Tag: Europe

Post office services may move to council buildings in Southampton

Posted by | Dec 3, 2007 | |

Threatened post office services in Southampton could be moved inside council owned buildings to save them from closure plans.

Services could be located in housing offices, leisure centres and libraries and a mobile post office could be launched if five city post office branches get the axe.

Liberal Democrat and Labour city councillors have agreed to explore whether the move would be feasible under new powers given to local councils.

Lib Dem councillor Ann Milton who floated the idea said there was “profound concern” for the impact the closures would have on communities, especially on elderly and disabled people.

However the minority Tory administration voted against her motion, saying although it was an admirable idea it wouldn’t work in practice and blamed the Labour Government for allowing too many services to leave post offices.

The move comes as Southampton Test MP Alan Whitehead is calling on Post Office bosses to postpone their closure decision.

Mr Whitehead claims urban obstacles’ to alternative branches such as busy dual carriageways and dimly lit parks and underpasses have not been considered.

Mr Whitehead said: “They can act as a real impediment to customers trying to get somewhere on foot.

“The Post Office Network needs to demonstrate that they have taken into account the kinds of obstacles faced by my constituents, and they have so far fundamentally failed to do so.”

The MP is calling for a review of the plans until urban obstacles have been clarified.

Under the closure plans customers losing their local branch are supposed to be within a one-mile road distance of another post office.

A Post Office spokesman said: “In developing our proposals for an area a number of criteria are considered, including the routes to alternative Post Office branches, the availability of public transport as well as the demographics of the locality and the impact on local economies.

“It is worth noting that the four branches which are proposed to close within the Southampton Test constituency referred to by Mr Whitehead are all within a mile of an alternative branch.”

In Hampshire the Post Office plans to shut 62 of its 291 full-time sub post offices in both rural and urban areas Watchdog Postwatch has urged customers to take part in the consultation process over the closures.

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Postcode profiling

Posted by | Dec 3, 2007 | |

A postcode can tell you a lot about your customers but too many retailers ignore this valuable source of demographic information

Most online businesses are content to grab email details for customers and use this as the basis of their subsequent email marketing, while a few others take it one step further and use the email address along with purchase information to slice-and-dice their lists. However there’s a host of information available from the users postcode that many retailers just throw away.

There are a host of statistical packages available to companies trading online which provide information on website visitor activity. These can show invaluable data such as number of visits, referring sites, keyword searches used, and hits by week, day and hour. However, without the use of lengthy surveys at point of purchase, which may put some buyers off, there is no way of finding out useful customer information.

Customer profiling and location planning consultancy Cartogen

(www.cartogen.co.uk) have come up with a solution to this problem. The Brighton based consultancy is making detailed consumer profiling available to Ecommerce businesses throughout the UK. Cartogen’s advanced systems can provide demographic, lifestyle and behavioural information based solely on postcode.

Cartogen uses Eurodirect’s CAMEO profiling system which assigns every UK postcode to one of ten groups and, within those, 57 categories. Available information includes brand preferences, leisure activities, newspaper readership and holiday destinations along with a wealth of other geodemographic and financial data. Standard information such as age, sex, housing type and income are also available. All that is required is the customer postcode, which is supplied with every transaction.

Cartogen’s service has helped a number of offline businesses in their customer profiling and marketing processes, clients including Shell Gas and Yates’s Wine Lodge, and now the company plans to change the way online retailers use their customer data.

For an annual fee companies can have their customer database profiled on a monthly basis. The service is described as “very affordable”.

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UPS names new District Executive

Posted by | Dec 3, 2007 | |

Jill Schubert, a 27-year veteran of UPS, has been named the Vice President of operations for the company’s Minnesota District. In her new role, Schubert will be responsible for more than 5,000 employees and 30 facilities throughout the state.

Schubert most recently managed UPS’s South Illinois District.

Schubert began her UPS career in 1980 as a driver helper. In 1981, she began progressing through a variety of jobs in the Rocky Mountain District. She was promoted in 1999 to air division manager, later serving as a package division manager. In 2002, she moved to the Missouri District as a package division manager before joining UPS Supply Chain Solutions in 2004.

Schubert succeeds Romaine Seguin, who has accepted the position of South Europe District Manager based in Milan.

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"Mail of Russia" receives payments to collector agency

Posted by | Dec 3, 2007 | |

“Mail of Russia” has begun reception of payments which are carried out by physical persons by means of the postal order “CyberMoney”, to the address of the Joint-Stock Company “Sequoia Credit Consolidation”. It is spoken about in the joint report of the companies.

The given service is accessible in all post offices of Russia. “Sequoia Credit Consolidation” will inform the borrowers who will have an opportunity to pay off the duty through “Mail of Russia”, additionally.

“Mail of Russia” is the network of federal mail service including 84 branches, 42 thousand departments of mail service. The company renders services in all territory of Russia, including cities and rural settlements. Incomes in January-June, 2007 in comparison with the parameter of the similar period of the last year have increased up 26 pct and have exceeded 30mlrd rbl. The pure loss of “Mail of Russia” in 2007, on preliminary data, will make 5.7mlrd rbl.

The Joint-Stock Company “Sequoia Credit Consolidation” – collector agency – works in the Russian market since 2004. The company renders banks, not bank credit organizations, insurance, telecommunication companies the service on return of clients’ – physical and legal persons- debts, works in 30 cities of the Russian Federation, in 12 from which its branches are opened.

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