July 13, 2006
Telegrams make a comeback in NZ. STOP.
The New Zealand Post office is reinstating a new telegram service, according to TVNZ, after ending its service in 1999 due to lack of demand.
"Telegrams are now being used by businesses to pass on important information quickly to their clients, such as "your power is about to be cut off - pay your bill immediately.
New Zealand Post's general manager of payment services, Terese Tunnicliffe, says modern telegrams are more advanced and sentences don't always end with STOP. She says they are primarily being used as a means of debt collection, but could be also be used for marketing."
Seems to me text messaging is quicker way to pass a message along. Debt collecting schemes by SMS have been very successful.
-- In a South African High School, late paying parents receive the following SMS: "A wonderful spring day to you. But please pay your child's outstanding school fees. If you have already done so, thank you." A few days after the messages go out, the school receives a lot of outstanding fees. [News24.com]
-- Officials at Fife Council Scotland are hailing as a success, an experiment in which tenants behind on their rent payments were sent reminders by text messaging. Out of the 200 tenants sent SMS messages adivising them their rent was overdue, the response rate was of 40%, with five responses arriving within 10 minutes of being sent. [Textually.org]
-- Using cellphone SMS messaging in debt collection is proving more successful than conventional telephone calls or correspondence, with response rates increasing as much as 200% [Textually.org]
The Permanent Link to this page is: http://www.textually.org/textually/archives/2006/07/012924.htm
