When was an airmail letter sent?

[simondavies3Participant @simondavies3]

Hi All,

I (eventually) received an airmail letter here in France, sent from the UK allegedly on the 16th June. Normally, post takes 3-5 days whether its airmail or not so I am deeply suspicious about the assertion that it was actually sent when they said it was.

 

However, being part of a processed delivery, there is no man-readable date on the letter, only two pale orange barcode-like lines above and below the Airmail stamp.

Anybody know whether these are a) the information I am looking for and b) whether ordinary mortals are able to read them?
Simon

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Almost certainly part of the handling/tracking/franking process, and readable photographically

First obvious question would be … were they they applied in the UK or in France ?

… but are you happy to share them ?

I’m happy to have a go

MichaelG.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

With the caveat that this page is US based:

 

https://www.endicia.com/tools-resources/harrys-hints/facing-identification-marks/#:~:text=This%20is%20for%20a%20process,can’t%20be%20reused).

 

MichaelG.

[simondavies3Participant @simondavies3]

Michael, I am in constant awe of your ability to drag obscure bits of information from the outer corners of the internet!
the US description closely resembles one of the two lines, the second could be the subsequent sorting results.
And yes, I am pretty sure that they were added right at the start of the postal journey.
I have forwarded you a photo of the envelope and details to your email address to limit my data being further spread across the web.
Simon

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Got as close as we probably ever will … just before midnight

MichaelG.

.

Regrettably:

1. although your eMail arrived; there was no attachment
2. Royal Mail claimed, in 2009, that the coding is a secret

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Any coding is not going to show when it was posted unless possibly the sender used a prepaid lable. If via box or postoffice then it will be when it first went through a machine.

So could have been posted on a Thursday but missed that days post, collected Friday but maybe not sorted until a Monday. Or it could have sat around in France for a few days if local delivery office short of staff.

[Michael Gilligan]

On Michael Gilligan Said:

Got as close as we probably ever will … just before midnight

[…]

Oops … I now realise that statement ^^^ was ambiguous

for clarity, I was merely noting the timing of my small achievement

MichaelG.

[JasonB]

On JasonB Said:

Any coding is not going to show when it was posted unless possibly the sender used a prepaid lable. If via box or postoffice then it will be when it first went through a machine.

Thanks Jason, I was not sufficiently precise about my request – this was a batch of letters sent and processed by machine rather than a simple letter being dropped into the letter box. Given my preference for restricting what I send and share publicly, I chose not to share the photo, however following Michael’s investigations, the information on the letter looks like this:

 

Michael, thanks again for your research, one wonders ‘why’ such information is considered ‘secret’…

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

I don’t think there is anything particularly sinister about the secrecy, but it is broadly true that possession of a secret is an Asset.

I will post the reference later … but prior to that , will interested to read any further comment from the forum.

MichaelG.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

It is still “sorting office” generated so will depend on when that batch or even the bag/container from the batch was processed not when it left the sender.

The line along the bottom is a lot longer and mor espaced out than most which may be to do with the airmail, usually top and bottom lines of code are about the same length

Hope you got your vote in on time!

[JasonB]

On JasonB Said:

It is still “sorting office” generated so will depend on when that batch or even the bag/container from the batch was processed not when it left the sender.

Sure, but my suspicion was that it hadn’t departed to the sorting office when it was alleged to have departed – I accept a +/- day or so whilst the sorting office processes it.

Hope you got your vote in on time!

err, not really – and a follow up letter to my enquiry about ‘when’ it was sent reveals that they didn’t get the filled envelopes to a distribution centre at Heathrow until the 24th, which explains why it actually arrived at my address yesterday

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

The top line might be ‘Intelligent Mail Barcode‘.  The lower line is something else.

This is a USA system, so international air-mail might be different.  The article also provides links to POSTNET and PLANET , said to be obsolete.

I guess the upper line is a unique number with checksum confirming postage has been paid.  Added by a franking machine.   To reduce fraud, how this is encoded is likely to be a secret.  Might include date-time, but could just be the franking machine’s identitity, plus a serial number, and perhaps the tariff.    The lower line could be the cancellation, and this might well contain a date-time, and location,

I fear Simon is on a looser even if Michael can decypher the code:

• I don’t believe AirMail offers delivery within a set time.   Hopefully faster than standard mail because some part of the journey is routed by air, but if anything goes wrong AirMail will be delayed.  The system doesn’t track or guarantee speed.
• We don’t understand the system.  I wonder if AirMail sent from the UK to France is treated any differently from ordinary mail?  The ordinary postal service makes heavy use of aircraft, whilst the Channel Tunnel might well be faster than air, at least into Northern Europe.  How Simon’s air-mail was routed is unknown, although we can be sure it wasn’t flown direct from the sender to Simon’s home – it’s been in vans, sorting offices, and maybe in a bag on the back of posties pushbike!
• On ordinary letters the cancellation can be added immediately at the sending end, or much later in the chain, often the last sorting office before delivery.   So any date-time in the cancellation code may not mean much.
• Even if dates are found suggesting Simon’s suspicions have legs,  that’s unlikely to help.    ‘The cheque is in the post sir‘ is an ancient excuse, and I don’t think anyone ever proved it was a lie.   Best answer is registered and tracked delivery, but even these don’t guarantee a letter will arrive:  they only pay compensation if it doesn’t, which may not help much.
• The mechanics of the postal system are geared to help them, not customers with a problem like Simon’s.   Palliative care might be the answer: try kicking the cat or glugging a bottle of wine!

Dave

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

If its like my copies of MEW, it probably went to the “central” mail centre in Romania before being forwarded on to the destination country. A straight shot across the channel would be far to easy in today’s globalised efficiency-maximised world.

Re speed of airmail vs “normal”.. Almost all international mail is delivered by air these days. And parcels. Sending mail and parcels by ship or train, taking weeks and months to get to destination has not been used by most post offices and couriers for many years. Even the standard stuff goes by air but can sit for days/weeks in a depot until there is a spare space in the hold of a passenger jet or cargo plane. If you want fast, you have to pay the extra for express delivery, which goes on teh same planes but is prioritised to get on first, in reserved “seating” for mail containers.

[simondavies3Participant @simondavies3]

Thanks for all of the responses.

My original request was to determine whether the sender (the local electoral office as Jason correctly guessed) had actually met their stated intention to dispatch my postal vote on or around the 17th June.

I have lived long enough outside of the UK to be aware of the vagaries of international mail and the advertised ‘N-M ‘days delivery times, often requiring a squadron of ducks to be lined up along with several following winds to be in place. However, even today, I expect UK-France post to take 3-5 days when sent by the public and also letters/small packets from businesses.

As it turns out, the electoral office had taken until the 24th to dispatch their international postal vote letters to a Heathrow destination for onward transmission – how long and how that happened in a timely manner is a completely different discussion, not one I intended to address at this point.

Simon

 

[Hopper]

On Hopper Said:

If its like my copies of MEW, it probably went to the “central” mail centre in Romania before being forwarded on to the destination country. A straight shot across the channel would be far to easy in today’s globalised efficiency-maximised world.

No clue where mine go but they now take around 3-4 weeks for MEW and ME. Some 10+ years ago, they obviously had a different (presumably more expensive) method which ensured delivery a day or so after the UK deliveries. Adds to the anticipation when reading the grumbles comments about the latest issue on the forum!

[simondavies3]

On simondavies3 Said:

On Hopper Said:

If its like my copies of MEW, it probably went to the “central” mail centre in Romania before being forwarded on to the destination country. A straight shot across the channel would be far to easy in today’s globalised efficiency-maximised world.

No clue where mine go but they now take around 3-4 weeks for MEW and ME. Some 10+ years ago, they obviously had a different (presumably more expensive) method which ensured delivery a day or so after the UK deliveries. Adds to the anticipation when reading the grumbles comments about the latest issue on the forum!

When I was a boy, we used to get two Royal Mail deliveries a day. Back in Samuel Pepys’ day, you could post someone an invitation for dinner in the morning and get a reply back in time to get ready to go out in the evening.

Nowadays, the UK postal service is verging on the farcical, as lucrative parcels are prioritised while letters languish in sorting offices, sometimes for weeks. There is an emerging scandal as it becomes apparent that thousands of people have not received their postal voting forms for the General Election yet, with little prospect of them getting returned by Thursday.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

As promised earlier:

My initial search was for technical information about the fluorescent bar-coding … but found nothing easily accessible … This rang a few warning bells, because hobbyists often like to investigate such stuff [TV remote control codes, etc.]

So, I changed tack and wondered what questions had been asked, but not answered

Eureka !

Within a few minutes, I homed-in on this:

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/ocrphosphor_code#incoming-53187

It runs to several pages, but for convenience I am putting the response letter in my Gallery.

MichaelG.

.

.

Ref. John FOI

[simondavies3]

On simondavies3 Said:

…
As it turns out, the electoral office had taken until the 24th to dispatch their international postal vote letters to a Heathrow destination for onward transmission – how long and how that happened in a timely manner is a completely different discussion, not one I intended to address at this point.

Simon

 

Ah ha, new information.

Bulk dispatchers typically save money by pre-sorting their output before putting it into the postal system.    But this assumes the dispatcher is tooled up to handle peak loads, and because excess capacity is expensive, peak provision is often the first thing to go when cuts are made.

No problem until something unusual generates a burst of high demand, causing the system to overload and break down.   Thus we have periodic scandals, where it turns out the Chief Executive received a gigantic bonus for making ‘efficiency’ savings, that were nothing of the sort – reducing a system’s capacity too far isn’t an efficiency saving!   The CE will be temporarily embarrassed, but won’t be penalised, even if they knew full well what they were doing was wrong,  and – if in the public sector – no-one will recall which politician was in charge at the time.

Dave

[Speedy Builder5Participant @speedybuilder5]

Simon D,  this doesn’t help decode your post mark, but …..

I recently asked a French postal worker why it was so expensive to post a 60 grm letter from France to Australia and as to why it took so long (4 – 6 weeks most times).

Well you zee, he said. It is le BREXIT.

How can that be I asked. It only takes 3 weeks from England to Australia and costs about £7:50 (approximately 9€) but in France it costs 31€95. That is nearly 23€ more! More to the point, its about 19€ to cross over 22 miles of water after travelling through France for about 4€

It’s simple, the letter travels through France (which is 2x the size of the UK), and then must pass through the Duanes (Customs). Then a 3rd party must take it to England and pass through the English customs.

Now this is slow, because England and France do not help each other – we never have done!

The letter then waits until the aeroplane is full before flying to Australia and it may stop along the way to deliver or pick up more post. It all takes time mon ami.

When it arrives in Australia, it must pass through border control.  This is slow, just look at “Border Control Australia” on the TV and see what I mean.

Now you may know that Australia Post is very slow, so there are even more delays but eventually, if you ave the correct address on your letter it will arrive, eventually.

Thank you Jean Marie, I think it is time for a crust of bread and cheese and a glass of red wine.

Bob

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

No Dave, you’ve got it wrong. If we are talking public sector, banking or utilities the failed CE will receive a peerage and a large sum of money for leaving early, then after a decent interval be appointed to another post for which he is totally unqualified but still will receive an obscene salary.

Just to be woke, he should be taken to mean he or she or any combination of the 2

[Author]

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