[Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - shop as post-partner

Bert -Araali- Van Opstal bert.araali.afritastic at gmail.com
Tue Feb 16 14:32:18 UTC 2021


I advise to try to keep the scope as applicable as possible to cover the
same kind of services worldwide.

Reviewing all the comments and objections that were recently posted here
I tried to figure out what this is about, and to my humble analysis it
comes down to finding a suitable globally and general accepted term for
the services offered.
In this context it becomes ever more difficult since for some number of
years in most countries postal and parcel services, all or just a part
the services, are privatised. Mostly they are well regulated but the
services clearly overlap with what is considered as courier services.
Either by private entities offering postal or post services, either by
the post or postal (formal government controlled or mandated private
organisations) offering courier services or the opposite.

My analysis:

If we refer to wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_office) the
term post office, postal service refers " to government postal
facilities providing customer service." in most parts of the world.  And
luckily wikipedia refers to the German situation: "Private courier
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courier> and delivery services
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Package_delivery> often have offices as
well, although these are not usually called "post offices," except in
the case of Germany <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany>, which has
fully privatized its national postal system
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Post>."

I'd like to propose the following to get this discussion going again and
proceed with the proposal since it looks fine and clearly defines a need
in the community:

Do not introduce a new key but use the existing office=courier or
office=logistics (I know, not widely used but .. better then to
introduce a new one which is not used so far).  Attribute those with
keys to describe the services offered, which might use post or postal
terms in the values but do not define them as a post or postal office,
much as is somehow clearly described on the English Wikipedia for the
German situation.

Specifically to the german situation, but this also applies since recent
to other countries, like the Netherlands, Belgium or France, the name
post or postal is reserved to formal, whole or partially government
owned entities. Deutsche Post, Bpost, PostNL, La Poste, they all carry
the name post and are all at least partially government owned, also
because they offer services which are not allowed to be carried out by
courier services (don't want to go in too much detail here). In Belgium
you can find a parcel delivered by Deutsche Post, or PostNL and vice
versa. If we look at other continents, Africa, Asia, South-America
etc... in essence the same principle applies, even when in many
countries besides a central post office in major towns the postal
services, or a part of them are mostly provided by private shops and
courier services.

Hope this helps in the discussion as a contribution with a positive tone.

Greetings, Bert Araali

On 16/02/2021 16:40, Paul Allen wrote:
> On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 at 13:10, Robin Burek <robin.burek at gmx.de
> <mailto:robin.burek at gmx.de>> wrote:
>
>     Am 16.02.2021 um 13:42 schrieb Paul Allen:
>
>     To handle postal services in a store (often only a short option
>     and not the full programm) aren't post offices. That is a store,
>     that supports (a selection) of postal services. A bank can not be
>     a post office but can handle (in Germany) postal services.
>     I really want to find a consensus.... but you're not making it
>     easy for me here ...
>
> What you describe in terms of function does not sound like a post
> office to me.
> Post offices have legal requirements in the UK.  What you describe in
> terms of
> function sounds very much like
> https://www.collectplus.yodel.co.uk/click-and-collect
> Shops offering those services are not considered post offices in the UK.
>
> And yet you insist these "not post offices" are post offices.  I asked you
> where you would direct somebody asking for the nearest Postamt
> and you said you would direct that person to one of these services
> rather than Deutsche Post.  You tell me that the service providers
> offer all the same services that Deutsche Post does.
>
> Either these are post offices or they are not.  If they are post offices
> then map them as such.  If they are not post offices then find some
> different tag name that does not have "post" or "postal," Because
> in some countries the partner will not offer a full range of postal
> services in any location, not just that particular one.  Those partners
> will merely be couriers.
>
> That said, your insistence that these things be mapped as
> attributes rather than POIs baffles me.  The information will
> not be visible to most data consumers so may as well not be
> there.  If I can't see it on the map, it doesn't exist as far as
> I'm concerned because I'll never know it's there.
>
> -- 
> Paul
>
>  
>
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