Chapter 8
Why Registered Email Is Better Than US Postal Service Registered Mail

The deliv­ery of nor­mal email isn’t reli­able and there­fore doesn’t pro­vide assur­ance of deliv­ery nor make good proof in a legal dis­pute. All the recip­i­ent has to say is, “I didn’t get the email you sent.” That’s both pos­si­ble and believ­able. Con­se­quent­ly, email isn’t much good for legal noti­fi­ca­tions, impor­tant mes­sages, and high-val­ue com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Or is it?

In fact, RMail Reg­is­tered Email can pro­vide you with the assur­ance and proof that you need for email mes­sages. This reg­is­tered email is not only com­pa­ra­ble to US Postal Ser­vice reg­is­tered mail, but it’s bet­ter.

RPost  When RMail first began in 2000 it was known as RPost and offered only one ser­vice: Reg­is­tered Email. Today Reg­is­tered Email remains its most wide­ly used ser­vice.

Using Registered Email Service for Business

First, you need to under­stand there’s a dif­fer­ence between deliv­er­ing a doc­u­ment via post office reg­is­tered mail, Fed­er­al Express, UPS, or oth­er phys­i­cal means and deliv­er­ing it by RMail Reg­is­tered Email. When you use a phys­i­cal means and get a receipt, you have proof of deliv­ery, but you don’t have proof of what was deliv­ered.

For instance, you send an impor­tant noti­fi­ca­tion via Fed­er­al Express and get a receipt for deliv­ery. But the recip­i­ent claims that, yes they received the Fed­er­al Express enve­lope, but there was noth­ing in it.

On the oth­er hand, RMail Reg­is­tered Email ser­vice not only pro­vides legal proof that the doc­u­ment was deliv­ered, but it also includes legal proof of exact­ly what was deliv­ered. This, of course, is much high­er qual­i­ty proof.

This proof has been suc­cess­ful­ly used in court many times, and if need be, RMail will assist you in prepar­ing proof for a court that has nev­er seen a Reg­is­tered Email mes­sage before. RMail Reg­is­tered Email ser­vice has been approved by many major bar asso­ci­a­tions, such as the Flori­da Bar (the lat­est is the State of Mon­tana Bar Asso­ci­a­tion), and you can be assured that ulti­mate­ly the recip­i­ent will not be able to deny the deliv­ery.

For that rea­son, RMail Reg­is­tered Email ser­vice is a bet­ter and more effec­tive means of deliv­er­ing sen­si­tive and high-val­ue doc­u­ments or com­mu­ni­ca­tions than post office reg­is­tered mail.

If you take the sim­plis­tic view about this, you can say, “Oh great, I found a new means of send­ing a reg­is­tered let­ter where I have greater con­ve­nience and a low fee.” That per­spec­tive, how­ev­er, may be short­sight­ed. Why not use Reg­is­tered Email ser­vice rou­tine­ly for all your impor­tant com­mu­ni­ca­tions, deliv­ery of sen­si­tive and high-val­ue doc­u­ments, and noti­fi­ca­tions? In oth­er words, why not use a high­er vol­ume of Reg­is­tered Email mes­sages because it is so con­ve­nient and inex­pen­sive? Sure makes a lot of sense.

Impact

But what’s stand­ing in the way? Prob­a­bly what’s stand­ing in your way is the shock­ing impact of send­ing a Reg­is­tered Email mes­sage. If one gets a reg­is­tered let­ter deliv­ered by the post­man, it’s often some kind of adverse legal doc­u­ment, dire noti­fi­ca­tion, or oth­er bad news. Seems like reg­is­tered mail (or a Reg­is­tered Email mes­sage) is sel­dom good news for a recip­i­ent. Gen­er­ous use of Reg­is­tered Email may be a lit­tle heavy-hand­ed. Yet, you can dif­fuse the shock by a sim­ple state­ment at the open­ing of the Reg­is­tered Email mes­sage. For instance:

I always use reg­is­tered email for impor­tant busi­ness com­mu­ni­ca­tions such as this one so that I can be assured that it was in fact deliv­ered to you. I encour­age you to use it too in future email com­mu­ni­ca­tions to me.

Your recip­i­ents will come to per­ceive such reg­is­tered email mes­sages with­out shock, if you use reg­is­tered email rou­tine­ly for all your impor­tant com­mu­ni­ca­tions to clients, cus­tomers, ven­dors, col­lab­o­ra­tors, and oth­ers.

The rest of the sto­ry is a lit­tle bit dif­fer­ent. You can also use RMail Reg­is­tered Email for shock and awe. If you want some­one to know you’re seri­ous about some­thing, send them a Reg­is­tered Email mes­sage. That will like­ly get their atten­tion more quick­ly than an ordi­nary email mes­sage.

Personal Use of Registered Email Service

Why is it that peo­ple sel­dom use reg­is­tered let­ters for per­son­al com­mu­ni­ca­tions? Per­haps it’s the neg­a­tive impact upon deliv­ery. But it’s also the incon­ve­nience that makes a dif­fer­ence. To send a reg­is­tered let­ter you have to get forms from the post office, fill them out, deliv­er them to the post office, and pay five or six times the nor­mal postage.

If you take away the cost and incon­ve­nience, send­ing reg­is­tered com­mu­ni­ca­tions rou­tine­ly might enjoy more wide­spread use, not only for busi­ness affairs but for per­son­al affairs too. And RMail Reg­is­tered Email enables you to do exact­ly that.

Indeed, send­ing a Reg­is­tered Email mes­sage is as con­ve­nient as click­ing a spe­cial but­ton in your email pro­gram. And the cost? The cost for the first five Reg­is­tered Email mes­sages of any par­tic­u­lar month is zero. There­after the cost is less than first class postage per email and much less than a reg­is­tered mail let­ter.

What does Reg­is­tered Email do? First, it pro­vides you with a con­fir­ma­tion that your email has been received by the recip­i­ent. Sec­ond, it pro­vides a proof of deliv­ery time­stamp, not only of the email itself but also of the con­tents includ­ing attach­ments. How can these two aspects of reg­is­tered email serve your per­son­al activ­i­ties?

It seems that only the first is impor­tant most of the time for per­son­al email mes­sages. You often send emails that you want to make sure have been deliv­ered. You sel­dom if, if ever, send per­son­al emails that require proof of deliv­ery and what was deliv­ered.

So with the above thoughts in mind, you can pro­ceed to think about how you might use Reg­is­tered Email pro­duc­tive­ly for per­son­al activ­i­ties. There are plen­ty of sit­u­a­tions in the every­day activ­i­ties of ordi­nary peo­ple that might ben­e­fit from Reg­is­tered Email. Here are some of the sit­u­a­tions:

• Impor­tant fam­i­ly affairs
• Pur­chas­ing arrange­ments
• Impor­tant noti­fi­ca­tions
• Con­firm­ing var­i­ous ser­vices
• Oper­at­ing a home busi­ness
• Cor­re­spon­dence with your attor­ney
• Finan­cial mat­ters
• Com­mu­ni­ca­tions with your insur­ance agent
• Com­mu­ni­cat­ing with your land­lord
• Even affairs of the heart

In oth­er words, there’s a whole range of every­day activ­i­ties that can ben­e­fit from the use of Reg­is­tered Email. What’s the catch? The catch gets us back to that old cul­tur­al afflic­tion we know as reg­is­tered mail (via the post office). It’s obvi­ous that Reg­is­tered Email can be very use­ful, but you don’t want to scare or offend peo­ple. Still, I think there’s a way to avoid that.

For instance, you can start out your Reg­is­tered Email mes­sages with a phrase sen­tence such as:

I’m send­ing this to you reg­is­tered email so that we can be assured it is deliv­ered and that the lack of such assur­ance will not delay our sit­u­a­tion.

Or how about these three:

We met today and decid­ed that we want you to deposit $12,000 imme­di­ate­ly in Mom’s bank account. The three of us will each reim­burse you $3,000 with­in the week for our part in this con­tri­bu­tion to Mom’s well-being. I’m send­ing this reg­is­tered email to make sure you receive our deci­sion.

Tomor­row I will deposit in your Pay­Pal account the extra $250 you need for the large lab fee for your Chem­istry 435 course. So you can go ahead and sign up for the course before the 5:00 pm dead­line. I’m send­ing this reg­is­tered email to make sure you get it today.

I’m send­ing this reg­is­tered email my dar­ling to make sure that you get it. The thought of one of my email mes­sages not reach­ing you is more than I can bear.

In such cas­es, the shock of the recip­i­ent on receiv­ing a reg­is­tered email mes­sage will be defused.

So it’s easy to see why Reg­is­tered Email is a won­der­ful tool to use for com­mu­ni­ca­tions in your per­son­al affairs, where­in you just want to be sure that an email was deliv­ered to the recip­i­ent with­out mak­ing a fol­low-up phone call, a fol­low-up email, or some oth­er fol­low-up con­tact.

It’s true that the RMail Reg­is­tered Email ser­vice was designed for busi­ness mat­ters. That’s why it includes proof of deliv­ery and what was deliv­ered. But just because RMail Reg­is­tered Email was designed for busi­ness doesn’t mean that you can’t use it for per­son­al pur­pos­es.

Marked or Plain?

Be aware that you can be sneaky. The default for send­ing a Reg­is­tered Email mes­sage is an email clear­ly marked by the red RMail logo and oth­er dec­o­ra­tive treat­ment. Nonethe­less, you can elect to send Reg­is­tered Email with­out any mark­ing at all. In that case, the recip­i­ent will not know that the email is Reg­is­tered Email. There will be no shock. No awe. There will be no aware­ness by the recip­i­ent that there is proof of deliv­ery and con­tent. It’s your choice.

Using Registered Email Services

How do you send Reg­is­tered Email? You sim­ply click (tap) the red but­ton marked Send Reg­is­tered or Send RMail. Depend­ing on what RMail pro­gram you use (e.g., RMail Inbox, RMail Web, or a plug-in), the but­ton will send the Reg­is­tered Email or bring up a menu for addi­tion­al choic­es. Read Chap­ter 14 for addi­tion­al instruc­tions.

All You Need to Know

All you need to know about Reg­is­tered Email is that:

• It gives you assur­ance of deliv­ery with track­ing.
• It’s time­stamped proof of deliv­ery.
• It’s proof of what dig­i­tal infor­ma­tion was deliv­ered.
• If you need any one of these, RMail Reg­is­tered Email ser­vice pro­vides it at great con­ve­nience and nom­i­nal cost.