[Dx-qsl] Redeeming IRCs - a short story and some tips

Wed Jul 31 03:44:08 EDT 2013

NZ is somewhat relaxed about IRC's. I sent letters and parcels nationally in NZ using IRC's as a payment method many times (mind you I am using one of the main PO's in central Auckland). I think I had argument (kind of) only once:
Girl at PO: $$$ please
Me: I want to pay with IRC's
Girl: Sorry I can only give you stamps to the value of IRC's
Me: Can I pay the postage [I was sending parcel] with stamps?
Girl: Yes
Me: Ok, let's just save some time then...
Girl: Oh, that does make sense... Do you want to add x cents to make it $$$ or do you want to add one more IRC and take change in stamps?
Regards &73!
Andrei, de ZL1TM
> Date: 2013年7月29日 13:27:39 -0700
> From: turvin2009 at yahoo.com
> To: k7zo at cableone.net; DX-QSL at mailman.qth.net; cq-contest at contesting.com
> Subject: Re: [Dx-qsl] Redeeming IRCs - a short story and some tips
>> I guess I'm lucky. It seems that all the folks at my local PO knows what to do with them. It usually only takes me a few minutes to redeem a stack of IRC's. Very lucky indeed.
>> I have started getting a few of the new IRC's. I hope this great service remains at my PO in a couple years when I need to redeem a few of those.
> 73 NR6M
>>>> ex: KF7NMD
>>> Sincerely,
>>> Rex Turvin
> www.nr6m.com
>>>> ________________________________
> From: (K7ZO) Scott Tuthill <k7zo at cableone.net>
> To: DX-QSL at mailman.qth.net; cq-contest at contesting.com 
> Sent: Monday, July 29, 2013 1:12 PM
> Subject: [Dx-qsl] Redeeming IRCs - a short story and some tips
>>> 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ドル.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ドル.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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