package; (d) deliver package. The address lookup should be completely automated and introduce no discernable additional latency in the mail delivery. It could even be implemented as a special case of the address normalization step carriers already perform.
- slightwinder 8y ago
  What I mean is, in many countries there all are third-parties, because there is no monopoly on postal services anymore. So they must cooperate in some way and share the redirection-database. And this means implementing this would be very very complicate and take a long time, because companies are not very eager for cooperation until some strong reason exists. And this feature, as nice as it would be to have, is not really a strong reason for cooperation. In the first place there is not even enough data to know whether the huge investment would be justified.
  - nybble41 8y ago
    Don't these private carriers already share address databases, or outsource address lookup to third parties with incentives to find the right location for any valid address? Adding a level of indirection to that existing system wouldn't take very much effort. Or do you have one address for UPS deliveries and a different address for FedEx deliveries? (Substitute local carrier names as appropriate.) While that's more work—and pointlessly complex IMHO—you'd just need to set up one ID per carrier and give the correct ID, as opposed to the carrier-specific address.
    - slightwinder 8y ago
      I don't think they share any information, or maintain address-databases. Usually there are official geodata (maps, postal codes) and customers normally don't report back their own data to the government. Anyway, logistic of postal sercice is highly optimized and well defined, and changing anything is not as simple as hacking some script somewhere.
      - nybble41 8y ago
        If they can't easily implement something as simple as a mapping from IDs to addresses, that seems less like "highly optimized and well defined" and more like "inflexible, cobbled-together mess". I don't doubt that what they're doing works well for the situations they've encountered in the past, but situations change and they need to be able to adapt. Anyway, a shortcut to implementing indirection for these less-organized postal services you're describing would be to look up the recipient's ID when the parcel first enters the system and affix a label with the full address. That way the sender doesn't need to know the address and everything else about the delivery can stay the same.
        slightwinder 8y ago
        Highly optimized and well defined solutions are by definition inflexible. Because they are the result of removing everthing which is not relevant for the task. If you are a company handling thousand of letters per minute, then you don't have any reason to be flexible, because the task does not change between the iterations. I mean we are talking here about industrial level of optimization, not some dude in his small office stamping his three letters a day. Companies on such level optimize everything from highest to lowest levels, because any optimization can make a difference of millions of whatever currency they use. In that scale, nothing is simple, because everything can become expensive on the high run.
        nybble41 8y ago
        > Highly optimized and well defined solutions are by definition inflexible. Because they are the result of removing everthing which is not relevant for the task. Only if you don't consider flexibility part of the task, which is rather short-sighted in today's world. Maybe postal services could afford to be inflexible once, but those days are long past.

nybble41 8y ago

> That would only work if all post-services would work together. That's the idea: the redirection would be handled by the carriers, not some third party. In place of the current system of (a) scan address; (b) route package; (c) deliver package the process would be (a) scan recipient ID; (b) translate ID to address; (c) route package; (d) deliver package. The address lookup should be completely automated and introduce no discernable additional latency in the mail delivery. It could even be implemented as a special case of the address normalization step carriers already perform.

slightwinder 8y ago
What I mean is, in many countries there all are third-parties, because there is no monopoly on postal services anymore. So they must cooperate in some way and share the redirection-database. And this means implementing this would be very very complicate and take a long time, because companies are not very eager for cooperation until some strong reason exists. And this feature, as nice as it would be to have, is not really a strong reason for cooperation. In the first place there is not even enough data to know whether the huge investment would be justified.
- nybble41 8y ago
  Don't these private carriers already share address databases, or outsource address lookup to third parties with incentives to find the right location for any valid address? Adding a level of indirection to that existing system wouldn't take very much effort. Or do you have one address for UPS deliveries and a different address for FedEx deliveries? (Substitute local carrier names as appropriate.) While that's more work—and pointlessly complex IMHO—you'd just need to set up one ID per carrier and give the correct ID, as opposed to the carrier-specific address.
  - slightwinder 8y ago
    I don't think they share any information, or maintain address-databases. Usually there are official geodata (maps, postal codes) and customers normally don't report back their own data to the government. Anyway, logistic of postal sercice is highly optimized and well defined, and changing anything is not as simple as hacking some script somewhere.
    - nybble41 8y ago
      If they can't easily implement something as simple as a mapping from IDs to addresses, that seems less like "highly optimized and well defined" and more like "inflexible, cobbled-together mess". I don't doubt that what they're doing works well for the situations they've encountered in the past, but situations change and they need to be able to adapt. Anyway, a shortcut to implementing indirection for these less-organized postal services you're describing would be to look up the recipient's ID when the parcel first enters the system and affix a label with the full address. That way the sender doesn't need to know the address and everything else about the delivery can stay the same.
      - slightwinder 8y ago
        Highly optimized and well defined solutions are by definition inflexible. Because they are the result of removing everthing which is not relevant for the task. If you are a company handling thousand of letters per minute, then you don't have any reason to be flexible, because the task does not change between the iterations. I mean we are talking here about industrial level of optimization, not some dude in his small office stamping his three letters a day. Companies on such level optimize everything from highest to lowest levels, because any optimization can make a difference of millions of whatever currency they use. In that scale, nothing is simple, because everything can become expensive on the high run.
        nybble41 8y ago
        > Highly optimized and well defined solutions are by definition inflexible. Because they are the result of removing everthing which is not relevant for the task. Only if you don't consider flexibility part of the task, which is rather short-sighted in today's world. Maybe postal services could afford to be inflexible once, but those days are long past.