Sep 11th, 2008
Does the United States Postal Service Kiosk Save You Time?
Our post office in Kane’ohe has always had very decent service, some of the best I’ve experienced at a post office. For over a year now they’ve also had an automated kiosk, also known as an Automated Postal Center, or APC.
The kiosk allows folks to get many services done without having to go to an in person attendant. You can buy stamps, send many different kinds of packages and letters both internationally and domestically, and in a recent addition, pay for a post office box. The kiosk takes cash, credit cards, or debit cards. Next to it is a large receptacle that looks like an overgrown mailbox that accepts items that got postage from this machine.
What do I think about this automated kiosk? In its favor is the fact that it’s accessible (at least in my post office) 24 hours a day, seven days a week, which is a huge benefit when you have the kind of schedule I do. Unfortunately, I’ve also run into times when it was out of order. It also typically does not have long lines either when the post office is closed or actually open, which may be attributable to people preferring personal service.
More unfortunate is that it cannot offer some of the information that a human can. I had several items returned to me for more postage after I used the APC to mail them out; turns out that I was trying to send a parcel as a large envelope (it looked like an envelope to me!). This is the kind of assistance that is only provided by a human. I wish I had known about this as it would have saved me a lot of heartache!
Does the ACPC save me time? Yes and no. It saves me time in the sense that I don’t have to be at the post office at a certain time of day or a certain day of the week. But when something goes wrong–like my trying to send parcels as large envelopes–my mail outs get delayed. While I like the concept in general, I’m not quite sure that the ACPC actually saves me time. So call this one a draw; it might save me time, it might not.
I am a huge fan of the automated postal kiosk. When I sold stuff on eBay several years ago, I got tired of going in over lunch and having to wait in line for half an hour. Then they installed the kiosk and I could go to the post office at any time.