Parcels go through a different process, but there are also templates to match against Royal Mail spec labels which help get things correct.
If there are two full address blocks then it’s straightforward to reject the return address (to simplify a bit, we OCR both, look for the word ‘return’ in one, and use the other) - return address on the front is usual in some countries, e.g. Sweden (I led that one too ). However, by doing just “Freepost Monzo” plus a full return address block on the front you’ve picked up on an unusual edge case. Not sure if anyone ever thought of that one.
anyway, from my ignorant view, not checking for the word “freepost” and grabbing the address under the word “return” is a double bug in the software, blame me stupid or whatever.
Yes, it’s a shame the system doesn’t automatically look for the word “freepost” and treat it differently in the same way as it treats return differently.
Fascinating reply, great to get some proper behind-the-scenes information. I presume ABL is used because if you were to try and OCR the entire front of the envelope it may slow the machine too much to achieve the required throughput? Also:
How do they know that? Do they have some way of recognising the flaps after all?
I don’t work on software that reads addresses, or for an auto-sorting system, but I do make software for one of the major logistics companies, scanning speed of the barcodes is vital for them, so we have a very small time window in which to perform our processing (though we have to process 5x less items per second than what was quoted as the number of items processed per second above). So when we’re processing a barcode, we need to try and limit the number of checks we perform as much as possible. It means that we won’t catch everything perfectly, but where the standard process is working correctly, we’ll get close enough to perfect.
I imagine with the address reading here, it finds the area of the front of the envelope that looks most like an address, if there’s only one area that looks valid, it reads that and ignores everything else. I assume it would only be where multiple areas of the envelope look like they could be an address block that it would look at both to try and figure out which one was a return address.
Thank you Alex, that is a very sound advice indeed!
Btw, if I may ask… out of your input I assume you have a Starling account already. So why would one need Monzo if they have Starling with cheque imaging in place? Are there any downsides to a Starling account comparing to Monzo?
You can have as many current accounts as you like. I generally prefer Monzo’s functionalit, however Starling is useful for certain things such as cheque imaging and I can keep certain expenditure separate in there.
In general letters go in to the machines with known orientation - bulk mailings (e.g. your bank statements) are delivered in trays with consistent facing, and for collection (i.e. out from a postbox) letters will be pre-processed through a machine called a culler-facer-canceller (CFC) which removes items that are too small, too large, or too thick (“culling”), orients so that the ‘indicia’ (stamp or pre-paid licence) is outwards (“facing”) and cancels the stamp. That’s not perfect for facing, but usually pretty good. They then go into the main sortation machines, one type has two cameras so we get both sides and can pick if the CFC got it wrong, the other type is single camera and misfaced mail goes to manual refeed, so a person can flip it over and feed it back through. There’s a bit more to it than that, but hopefully gives you the general idea.
Facing uses a mixture of ABL and indicia detection to try and figure out the address side, bulk print also also sometimes has things called FIMs (Facing Indicator Marks) that make it simple for the CFC, but they’re less common these days.
Increasingly letters use barcodes too - known by Royal Mail as MailMark, there are three types of datamatrix barcode that encode information about delivery point, along with a few other things. We use that information if it is available on a letter - barcodes are pretty easy to detect - but will use the written address in preference to the barcode for the final result if the two differ.
Not a bug as such, as if the item isn’t addressed to spec then sortation is best effort - you’d be amazed at how strangely some items are addressed and an automated system will never catch all the edge cases. Still, the system usually avoids sorting to sender, typically it would go to a reject stacker for human intervention if the system’s not sure, so you got unlucky.
Ben , thank you for all the input, it is very educating.
so you got unlucky
well, I’m still not quite sure if the “system” has decided that my home address under the “Return to” was the “Send to” address. Because in this case it would mean that the “system” has granted me a free delivery from an unknown sender and why would it do that?
It looks more like it tried to figure out a “send to” block, failed, gave up, desided that even a mighty Human would not be able to help in such a critical situation and simply has returned the letter back perfectly knowing what does “Return to” mean.
But to be completely honest, I don’t really care one way or another. What is imprtant is you do X and you might have Y in result, which I wanted folk to be aware of.
Next time request a bank transfer from the DVLA Glad you got it sorted
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I like the fact that it shows the image of the cheque in Starling.
I suspect this would have to be done much differently in Monzo (take photo of cheque, send cheque in, add image to transaction when it appears in feed), or does Monzo auto-tag any cheque payments with an image (or details) of the cheque?
Nope, Monzo don’t show an image of the cheque or anything.
You post it and when they receive it you get a notification in your feed saying that they’ve got it, then the usual payment notification when it clears.
I sent a cheque in the post yesterday with the address Freepost Monzo (as advised by Monzo help section) and today it was returned to me by Royal Mail. Thankfully I’d put my address on the back.
Anyone else had issues? I guess I’ll have to use the full address and a stamp
). However, by doing just “Freepost Monzo” plus a full return address block on the front you’ve picked up on an unusual edge case. Not sure if anyone ever thought of that one.
