Suggestions, improvements and SingPost

Keep an open mind and no suggestion is too trivial to be made or considered.

Ostensibly, a recommendation may amount to nothing. However, by virtue of coming out in the open the proposal may change the nature of a debate. By receiving the advice, relevant persons may alter their future behaviour becoming more sensitive to certain thoughts.  

But before any behaviour modification may occur, the ideas must be pushed into the bureaucracy. Until someone speaks their mind, bureaucracies are typically not nudged in a particular direction.

Hence, my occasional letters to the Straits Times.

Facilitate greater usage of SAM

RECENTLY, some tourists requested my assistance in purchasing postage stamps using a self-service automated machine (SAM). Such machines require Nets cards for transactions to be processed and, as visitors to Singapore, the tourists did not have a Nets card.

One can appreciate that for transactions of small values, the use of credit cards at these machines is not cost-effective. However, in order to facilitate greater usage of existing SAM facilities, SingPost may consider two improvements.

First, accept credit cards for payments above a minimum threshold of say $10. Second, accept payments in cash and coins, subject to exact change being tendered by the purchaser.

Encouraging greater use of SAM facilities will go a long way in reducing waiting times at otherwise busy post offices.

Imran Ahmed

As published in the Straits Times, September 15, 2010.