The mobile mail service is operating in villages with less than 600 inhabitants. The service represents a mobile/moving post office. The essence of this initiative consists in the fact that the postman has a car and he visits the villages on an everyday basis. This has been developed because there are not enough post offices around the country. They are particularly lacking in the countryside.
To be economically viable, the mobile mail service has a large offer of basic services, like:
• delivery and collection of letters/packages/cheques/parcels
• money board and pension service
• delivery of cash charged to credit card (mobile function of ATM)
• additional services, like: lottery tickets/newspapers/ etc. for sale.
In practice, every household gets a card indicating the intention of using the service (connected to the postman’s car through a signal). The households have to hang it on their gates or somewhere which it can be seen from the street.
When the car passes, if the postman cannot find the family at home, he leaves a reminder in the mailbox three times. If they miss these occasions, people can collect or send packages at the appointed post office. Additionally, users can give power of attorney (proxy) to a neighbour or anyone else to receive their packages or pension.
This good practice carried out by the Central Transdanubian Regional Innovation Agency in Hungary is part of the “Good practices collection on sustainable mobility in rural EU: summary of the good practices” written under the Move On Green (MOG) project.
To know more about this Good Practice, please click here and if you want to learn more about the MOG project, please click here.
