Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The Wiki Man: The inefficiency of email

<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Georgia;">A fortnightly column on technology and the web</span>

issue 09 October 2010

To me this is a silly line of attack. That’s not to suggest there are no possible improvements to Royal Mail services — I can think of several. For instance someone should ask postmen to reverse their round every year, so that it isn’t always the same hapless householders (me, in this case) who receive their post after lunch. When they’ve finished that, they could also question the increasingly surreal placement of letter boxes (it’s now easier to post a letter in a peat-bog nine miles outside Thurso than at Victoria Station), or even adopt that clever Finnish idea where you can pay for postage using your mobile phone. However, as far as the basic service goes, I have no complaints at all. My father and I have sent or received 1,000 books and parcels via Amazon and eBay with a zero rate of loss and a minuscule level of delay.

So those letter-writers seem to be barking up the wrong tree.

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