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From: lang@panews
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Why do Telcos Use Window Envelopes for Payments?
Message-ID: <telecom11.140.5@eecs.nwu.edu>
Date: 20 Feb 91 20:30:48 GMT
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Reply-To: lang@ibmpa.awdpa.ibm.com (Lang Zerner)
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> [Moderator's Note: Actually in the case of Illinois Bell, ...  Anything
> saying 60669 sorts to the back of a large van which delivers a couple
> hundred thousand payment envelopes to telco daily ... Like you, I've
> always wondered why the big fuss about making the coupon stand the
> right way in the envelope, etc.  PAT]

Consider what happens at the other end, when those couple hundred
thousand envelopes arrive at the processing center each day.  Each one
has to be opened, and the remittance sheet handled both by a human (to
enter the amount received) and (I presume, based on the
machine-readable digits on the sheet) by a machine to record the
payment.

The person handling the remittance has to take the sheet out of the
envelope, read it, and probably insert it in the correct orientation
into some processing machine.  Consider it from an efficiency
engineer's point of view and you'll see that adding the step of
flipping the sheet around to the correct orientation to read it and
send it through the processing machine could cost, say, two seconds.

Even if only 30% of the envelopes came in with the sheets in an
"incorrect" orientation, Pat's estimate of 200,000 envelopes per day
yields 60,000 envelopes requiring special handling to reorient the
remittance document.  Assuming the flow of envelopes is constant six
days a week, two second for each of those 60,000 envelopes comes to
16.66 hours per day, or 5197.92 hours per year.  Even allowing for a
fifty-hour work week, that still comes out to two extra full-time
employees.

While not a large expense compared to the outrageous profit margins of
the operating companies, two full-time employees has *got* to cost
more than the difference between standard and window envelopes.  So,
from a manager's point of view, the choice makes sense.

Be seeing you...

Lang