United Radio QSL Bureau has reached 10 years in QSL management, supporting rare DX and DXpeditions to send out QSL cards direct and through the IARU Bureaus. Times have changed considerably since I started back in 2007.
The way in which DXpeditions have needed to plan their QSL policies, with cost of shipping and vessel charter reaching new levels it has been important to incorporate in our QSL work, ways that we can assist the DXpeditions in raising valuable revenue to help offset some of the high budgets needed. Quite often the DX chaser may not understand why a QSL will cost $5 but for some of the Top Rare DX locations where vessel charter, helicopter and shipping costs are very high it is not just the cost of postage that you are paying.
In 2007 all QSL requests arrived to us by post with dollars and IRC’s which was 100% manual work. Bureau was in our eyes used abusively back then and still is by many in our hobby. The cost of using the bureau is something few of us think about and few rarely think about the cost to everyone else when they send a box of 2,000 cards to their Bureau for processing when you should be asking yourself:
Are these cards wanted by the recipient? No? Don’t send them.
Do I want their cards back? No? Write “Thanks QSL” or “Your QSL is not required!”
Can I request their card by OQRS? Yes, so do it!
Every quarter we receive a box of cards like this incoming from the bureau, most of which are sent to recycling once processed so please use OQRS.
While 3 or 4 times a year we send out to all IARU Bureaus packages weighing a total of 80 kg. Again combining our mailings with others keeps the cost down for everyone.
Using our bureaus responsibly makes it quicker and cheaper for those of us that actually NEED cards Via Bureau. Since 2007 you have requested over a quarter of a million QSL cards through our outgoing QSL Bureau.
