Address, Postcode and Bank solutions
INTRODUCTION & INSTALLATION
Introduction
CopyrightThe Royal Mail offer a range of discounts under the Mailsort, Presstream and Advertising Mail schemes to provide an incentive for customers with larger mailings to carry out pre-sortation of mail.
The essence of these schemes is that mail is sorted and bagged according to a Mailsort Code, which is derived from the postcode of the mail item. The Royal Mail is thus able to eliminate some of the normal stages of mail delivery - and pass on some of the cost savings to the customer. Savings of well over 30% of postage costs are possible on large or highly targeted mailings or where heavier items are posted - but even for a modest size of mailing, discounts of over 20% are quite achievable.
In order to take advantage of Mailsort, Presstream or Advertising Mail discounts, and to obtain full information on the requirements and facilities of the schemes, you should contact your Postal Sales representative - who can be contacted via your nearest main Post Office or telephone 08457 950 950. You will require a Mailsort or Presstream contract before your mailing can be organised - your representative can organise this, as well as advise on all other matters relating to the schemes.
All mailsort schemes require high quality address data - with high levels of postcoding and address accuracy. The first step for many organisations who intend to carry out Mailsort mailings, is to clean up the database to be mailed - and complete missing address fields - especially postcodes. AFD Software offers a range of address-list cleaning tools, and AFD's Refiner product is especially useful in this process.
AFD MailSaver is a comprehensive, easy to use Mailsort solution for all straight-line Mailsortsortations. MailSaver includes support for MailMedia, Big Book, Presstream and Advertising Mail along with standard Mailsort services and can produce data compatible with Royal Mail's electronic billing system (OBA). (MailSaver does NOT offer mixed-weight Mailsort/Presstream facilities) By attaching directly to PC databases, and offering SQL querying, MailSaver is not only simple to use, but incredibly powerful - and by writing results back directly into the database, MailSaver provides maximum versatility of use. MailSaver also uses some powerful techniques for ensuring you obtain the best possible discounts - including a special routine that cleans up faulty postcodes, and replaces many obsolete ones with the correct replacement postcodes.
These notes assume that you are already familiar with all the requirements of the Mailsort schemes. Further information and help about Mailsort is available direct from Royal Mail at:
Royal Mail General Helpline - for all documentation and general enquiries. 01865 780400 Royal Mail Mailsort Technical Helpline - for all technical enquiries. 020 7371 6957 Your Royal Mail Sales Centre can be contacted on
08457 950 950
All programs and data provided by AFD MailSaver are copyright and protected by the 1988 Copyright, Designs and Patents Act in the United Kingdom and by the Berne convention and other International Copyright treaties.
You are permitted to install and use components of AFD MailSaver only on the number of computers for which a license is held. You may additionally make one copy of the program master disk(s) for back-up purposes, but no other copies are permitted, for whatever reason.
For the avoidance of any doubt, you are specifically not permitted to share a single license for AFD MailSaver between computers.
Evaluation versions of AFD MailSaver and the associated sample data are nevertheless copyright material. You may make and distribute copies of the evaluation version and its sample data, but these copies must be complete and unaltered. You may NOT use the sample data provided for any purpose other than to assist you in evaluating the usefulness of AFD MailSaver.
You may not extract, reverse-engineer or re-distribute data or programs provided under any circumstances whatsoever.
The MailSaver program and data license is renewable each time a new Mailsort database is issued by Royal Mail, normally about every 18 months, and renewal fees include a fresh set of data, program update and technical support until the next renewal becomes due.
MailSaver is also available by subscription to AFD's POP scheme. This covers all costs of using MailSaver, including program and data licenses, updates and technical support for just £35/month (min 12 months) including VAT, payable by standing order.
AFD MailSaver™ is installed automatically by a special installation program and all files are placed in the correct directories. Some information from your License Certificate will be required during installation, so you are advised to have this to hand:
Place the AFD Compact Disc in your drive then from the Task Bar, select Start - Run, then type d:\MAILSAVE and click OK
... where 'd:' is the drive letter of your CD-Rom drive - usually D:
Follow the directions on screen, and provide any information requested by the installation program.
The installation will create menu entries for Mailsaver. These will include entries or icons for Mailsaver and for various help and information documents and program examples.
On new installations, Mailsaver will operate in a special mode, giving full access to data, for about two weeks. To register and fully activate your copy of the program, run the Mailsaver 'Welcome' program. The evaluation version of the program does not require registration.
A copy of the 'Welcome' program is supplied to simplify the process of Registration and activation of your program license. To register your copy of Mailsaver, you will also need the information printed on the 'License Certificate' supplied with your program.
To register, run the 'Welcome' program:
From the Task Bar select Start - Programs - AFD MailSaver - Welcome
Select your required registration method and follow the instructions on screen to activate your software.
If you are not connected to the Internet you can register using our Automatic Freephone Registration Service on 0800 083 8424 at any time.
You can also register via a WWW browser on another computer by visiting:
http://www.afd.co.uk/register.asp
and simply transfer the information to/from this machine.
If you need personal assistance with the registration process, you may call our HelpDesk on 01624 811712, Monday - Friday 9am - 5pm (except holidays).
Technical SupportThe evaluation version of MailSaver is limited, in that:
1. MailSaver uses an out-of-date Mailsort database, so items are not valid for submission to Royal Mail.
2. Only example-data is written back into your database.
3. Mailing Labels are all printed addressed to 'AFD Software Ltd'.
4. Obsolete postcodes are not changed.
- otherwise the program operates exactly like the full version.
The AFD range of software is carefully designed to be easy to use, and trouble free. Every product goes through an intensive testing process on every operating system we support. It is a credit to the team who develop and maintain AFD products that they work "out of the box" in tens of thousands of installations, and we receive surprisingly few customer support requests.
Nevertheless, customers do occasionally have difficulties with new or complex installations, new programming projects - or as a result of system damage such as virus attacks: so AFD has provided a friendly, efficient Technical Support service to ensure that everyone can get the maximum benefit from their AFD system.
AFD Technical Support is a free, unlimited service for everyone who is evaluating or using our products. Our team will help you with any aspect of the installation, configuration, programming or use of any of the AFD range of software. We'll even do our best to help and advise with difficulties you're having with software not our own - so long as it relates to the use of an AFD product.
Unfortunately, we cannot help with other hardware or software products.
The HelpDesk is manned Monday - Friday 8:30am to 5:30pm each weekday except holidays:
1. Email Support is the best and first-choice method of support. Our support engineers will respond to an email within a few minutes - and certainly our aim is to reply within one hour of receipt. You can email us at support@afd.co.uk or from our web site support page using our "Ask the HelpDesk" page which gives us most of the information we need before we respond, thus helping us to direct your enquiry to the correct support engineer. Email is also monitored outside normal office hours, each evening after 9:00pm and on holidays and at weekends (except Christmas Day) after 10:00am, 4:00pm and 9:00pm.
2. Telephone Support. Call our HelpDesk (Mon - Fri 8:30am to 5:30pm) on 01624 811712 to speak directly to one of our product experts.
We won't waste your time and money in a hold system: if all our operators are busy you will be transferred to our purpose built call-handling system. Please leave a message giving as many details of your problem as possible, plus your name, telephone number and product serial number if you have one. One of our qualified engineers will aim to return your call within 15 minutes - but no later than within the hour at exceptionally busy times.
Address data is constantly changing as a result of property redevelopment, business moves and the increasing trend towards the automation of mail delivery. MailSaver can detect and replace many previously changed postcodes but from time to time - usually about every 18 months, the Royal Mail issue a new Mailsort database after which the old database cannot be used for mailings. Subscribers to AFD's MailSaver POP scheme will receive these database updates automatically - other MailSaver users will be invited to order the required update in good time for the changeover date.
Updates to the postcode changes data used by MailSaver are available as part of the AFD Postcode or AFD Postcode Plus regular quarterly update service. If you are not a user of either of these products, you may purchase the update for AFD Postcode at the normal cost of £30 + VAT - you will not be able to use the features of AFD Postcode, but will benefit from the updated Changes data.
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