[s]
Students' Association wrote on 17:07, 2nd Sep 2004:
Last year, we spent £2590 on posting packs to a fraction of the freshers (only those in the UK). This year, EVERYONE has been given information on how to find out what's going on, for much less!
Much less? According to the 'UK Postage Costs', found here;
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/stephanie.thomas/Ebay/
...it costs, 21p to send a postcard anywhere in the UK, including the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands.
Given...
However, according to the RoyalMail website,
http://www.royalmail.com/ , it costs 39p to send a postcard to the US.
I'm not going to begin to try and proportion the exact costs, but just say we take an *average* cost of 35p per postcard, and multiply by say 6000 students, giving us a *total* of £2100.
The costs do come into it in a big way, however, one critical factor when sending out a postcard to 'inform ignorant students about orientation', is that it arrives on time.
*Assuming* that all postcards were sent out on the 30th of August using surface mail (the cheaper option), as my 'TWO' were, that would give RoyalMail only 2 weeks to 'surface mail' them to the US and Europe, in order to let the poor students know when to come back.
This is flawed.
"We aim to deliver Surface mail within two weeks to Western Europe, four weeks to Eastern Europe, and eight weeks to the rest of the world"
It can take as long as 8 (EIGHT) weeks to deliver a postcard to the US, so most American students won't receive their postcards until they go back home, probably over the Xmas period.
So, bottom line, a lot of money has been wasted and "EVERYONE" has NOT been given information to find out what's going on, and NOT for MUCH less either.
Open to debate
)
