E-QSL: Paying for FT4JA

Processing QSL cards and e-cards is a real chore, I find.  Not only that, dealing with physical cards can quickly become ruinously expensive.

What I get for my $1

Some time ago, I decided that I didn't need a physical card, although I'm perfectly happy to receive them, and always interested to see where they're from. 

But I had to get tough on those apt to send a card on a whim.  Being very active on the air, it was becoming unsustainable for me to be charitable by returning cards several times a week.  The postage costs are far too high for this kind of thing, so I had to reluctantly impose a $2 charge, which is an at-cost affair.

This imposition has seen the number of cards dropping through my letterbox to just one or two a week.

Today, I was confirming a large number of E-QSLs when I came across FT4JA's e-card.  It had a nice little exclamation mark on a yellow triangular background, indicating something had to be done.

That thing was payment!  Well, it was only 1 USD, and the dxpedition probably cost a lot of money.  So I did, more as a 'look-see', pay for this card.

I understand entirely why the transaction is in USD.  But for those, perhaps the majority of folk who do not have a USD account because they are not Americans, there is usually a charge, sometimes with a minimum amount, that adds to this superficially small amount.  At least the transaction worked smoothly.

The other thing is that charging for E-QSLs does rather go against the grain of ham radio.  Yes, I am doing the same thing for the same reason with physical cards - I don't want others' cards very much, anymore than the FT4JA want tens of thousands of others' cards.  

It's just that physical cards cost money to make and send, whereas with purely electronic qsling, it's difficult to see where the costs are incurred.  FT4JA clearly were logging as they went, which is why I received their E-QSL first.  So the only answer in this case is that it's money-making, however justified or necessary.

Yes, I guess I would pay $1 for some other rare DX.  But I hope this charging for E-QSLs doesn't catch on too much, because it would certainly push me over the edge into abandoning E-QSL altogether.  I'm already pretty close, choosing these days to update my LoTW account daily.

Or maybe I should be more entrepreneurial, in charging everybody $1 for my E-QSL, because Wales stations aren't so common, and everybody seems desperate to add MW to their DXCC counts.  I could be pretty rich in no time...