| How the VE/VA6 Bureau
Works
Bureaus and other QSL
senders from all over the world ship cards to us the cheapest and
therefore the slowest way possible. We then sort them and mail them to
you (if you have funds on hand at the bureau). Our objective is to mail
cards 3 or 4 time per year (this is dependent on receipt of cards from
the national incoming bureau) to those clients who have 3 cards or more
and have funds on file. We also do a year end clearing (coordinated
with receipt of a National Bureau clearing) where we'll
send 1 card or more to those who have funds on file. Client's
funds on hand at the old bureau have been transferred to the new bureau
as well as all the cards.
Typical time from
QSO to receipt of a card via the bureau is a minimum of 1 year.
This is a long process with many volunteers in the chain, plus mail
delays that arise from postal systems that are a little less efficient
than ours.
Cards are received
from many sources:
- The Canadian
National Incoming QSL Bureau (most volume here)
- Other Country's
Outgoing Bureaus directly
- QSL Services
- QSL Managers
- Individual hams and
SWLs
At the VE/VA6 bureau,
all cards are received by "The Bureau Chief", Larry VE6KC who sorts the
cards based on the first letter of the suffix. These sorted cards are
then passed to the "Letter Managers" (who? see home
page) to be sorted to the individual operators callsigns. The cards for
those who have a funds balance at the bureau are then packaged, labeled
and mailed. Cards for those who don't have a
balance on hand are held for at least 24 months pending receipt of
mailing funds and if no funds are received, these cards will be
DESTROYED. This is a change to our previous stated policy but is
driven by the high cost of postal services. If you don't EVER want
bureau cards, please let your letter manager know and he'll destroy
your cards upon receipt BUT
remember that if you do this you MUST advise the bureau to resume
delivery. This applies to clients that have told us that, for example,
they don't work HF and then start working HF again.
The incoming bureau
operates as a "post office" and we deliver cards to clients to the best
of our ability given the data we have. This can result in clients
receiving cards that are not theirs. Please appreciate we cannot read
dates, modes, bands, etc. on each of the thousands of cards we handle
for you. Also there is a possibility of simple miss-sorts like a couple
of cards sticking together. If the cards are not for you, please return
them to us with a note or send them back though us or the National Incoming
Bureau.
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