[Dx-qsl] Follow Operator Instructions on QRZ.com

Wed Sep 18 21:36:03 EDT 2013

Ladies & Gentlemen:
Each month our Bureau receives hundreds of cards for rare DX stations and
DXpeditions who, on their own QRZ.com pages, state that they will not
answer bureau cards.
We recognize that one reason people use the bureau is that they don't have
to check QRZ.com or another online lookup service before sending off the
card. This is directed at those of you who see what their QRZ.com page
says about QSL policies and send off cards to the bureau anyway. This
causes us many hours of extra work per month to re-direct the cards to the
real managers or to the station's own bureau, and even after our efforts
almost all of these cards will not be answered anyway.
So a word to the wise: If an operator says he/she will not answer bureau
cards, he/she in all likelihood means it. That means that there is no
cheap way to get around the instructions. While we may lament the fact
that $$$ have become such a big factor in DXing these days, we as a bureau
are not in a position to do anything about it.
By the way, a number of operators, some of whom make a lot of QSOs, have
told us they do not wish to receive bureau QSLs. We list their calls on
our web page, http://www.ncdxa.org/qsl.shtml
Some bureaus, notably the DARC, return unwanted cards to the senders, but
for us to do so would mean that this is being subsidized by the ARRL
members who use the ARRL outgoing QSL service, possibly causing their rates
eventually to be raised. We don't want to do that to our fellow ARRL
members, so the best we can do is make an effort to publicize the calls of
the DXers who do not accept bureau cards. Instead, we send most of the
unwanted cards to K8CX for use on his wonderful web page Hamgallery.com,
and some others have been provided to elementary school teachers who use
them in their geography classes.
73 & DX,
Fred Laun, K3ZO
Manager
NCDXA/ARRL Third Call Area Incoming QSL Bureau