You can soon return Amazon products at post offices

BENGALURU: The Postal  Department’s tie-up with e-tailer Amazon will soon be taken to another level. Customers will soon be able to return items to the company via post offices. Chief Postmaster General, Karnataka Circle, Charles Lobo, told The New Indian Express that this facility will be introduced within a week.

Currently, Amazon offers the option of ‘C/o postmaster services’ where one can opt for pick up of ordered products from the post offices if the person booking it will not be home at the time of delivery. “Also, for instance, if a pair of shoes does not fit one’s size, it can be handed over to the nearest post office without any packaging. A unique barcode given to the customer by Amazon will be the only item that needs to be handed over. The customer does not have to pay anything as Amazon will compensate the post office,” Lobo said.

Now locate letter boxes via GPS

To facilitate easy access to letter boxes, the Karnataka Postal department has completed Google mapping of nearly 8,000 letter boxes in Bengaluru city. It now plans to map 29,870 letter boxes across the state by November. One can now use GPS to locate the nearest letter box.  

“We completed mapping all the post boxes in Bengaluru City by September-end. It took us three weeks to complete the process. To ensure the exact location, our letter box peons were asked to initiate the process on their phones when they went to collect the letters from the boxes.”

Postal dept needs to reinvent itself, says Infosys co-founder

Bengaluru: The Postal Department needs to reinvent itself in the present times, for which speed, imagination and innovation are important, said Dinesh Krishnaswamy, one of the co-founder of global IT giant Infosys.
Delivering a talk at a programme organised to present the Dak Seva Awards 2017-2018 to mark World Post Day on Tuesday, Krishnaswamy told the department staff, “Have the guts to be an innovator.” In a speech laced with personal memories in which he traced the journey of Infosys and his life, he said, “From a salary of `80 in my first job in the Postal Department, I am a billionaire now.” He attributed his success to his spirit of adventure, ability to challenge himself and the capacity to dream big.

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When seven middle class friends got together and started Infosys in 1981, it was a very tough time, he recalled. “Computers had to be imported and it took two years to get an import licence. It took one year to get a telephone connection. When it went public in 1993, Infosys had just 400 employees. All those who bought shares then are crorepatis today. In 1999, it was listed on NASDAQ Stock Exchange, the first for any Indian company,” he added.

Awardees
Twelve postal staffers, including an woman, were presented the Dak Seva Awards. The awardees are M K Moulali, Grameen Dak Sevak, Shivamogga division; Subhash P Salian, Mangaluru head office; Derick Norohna, Section Supervisor, Circle Office; N Ravindranath Reddy, Postmaster Grade, Bengaluru West Division; Vijayanarasimha, Assistant Superintendent, Dharwad Division; T S Aswathanarayana, Assistant Post Master General, Chief Postmaster General Office, Karnataka; A V Srinivas Murthy, Postal Assistant, Bengaluru GPO; N Uma, Section Supervisor, Circle Office; A Krishnamurthy, best MMS driver. Best Sportspersons: K S Jeevan, postal assistant; A Karthik, sorting assistant, and Akbar Baig (under Divyang category) Postal Assistant.