It is common for local residents to find their mailboxes filled each day with news of the world, nation, city, and neighborhood, and all at surprisingly low costs to mailers. Whether it be today's price of chicken or a journal on Chinese culture, the flow of information through the mails in the ROC is noted for its efficiency and comprehensiveness.
While this may seem little different from other national postal systems, the Directorate General of Posts, under the supervision of the Ministry of Communications, offers additional services rarely found elsewhere—and has a reputation for providing them in an especially "consumer- friendly" manner.
One of the most praiseworthy aspects of local post offices-and one that greatly impresses visitors—is their long service hours. Postal substations are open Monday through Saturday from 8 a.m. until 6 p.m., plus half days on Sundays. And even these already remarkable hours have been augmented through the ingenuity of the postal authorities.
To service people better in residential areas, many neighborhood grocery stores have been consigned as postal agents, selling stamps and taking care of such simple postal transactions as receiving registered mail. Because these shops are normally open every day into the late evenings hours, nearby residents enjoy the convenience of buying stamps and aerogrammes which enable them to post those last-minute letters in the nearly ubiquitous mailboxes. This service is especially practical because most mailboxes are cleared by postmen at least five times a day.
People who are constrained by work hours in commercial and business districts have a matching service. In many cases, the persons at the concierge desk in larger office buildings are also empowered to provide the same postal services as the grocery store owners. Beyond saving office workers considerable time, it further illustrates the desire of the post office to be "user-friendly" to its customers. Currently there is a total of 11,370 postal representatives in both stores and high-rises supplementing regular postal substation facilities.
Unique to Taipei, Taichung, and Kaohsiung is another impressive innovation: the establishment of Night Service Post Offices. First set up in 1970, these offices extend regular postal business hours until 12 midnight.
The number of central post offices and substations in cities and small towns alike has reached more than 1,130. At the front line of contact with people at the grassroots level, a closer look at their window services reveals just how much the post office has achieved over the years. In addition to the most frequently used stamp purchase and package mailing window, there are other services available that can only be termed comprehensive. One of these, instituted in 1984, is a "speed post " service for both domestic and international mail. Geared especially to accommodate the needs of the business sector, the service not only ensures speedy delivery but also provides door-to-door service.
Parcel delivery constitutes a major area of postal service, and the ROC's postal employees have become renowned for their safe and guaranteed delivery of parcels. Besides delivery, the post office helps in related areas by offering free packing service, including provision of packing material at minimal cost. Major post offices are even equipped with packing machines for the use of the public without extra charge.
The parcel service was significantly modernized with the Taipei Parcel Center, which began service in 1978. Using the latest in technology, it gradually replaced many manual handling tasks with machines. Belt conveyors, parcel sorting machines, trolley conveyers, and other equipment are now standard components of both parcel and mail sorting services.
As one top postal official says, their services will always require extensive manual labor, for delivery itself cannot possibly be replaced by machines. But other tasks can be speeded up, as in the Taipei and Kaohsiung post offices where electronic sorting and cancelling machines can handle up to 24,000 letters and postcards per hour. This is about 70 times as fast as manual processing.
Local residents have long enjoyed another welcome aspect of their efficient postal service: low postal rates. Even after a raise in rates last August, postage for an ordinary letter of not more than 20 grams costs under 10 cents—and it will usually take only one day to reach any destination on the island. And those letters that are missing key elements of the address usually find their intended addressees as well, for domestic mail carriers seem somehow especially equipped with an ingenious capacity for finding addresses and addressees. They often overcome challenges of handwriting and omission that in other locales would most likely result in letters being returned to the sender or assigned to dead letter boxes.
A sign advertises Taiwan's Domestic Speedpost service. A package mailed in the southern city of Kaohslung will reach its destination in Taipei within three hours.
The post office also offers a range of useful financial services to its customers, again saving them time and trouble. Postal savings accounts, for example, are quite popular. Today the standing balance in Taiwan's postal savings accounts has reached an astronomical US$30 billion. The post office has further encouraged the already long-established Chinese custom of saving money through various sorts of accounts. One of the more successful begins at the school level. Young students are encouraged to save part of their pocket money at their school postal savings bank, stimulating early on a habit of thrift.
Individual savings in postal accounts provide ready funds for public construction projects or other government long-range development plans. Postal savings are now computerized, and people can assign their payroll checks to be deposited directly in postal accounts if they desire. Deposit and withdrawal procedures are no more complicated than regular banking operations. Computerization has been especially appreciated by the public, who for years had to face lengthy and slow-moving lines at their financial institutions.
A related financial service based in the post office is its handling of "giro" transactions. Also widely popular with the general public, it has transformed the way people pay their bills. For generations, Chinese have been used to paying cash to creditors face to face. But with the dramatic changes in living habits of recent years, there is less time and opportunity to pay bills in traditional ways. Today people can pay taxes, electricity, water, gas, and even traffic violation bills through the post office at its "giro" transactions windows. Post office personnel and computers do the rest of the work.
The ROC Post Office offers a wide variety of a typical services. At right, the computer system used to handle postal remittances and savings accounts.
Change characterizes post office services even today. One recent new service illustrates the responsiveness and the efficiency with which the post office serves the general public. Last November the government began allowing people with relatives on the mainland to visit them via a third country. But finding the relatives in the first place often posed serious initial problems. In response to this need, the post office established a special P.O. Box 50,000 for mail destined for the mainland. Currently, it takes less than 50 cents for a personal letter to arrive in the hands of those separated by divisions of politics. Although the letters thus delivered still have to be mailed in a tedious "two-envelope" format (with the outer envelope addressed to the P.O. Box number and the inner one addressed directly to the relatives concerned), it is nonetheless an important expansion in the transmission of information, the overall goal of the postal service.
The ROC's postal service, whose institutional green uniforms and white dove logo (decorated with five square boxes that signify the five postal codes) have become the symbols for high quality service-a reputation earned by its attention to the needs of the people, needs supplied by a staff dedicated to efficiency and noted for its "consumer-friendly" hard work.