Postal Markings On Mail Returned Due To Guatemalan Postal Disruption

Mail to Guatemala has been suspended for awhile now. I had a buyer who forgot to update his mail address online when payment was sent. He was in the U.S., but I was given the Guatemala address. It was returned, but this was last year. I guess folks in Guatemala just don't have regular mail anymore.

http://www.postal-markings.org ... Auxiliary Markings Club

"Nixie", in the corner of the yellow label, which you may or may not know, is/are the folks that work on the puzzles and knotty problems, often incorrect addresses, damaged addresses, etc. They apparently are not everywhere in the postal system nowadays so the transit time may be due to forwarding this to them and return. Note the yellow tag is dated the 29th.

In the bad old days - when local phone books were the most critical nixie resource - it made sense for one of the clerks to handle the nixies every day as part of a wider range of duties. It was just one of the things they did during the course of a day, like putting up POBox mail, etc.

With more of the nixies being handled at a central office, as a matter of efficiency, the nixie clerks will work with a backlog / inventory. There is no point having them sit there with nothing to do, so one would expect there to be at least a coupla days 'inventory' onhand at any given time, with a commensurate delay. The USPS feels guiltless about this, as they are not the ones who made the mistake (that got the mail nixie'd) to begin with.

One advantage of centralizing the nixies is that it makes it easier for the USP to compute the system-wide cost of handling nixie mail.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey