I can buy a couple of IRC. I can pay $1.00.
Sam LY5W
On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 11:12 PM, (K7ZO) Scott Tuthill <k7zo<k7zo@cableone.net>
> wrote:
> Having spent 40 minutes this morning at our main Post Office redeeming 35
> IRCs I thought I would pass on a few tidbits and hints to make this process
> potentially easier for those among you that will attempt the same thing
> before the end of the year and the current series expires.
>
> I don't get down to the post office that often but I have noticed over the
> last couple of years that all of the old guard has retired. The last time I
> redeemed IRCs I went to the counter with the most experienced looking guy
> and it went very smooth. He knew what they were and said "This is going to
> take a long time, I know what they are, here are your stamps, I will
> process these later when the lines for the counter go away". The experience
> this time was quite different.
>
> The guy at the counter had never heard of nor seen IRCs. He went to get
> his supervisor and then sent me over to an unused counter to wait for her.
> After about 10 minutes she came out and she brought with her the overall
> office manager. She had heard of them and had seen them but had never
> processed a redemption. She also thought the post office still sold them as
> "... we have these on the shelf in our vault...". The office manager had
> some vague recollection of them but was not really sure what to do with
> them either. The good thing was they knew they were good for an air mail
> stamp, or to be grammatically correct, they are now called "Global Forever"
> stamps.
>
> I then watched them for 25 minutes try to figure out how to process the
> redemption transaction on their counter terminal. The office manager
> eventually had to call their main tech support line to get walked through
> it. [BTW - though I had printed out from their web site Section 381 on
> International Reply Coupons, this really does not help as the problem they
> had was with using their computer system.] Where they got hung up, and this
> is a tip to all in case you run into this is somewhere in the redemption
> process the system asks for "Sale by item number". My team was entering the
> IRC item number when they should have been using the Air Mail stamp item
> number, which is 578800.
>
> The second tip has to do with US issued IRCs. In my pile of 35 I had a
> couple that were issued in the US. These are actually redeemed differently
> than the internationally issued ones which I didn't know until this morning
> when the folks at the counter had to sort out the two different redemption
> processes on their screen. Things were rather confusing at this point but I
> think I somehow received postage credit of $2.27 each for my two US issued
> IRCs. According to Section 381.2b of the postal regulations I think the
> amount should have been $2.09 but who knows. They just were doing what the
> terminal told them to do.
>
> Anyway hope this note can save some of you out there several precious
> minutes in your next trip to the post office to redeem IRCs.
>
> Scott/K7ZO
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