One of the most important issues that should be on the agenda of the Management of "Bulgarian Posts" is the qualitative reform of the BFS. Here we are not talking about a reform in the personnel of the specialized division, but about a global reform in its work, starting from printing and ending with advertising and sales of finished products.I know that neither the management of Bulgarian Posts nor that of the Bulgarian Federation of Stamps wants to give them any advice, but the situation with stamp issuance and stamp distribution is already becoming intolerable and is affecting more and more both the number of philatelists in Bulgaria as a whole and the number of philatelists who purchase new postal issues. Therefore, I will allow myself to share with you a few pressing problems and proposals for solving them.
We have already written and discussed the problems with the printing of philatelic publications several times. Recently, newer and newer "wrong" postal publications have been appearing on the market, which are sold at prices even higher than the price of centimes. All colleagues with whom I have spoken on the issue are of the opinion that these are samples taken out by printers and other officials in the printing house. Of course, I cannot accuse the people in question without evidence and I secretly hope that these are publications printed by the people who sell them. But in order to stop the rumors about unregulated taking out of samples from the BFS printing house, it would be good for the control over the press to be strengthened, for maximum sanctions to be imposed on possible violators, as well as for the process itself to become more transparent. The lost trust in this direction must be restored and in my opinion this is the right direction. The presence of such "wrong" issues on the market has an extremely negative impact on the reputation of Bulgarian Philately and destroys trust in the system.
Stamp distribution. It is no secret to anyone that the distribution of postal publications in Bulgaria is at a terrible level. The exception, of course, are places with philatelic shops - the city of Sofia and the city of Plovdiv. But Bulgaria is not Sofia. It is no secret to anyone that the philatelic counters in the other regional cities do not do any work. Over the past year, I have not heard of a working philatelic counter anywhere, and even if it were working, it cannot be at the level of the philatelic shop.Unfortunately, this situation strongly discriminates against all philatelists in the province - current and future. And having said future philatelists, it is worth mentioning the latest policies of the leadership of the Union of Bulgarian Philatelists (UBP) aimed at the youngest part of our society. The results of these are already visible in many places. And here we come again to the poor management of Bulgarian Posts and BFS. The result of the lack of stamp distribution in large (and smaller) cities leads to a complete cancellation of the efforts of the BFS to work with children. Why? Because even though they (the children) are involved in the idea of this beautiful hobby, they have nowhere to buy postal publications and if they accidentally manage to get one, it will be through the hands of several commercial resellers (traders) with whom the BFS has concluded contracts. And I forgot to mention that despite 5 years of efforts by several people, promises from Ministers, Deputy Ministers, Executive Directors and others, we still do not have the opportunity to purchase postal publications online. We cannot, not even by phone, and we live in the 21st century.
Let's get back to the resellers. Bulgarian Philately and Numismatics deliberately concludes contracts with these dealers, and does not sell directly to retail customers outside the Philatelic Shops. The reason is very simple. They are too lazy to work and with little effort they have a decent profit. This laziness of theirs leads to philatelists in the country (with the exception of Plovdiv and Sofia) purchasing philatelic publications with at least a 30% markup from the dealers in question. Not to mention the enterprising unofficial traders from Sofia, who buy from the philatelic shops in Sofia and sell again with at least a 30% markup. So how do you want the Philatelic Hobby to develop!? A solution could be the creation of an equal system for purchasing postal publications. By equal, I mean equally facilitated, accessible and with the same prices everywhere! Of course, this definitely requires new or simply renewed management, which will strive not only for deals with commercial entities, but also think about the little guy, and this, of course, is unlikely to negatively affect the company's revenues. In fact, it will likely increase them.
This is it, dear friends and colleagues. I will write about this thing repeatedly and I will not give up until there is a positive result for the ordinary philatelist.