About Hellmail.co.uk

(Updated March 27th 2008)

 

Firstly, a big welcome to Hellmail.

Hellmail is a privately owned, independent online news source run on a wholly voluntary and non-profit making basis. Hellmail looks at postal matters in the UK, Europe and elsewhere in the world. We remain (as far as possible) independent of political organisations, postal operators, trade unions, postal regulators and consumer organisations. Our main task is to provide news, features, and other useful information. Our style is generally 'breezy' with a few highbrow pieces for those more comfortable with that.

Our output is fed to Google News, News Now, Feedburner and many many search engines. We also have an email subscription service (daily delivery between 5am and 7am GMT), browser add-ons, widgets and range of brand new ideas to keep you informed. More here.

Soyez bienvenus à Hellmail,

Hellmail regarde les sujets postaux au l'Europe et ailleurs dans le monde. Nous restons (aussi loin que possible) indépendant des organismes politiques, opérateurs postaux, syndicats, et régulateurs postaux.

Why Are You Called Hellmail?

A reasonable question. Originally, Hellmail was set up as a consumer based opinion forum but as anyone who works in the postal industry will tell you, some days can indeed be hell, and on that basis we see no reason to change the name, even if what we do now is very different. Besides, theres a logic to reverse-publicity.

The regular news/feature writers include:

Steve Lawson, site editor, negotiator and problem solver. Steve has a background in teaching and working with charities. He is also an experienced journalist and broadcaster and has two national awards to his name.

Mark White sub-editor. Mark has a strong interest in the parcel side of postal services and runs a busy mail order company in the UK as well as a publishing operation in France where he spends much of his time. His articles are frequently 'spikey' but someone has to be!

David Lynch David has a passion for seeing quality maintained for domestic post but focuses on main news stories.

Janet Ames Janet is an established writer (and so she says) - an awful cook. Janet writes material for the blind and has done for over 20 years. She has appeared on Central Television as a panelist. Recently absent due to ill health, Janet has returned once again to keep us entertained with the lighter side of the postal world. Janet is most definately a consumer, and frequently gets lost on her way to the post office - as you'll discover.

Stephen Richardson New he may be, but Stephen is one of our most popular writers. A postal worker with a balanced view on things. We felt it was essential that at least one member of the regular team actually works on the ground although if you read Stephen's articles, you may suspect as we do, that he is in entirely the wrong job!

Franz Groter Franz is our European ear. You'll generally find him under 'Global News'

Sarah Sharpe Sarah is our administration. She deals with our email and correspondance and keeps track of what we're all doing. She often tells us that she is doing all the work and we can't disagree with that We wouldn't dare. Just occasionally she'll write for us but we have to get her fired up enough first.

Extended Writing Team   

The extended Hellmail writing team (which can include you) is made up of a wide cross section of individuals with expertise in their own particular area of the postal business, including, but not limited to, shipping and forwarding, couriers, postal operations (all levels) and direct mail specialists, as well as people who operate businesses dependent on such services. We also recieve articles written by members of the public.

The views expressed by our extended editorial team may not be the views of Hellmail or its regular writing team and some editing may be carried out to ensure that articles do not cause offence or break publishing codes. This is entirely the decision of the editor and is final. All submitted work is on this basis. We are not interested in matters relating to employment or industrial disputes other than in a general sense for our news or features section but 'Talkback' may offer scope for this.

How To Submit Your Own Article Or Become A Regular Writer

If you would like to submit an article, press release, or even become a regular writer (and we get many trying to get a start in publishing), simply email us or email your story/comment via the email ink at the bottom of the site. We welcome new articles and features from anyone interested in or wishing to comment on stories featured on Hellmail or on the postal industry. We welcome writers from across Europe, The Far East, Australia and the U.S. who can offer their own unique perspective on the postal, logistics and direct marketing industries.

You may find this page useful if you are not sure where to start or you can ask the Editor for additional help if you need it.

You can email us at postie@hellmail.co.uk

Why We Closed The Hellmail Forum

We include this paragraph as its a question that crops up from time to time and rather than replying to the same question via email, we now refer people here.

On 31st August 2007, we closed our busy and highly succesful forums after almost three years, to concentrate exclusively on news and editorial. 'Successful' does not necessarily mean cost-effective or self-funding and with 10,000 visitors a day at its peak, the forum created real problems in terms of bandwidth consumption. It was expensive to run and more importantly, enormously time consuming.

Closing the forum was not an easy decision to make and we still, to this day, genuinely mourn the loss of so many valued contributors. The Hellmail forum was the first of its type in the UK, and spawned others. However, the original purpose of the forum was purely to provide postal customers with a form of communication. It was never designed to take the volume of traffic we experienced or the breadth of topics it began to cover. Downtime became a real problem by the Summer of 2007 and we had a choice between investing in a stand alone server at even greater cost and no feasible way of ever funding it, or concentating on what we set out to be in 2003 - a news and information source. We chose the latter, redesigned the site and have broadened our readership to most of Europe and the States - more recently Russia. 27% of visitors arrive at the site by typing the word 'Hellmail' into a search engine - testament to the coverage we now get..

Do You Intend To Re-Open The Forum?

No, no and no. We get asked this repeatedly. There are many existing forums that do this already and although the question often crops up (alongside 1001 reasons why they should re-open), we have no plans to do so. The merits of doing so are too heavily outweighed by the financial implications and time involved. It simply isn't possible. We appreciate that many were upset when we closed down the Hellmail forum but it was a joint decision by the original Hellmail team based on economics, predictions based on the traffic levels over the 12 months prior to closure, and the technical limitations at the time - including bandwidth consumption. Our tie-in with Feedburner does enable comment on various other sites but from a technical point of view we have no plans to go back to a forum basis..

What We Can And Can't Do

We also cannot provide answers to everything otherwise we would have to replicate the entire content of websites owned by Royal Mail, Deutsche Poste, La Post and other postal operators as well as legislative material that applies in individual counties. A great deal of information can be found along the top menu bar relating to official and unofficial organisations, postal operators, as well as specific information for buyers /sellers and/or others with postal queries.

We remain independent but have some wonderful relationships with many organisations which we are keen to maintain and indeed develop. We talk to politicians, advice groups as well as the Media and try to raise important issues at every opportunity. We would particularly like to develop a new section which highlights GOOD things about Mail handlers and carriers - of which there are many.

What Others Say About Hellmail:

"If you haven't find your way there yet, you really ought to check the postal website with the really funky name. It's called Hellmail. Yes, I know, but once you get over the name, you'll find out that it's a postal information rich site that's worth regular visits." - Postcom.org - US Postal News

"What a fabulous job you've done with the new Hellmail. It's informative, provocative, enlightening and often funny. It is still my main source for information and although I miss it's once great forums, I can see why you changed and it seems to get better every week." - Claire Pemberton (CEO of large mail order est).

"We regard Hellmail as our British cousin. It has all the latest news and information on the postal business." - Storie Di Posta (Italian Postal News)

"Wonderfully informative, often first off the starting blocks for the latest news and not afraid to speak it's mind - that is Hellmail!" - George Bainbridge (Oxford)

"A festering boil or a listening ear on the postal business? - hard to say. Either way, if it's important, Hellmail will have covered it and we all read it!" - James (Postman)

Press Releases

We very much welcome press releases and are happy to write features about forthcoming events. Click here to submit a press release.

News Output &- Copyright  

Hellmail news is fed to many search engines including Google News and News Now. We also now provide a multitude of ways ways for site owners and organisations to keep tabs on whats going on at Hellmail including several news feeds (all free) and our RSS News feed. We continually add new widgets, code snippets, and bolt-n goodies to enable as many people as possible to read all the latest news on postal matters in the UK, Europe, and the rest of the world.

If you wish to copy/paste a Hellmail news story on your own or company web site, you are very welcome to do so providing you provide a working hyperlink back to the original article - these are the terms of our copyright. All content (except where otherwise stated) is copyright of Hellmail but it can be reproduced providing there is evidence of a return link. It is generally much easier to use our feeds though.

Sponsorship

To cover the costs of running Hellmail we have to have semi-sponsorship in the form of advertisements. Without these we'd be running at a loss. We clock up expenses not just on the hosting and bandwidth but on things like travelling expences for meetings, interviews etc. All staff work on a voluntary basis but clearly we can't be out of pocket due to these kind of costs. Ad space is available but some spots sell fairly quickly and in some cases can be for several months ahead, so if you're considering a spot on Hellmail, we need to know early so we can accomodate you. Ads are on a first-come first-served basis. Top banner ads are popular but an equally eye-catching ad can be placed in the side columns on a fixed or rotational basis. See 'Advertising' in the 'Hellmail Pages' section on the menu bars.

Privacy

Any email or postal correspondance is always treated in strict confidence by Hellmail and its appointees, and no data connected with such correspondance is ever shared or made available to anyone else except where the content of such correspondance is being forwarded to us for publication consideration. In such circumstances, we never publish personal details other than the person's publication name.

All visitors IP addresses are logged to enable us to produce accurate statistics on geographics when considering the content of future news and features (Hellmail increasingly covers new items from around the world).

E-Mail Alerts

We have a daily email alert service which is free of charge. You can subscribe or unsubscribe at any time and these are sent out automatically to all subscribers between 5am and 7am GMT. You can unsubscribe at any time but if you prefer to do so by post, please write to:

Hellmail - Postal Industry News, c/o FeedBurner, 20 W Kinzie, 9th Floor, Chicago IL USA 60610

Contact Information

Hellmail - 79 Market Street - Manchester - M43 6DD - United Kingdom

Our email address can be found at the bottom of the site