The Post Office in Croydon High Street is now producing the New Counter IT (post-Horizon) postage labels.
I have no more details (ie whether it is one counter position or all, or how easy it is to get these) but my correspondent WU sent a 2nd class large letter along with the receipt on 7 August 2024, which may have been the first day.
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| New Counter Information Technology postage label from Croydon PO 7 August 2024. |
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| Cash Receipt for the above label, |
There's no information about these from official Royal Mail sources - save that the designs etc have been worked out between Royal Mail and Post Office Ltd.
Please let me know if you see any from sources other than Aldwych (FAD - or branch code 0090107), Leeds St Johns (039323), or Croydon (0240133). Many thanks.
Update 15 August.
1. A report from Croydon. PA reports that, on 5 July, Croydon PO initially denied that it was there and wouldn't be for two years! He eventually obtained just one label. "A large letter copy was refused as it would be overcharging me and she would get into trouble. (Large letters at under 100g cannot be handled by NBIT). NBIT is very restricted and it can handle very little at present. It cannot handle Tracked, standard Certificates of Posting, banking transactions etc." (I suspect NBIT stands for New Branch IT, rather than New Counter IT - IB).
2. Five branches in trial. Thanks to AY who has pointed out a not-entirely unrelated article on the BBC website, which I had only partly read. Referring to the departure of Post Office Ltd's IT chief it cites delays and cost escalation on the replacement for the Horizon system.
The key point for the purposes of this post, though, states: "pilots for the new system were currently working in five branches, and it has requested cash from the Department for Business and Trade to fund the project to replace it. Post Office and the Department for Business and Trade are working on this request and as and when an agreement is reached, we will inform our Postmasters,"
If this is, indeed, the same thing it has a long way to go. Although postage labels are important, they are only part of the requirement. An accurate accounting system which properly interfaces with third parties (banks, utilities, Lotto, etc) and actually produces a balancing double-entry system with no system-generated errors or omissions, is really important.
Update 20 August
My thanks to AB who has visited Aldwych at a quiet time, and was able to discuss the trial.
"They did confirm there are five locations for the trial - Aldwych, Croydon and St John’s, Leeds as we know, but also ‘Springburn, Scotland’ which I’ve taken to be Springburn Shopping Centre, Glasgow and Melville Rd, Hove BN3 1UB.
"The system is indeed slow, as others have said! Services limited to 1st/2nd Large Letter and Signed For as well as Special Delivery (forgot to ask if ‘by 9’ and ‘Sat Guaranteed’). Definitely no international services, and not the new Tracked 24 and 48.
"I also asked how the trial was going: no info on that! No news on if this will be the final design of labels.
"They referred to the new system as ‘n-bit’ rather than ‘en bee eye tee’."
So if anybody in Hove or Glasgow has a lot of patience and wants to try out the new system, we'll be pleased to report the results. Thanks!
Croydon leads the way again.
ReplyDeleteIn 1967 it was the first town to have alpha-numeric postcode districts.
Leading after Aldwych and Leeds.
DeleteI think Croydon's first postcode was CRO following Norwich's NOR, but they then used the O as 0 (zero) which was the easy way out as other areas did not use zero in the outward half.
On postcodes, CRO became CR0 for the businesses in Croydon primarily enabling continuity but other addresses outside central Croydon were renumbered following the new national model. It remains, as you say, the only are to use a zero in this way. In Norwich NOR numbers as they were known were rejigged to NR postcodes in the 1970s (I think around 1975 but I was a young boy at the time, as I grew up in Norfolk, so can't completely recall).
DeleteThe new Norwich postcodes were publicised in 1974 and began being used by the public but the coding equipment was swopped over between Christmas 1975 and the New Year. Some additional facts - there was also an NPT code for businesses (government buildings) in Newport and both NPT and NOR had specific binary codes allocated in this follow-on national system for the overlap. Five members from the PMSC, assisted by other contributors, have over the past 40 years accumulated postcards and covers coded by the original 1966-75 system at Norwich to decipher the pattern of, and over 400 examples of what the codes for towns, cities and districts would have been - many would have been mnemonic - Darlington DAN but many simply alphabetical through ironically a non-alphabetical letter pattern Teignmouth OSA! Yes, Poole would have been POO!
DeleteI was not aware Leeds were participating but I see Croydon is continuing by using a different FAD code to the normal branch code of 009013
ReplyDeleteI think that Croydon has been part of this trial for some time - but you have to ask for a trial postage lable. At Croydon, as at Aldwych, only one counter position has the equipment and it is not staffed. You have to go to a staffed counter and then the person has to go the the end of the long counter setup - just like Aldwych - to use the machine – which she didn’t know how to so, I think, a manager was called. The machine wasn’t working so it had to be switched off and restarted, with PIN codes being entered from the manager’s mobile phone. Then, just like at Aldwych, it was noticeable how many times the counter assistant had to touch the touch screen just to issue one label.
ReplyDeleteA proper trial would have set the equipment up in every counter position – but then it would be hell for the staff and customers in terms of the time it would take.
Yes, I now understand it was early July in Croydon.
DeleteAgree, it's not a trial like the Gold Horizon labels trial was - short term use on Special Delivery only - at an office that did a LOT of SD, Camden High Street > http://norphil.co.uk/articles/horizon/machin_labels.htm . For those we had a little advance notice and an insider helping.
RW
ReplyDeleteOn Saturday when in Paignton PO the Horizon Card reader would not work the Manager was called and he fixed it in the end,
He also said that the system was changing next month so it might be that they are getting the new Postage Label Machine(s) Robert