QSL Matters. Or, rather, it doesn't.

Completely out of the blue yesterday, I received a fairly polite e-mail from the GB-series QSL manager for the RSGB, but one which clearly carried an air of frustration, bordering on irritation.

The e-mail went like this:

"Hi

There are a lot of your QSL cards coming through

There are no sae's [sic] for your GB call sign in stock.

There are cards here waiting to be sent out to you, I can only keep them for a limited length of time and they are approaching the time that I should destroy them.

Could you please send some sae's [sic] ASAP, and let me know if you have activated any GB call signs recently. I will then add them to your file meaning that they will all come out together and save you postage

Davina M0LXT

 

GB series manager"

 

Now QSL managers like M0XLT undoubtedly work very hard every day to clear the immense throughput of QSL cards for the RSGB - and for no money at all (noting that the General Manager gets ~£60,000 per year for some reason).  It would be nice if QSL managers knew how to use apostrophes in their own language, but that's another matter.

But being busy doesn't mean you get to be irritated.  In less time than it took for M0XLT to look me up, find my email address, and compose this e-mail, a quick check of the QRZ.com for the callsign would have clearly shown that at no point did I indicate a physical QSL card was on offer, or would be on offer.  I say QSL was only LoTW, and the associated imports into QRZ.com:

 

It seems that frustration leading to sounding a bit irritated isn't new to M0XLT, as this extract from page 7 of an RSGB newsletter from March 2011 that I found online rather illustrates, together with a rather dark suggestion - not from M0XLT - of 'banning' by a German station, apparently reverting to the more extreme German type:

QSL cards are just cards.  Sure, there's a tradition of sending them back and forth, and I am never unhappy to receive one, and will always respond if I do - provided the sender respected my published wishes - typically that I want $3 for the return.  But I will almost never send one out.  

If you want to criticise my approach for returns for $3, by the way, then all you have to do is understand difference.  I don't find any particular value in QSL cards.  But if you do, then you have to cover the costs of your personal obsession yourself.

I haven't been a member of the irrelevant RSGB for years, and so am not a user of their bureau.  I would have hoped the RSGB knew this, and provided a database for QSL managers to consult.

In short, had anyone - M0XLT or the plethora operators who blindly sent a card to the RSGB bureau actually read anything at all - then they would not have come to expect a card in return.  Sadly, for all of them, a non-return is precisely what they will get, and M0XLT had been told to destroy the incoming cards.

Remember: you can collect as many cards in as obsessive a manner as you wish, and for as long as you wish.  But, come the day you lie dying on your bed, nobody will care, and they will all end up, recycled, as toilet paper centres.  Laminated cards won't even manage that honour.  Think on!