Today, I was writing the address on an envelope to be sent to the Income Tax PAN services in Pune. The address runs into 6 lines and has more characters than twitter or SMS allows. I am sure this address must be receiving thousands of letters everyday. Why can't the Indian Post think of a way of shortening such popular addresses - something like tinyurl of the postal address?
This will save a lot of time for individuals, reduce errors and lead to customer delight! The post box service is one way of looking at it. But it is limited by resources (space available for post boxes) and also latency on part of the addressee. However, a service that shortens the postal address can be driven by an alpha numeric code and is virtually unlimited.
This can be monetised by charging either the sender or the receiver. The receiver may be issued this code at an annual fee or the sender may be asked to paste a premium postage stamp (marginal premium of Re.1) for a shortened address letter.
If tinyurl can do it to the web address, I am sure there is a way to do it for the postal address as well.
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