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Western Union Ends Telegram Services

Posted by samzenpus on from the first-my-8-tracks-now-this dept.

Snap E Tom writes "As of this past Friday, Western Union has stopped sending telegrams. The article cites factors such as long distance telephone and faxes that contributed to its demise, but email was the final nail. My hunch is that modern USPS and overnight delivery services did the most damage, though."

6 of 223 comments (clear)

  1. 1/27/06 by The+MAZZTer · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ...is a very important date in Telecommunications.

    My Networking and Telecomm prof says it's about as important as the eventual day when the last car manufacturer will announce they have ceased production of gasoline-powered vehicles.

  2. I will miss the telegram. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I never, EVER received a spam/junk telegram. Ever. There's something kind of nice about a message transmission medium that has never been trashed.

    "FROM NIGERIA STOP OPPORTUNITY FOR MONEY STOP PLEASE HLP ME STOP..."

  3. It's a pity by jetxee · · Score: 2, Insightful
    I belive, that there is still a lot of places in the world with neither e-mail nor fax. But one could send a telegram there. Is it easier now to communicate with those people?

    For WU it is business optimization, for most of us it does not matter much, but to tell the truth, there seems to be less opportunity now.

  4. Re:They recently killed their "BidPay" service, by Kadin2048 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I wasn't aware of this -- thanks for the heads-up.

    I haven't sold anything in a while, but back when I was doing it more actively, I really liked BidPay. I've never been a fan of PayPal since they started requiring you to "upgrade" (big fat sarcasm quotes on that, in case you didn't notice) to a Premier account to accept Credit Card payments. In return for this "feature," they take a percentage of all your incoming transfers -- regardless of whether or not it comes from a credit card -- from then on. And the best part? You can only "down" grade from Premier back to the free service ONCE. If you accept another credit card payment after that, you're stuck with them taking a significant percentage of all payments, permanently. And eBay doesn't provide a convenient way of specifying that you accept PayPal, but not if it's funded by a Credit Card.

    I always liked BidPay because it gave me a way to let buyers use credit cards if they really wanted to, without shifting that expensive over to me, or requring me to jack up all my prices by several percent in order to cover PayPal's Premier service overhead.

    And as a buyer, it was a lot more convenient than going to the Post Office and buying a Money Order. It will be missed.

    --
    "Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
  5. Have you seen a telegram lately? by wandazulu · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I sent a telegram as a novelty to my girlfriend many years ago; what she got wasn't the yellowish paper adorned with logos and glued letters, but a dot matrix printout. It was about as unglamorous as you could get. Yes, it did say Western Union on it, but I wouldn't have been surprised if they hadn't already been using the internet to transmit it.

    All in all, it was truly a telegram in name only (had to pay, fill out a form, etc). It totally lacked any of the style or magic you may have expected.

  6. Re:Money Transfer experience by jackbird · · Score: 2, Insightful
    bank transfer (my bank charges me somewhere between 12-15 EUR plus the Sender has to pay an additionals 12-15 EUR)

    What REALLY pisses me off is that there's some additional middleman that takes a fairly decent chunk out of the transfer that can't be predicted - Overseas wire transfers always arrive $10-$25 short, even though my European client pays their bank's fee up front, and mine doesn't charge for receiving.

    Anyone solved this problem, or learned to predict the charges?