Pensioner angry over ‘wasted’ postage
Dec 1 2008 by Sam Casey, Huddersfield Daily Examiner
Pensioner angry over ‘wasted’ postage
But Huddersfield U3A secretary Philip Walton refuted the money-wasting charge.
He said the job of sending the newsletters had been contracted to Kirklees Council’s Document Solutions department, which uses an automated mailing system, as a one-off trial.
He said: “Mrs Morton has not considered the logistics of sending out 1,800 letters by hand. The process of stuffing, addressing and mailing that number of letters would have taken two days.
“It was obviously going to cost extra, but it’s a question of weighing up the extra costs against the labour time.”
He said volunteers had been responsible for the process before, but the task of getting enough people to do it at the time needed to do it was a logistical nightmare.
Mr Walton added U3A had actually saved a substantial amount of money in the last year through a number of initiatives.
The measures included buying 5,000 second class stamps before the price went up, switching banks to avoid incurring charges and using cheaper rooms for classes.
Mr Walton said: “We are doing everything we can to save money. Mrs Morton has got her facts wrong.”
He said U3A would assess the success of outsourcing the distribution to Document Solutions before deciding whether to make it a permanent move.
