You need a paper licence to link to the Royal Mail website 54
I can think of a way to save the Royal Mail some money - abolish their scheme for controlling who links to them, which involves being posted a paper licence to do so, a licence that it's impossible to obtain ...
To get your licence posted to you:
- You have to write a letter to find out the right web address for the application form.
- The letter back gives you a web address
- The web address tells you to email.
- When you email they don't reply.
- But they do give you the option to, er, write in again.
(The emphasis in the quotes below is mine).
Step 1: please write in
I wanted to link to the Royal Mail website last year. But as I revealed last year, their terms and conditions said not to link to them without permission:
You may not create a link to any page of this website without Royal Mail's prior written consent.
so I wrote to them last May, saying:
I am setting up a website at www.settingupyourbusiness.co.uk. I would like to provide a link on my site to this page: http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/content1?catId=84200739&mediaId=84200746.... Please, therefore, could you send me written confirmation that this is OK. Does this give me permission to link to any of your pages, or just the specific one I’ve mentioned here?
Step 2: they write back
They wrote back in, er, July:
I am following up on the letter you wrote regarding the potential to link to Royal Mail on your website.
We have a process which allows us to grant permission and grant you with a licence agreement to link to the site. This takes the form of an online request form, which I hope you don't mind filling out. The info on this form allows us to populate the licence agreement. The form can be found at www.royalmail.com/ip.
Once you have filled out the form, I will get the licence in the post to you. Please note that we only allow links to certain pages as we tend to move the other pages around. Details of this can be found when going to the online form - if you look for linking to our website.
They want to post me a paper licence to link to them! All because they can't be bothered to put some redirects in place on their site.
Step 3: Please email
I'm a bit confused - I was told I needed written permission. So I wrote.
Now they've told me to fill out an online form. But when I go to the URL in question, it says I have to email. So I emailed in August:
Hi, I wrote to you recently about permission (as required by your T&Cs) to link to this page: http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/content1?catId=84200739&mediaId=84200746 from my website here www.settingupyourbusiness.co.uk
Your letter back advised me to visit this page to get a licence to do so: www.royalmail.com/ip
Having been to that page, it says to email you to get your written agreement to link to any pages other than those shown in a list of 7 listed: "Any other type of hyperlink to our site requires written agreement from Royal Mail. Please contact us for further information at brand.team@royalmail.com"
As the page I want to link to isn't one of those 7, could you therefore let me have written permission to link to it, or confirm that I can't?
Step 4: A holding response
They emailed back in September:
I will just check with the digital team - who are out of the office today -and get back to you tomorrow with a response.
Hope that is OK
Step 5: Please don't link
They never actually replied. They've moved their terms and conditions around now. And I lost heart slightly and gave up on my attempt to link.
But they still have that /ip page, which says:
We're happy for you to link to our home page or other selected pages providing you comply with the Hyperlinking Terms and Conditions below. Although you do not need Royal Mail's specific approval for linking to these pages, once the link is on your page it signifies you do agree with our T&Cs.
When linking to the pages listed below, please use the following link names and respective URLs.
Then there are 7 allowed URLs, followed by:
We constantly change and update sections of our site, and want to ensure that you and your customers continue to get the latest information and services you need. Therefore, please don’t provide links to pages on our website other than those listed above...
Any other type of hyperlink to our site requires written agreement from Royal Mail. Please contact us for further information at brand.team@royalmail.com.
So if you want to know why the Post Office is losing money, there we have it. They have an entirely circular process designed to stop you linking to their pages.
Odd policy. Can sort of half see why. Done a lot of work with postcodes, and they probably don't appreciate angry bloggers/geocoders linking to their site saying "these guys are twits for charging for their data".
Still won't stop me linking to them when angrily talking about them.
Sorry, Rhys, I'd misunderstood your comment when i answered below. If they are refusing to allow links because they don't want criticism, I don't think that's going to wash ... They actually say it's because they are always moving their pages about.
If they are indeed always rearranging their pages, I am tempted to ask a) why and b) why don't they preserve inbound links with 301 redirects.
Just out of curiosity, what can an organisation like The Royal Mail do if someone ignores their policy and just goes ahead and links to them? How can they possibly enforce this ridiculous rule? Makes me want to put a link to them on my own blog out of spite.
Great post!
I love it.
I wrote last year about sites which have similar (i.e. retarded) linking policies, which is here > http://www.planet-anarky.co.uk/index.php/2009/10/12/ridiculous-legal-disclaimers-on-websites/
I thought Financial Services were the biggest culprits, but clearly not!
This is typical. I'll link to what I like on the internet. If they want me to stop they can take their website down.
It's like banning people from pointing at their post office buildings if someone asks for directions in the street.
Nice job slipping the link in there....
Seriously though, what are they going to do, sue you? Could they ever possibly win that? Surely only if they could show you were damaging their website - which you aren't doing by giving them a good quality, relevant backlink. Besides, if they did sue you, they'd look phenomenally ignorant in the process....
Hang on a moment! Haven't you just linked to a page on their site?
He sure has... He sure has... Someone notify the link-police!
@rhys It depends which bit of their website - the URL I wanted is still there a year on. The information bits of their site can't be THAT unstable, surely? They should just do what everyone else does - redirects, and watch our for links to non-existent URLs.
@Amy / @Minday: Some lawyers say you need permission. You know what lawyers are like: http://www.out-law.com/page-5609
@George: Check out the "Read more" links at end of post. I found sites that forbade photocopying printouts of their webpages. Huh?
@David: If I catch you doing that without a written licence, you'll be in big trouble ...
Those 'print but not photocopy' examples are awesome. Be interesting to know who thought these things up...
"Don't link to us!"
Everybody links to them.
This is SEO genius!
i'm confused - on looking at their page http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/content1?catId=28000674&mediaId=28100668 all they're asking is for you to simply follow the guidelines on how to link to what (albeit more heavily than necessary) - they're not demanding written permission in advance of linking to them; the .pdf guidelines is admittedly ridiculous - but i think they're just being silly & misunderstanding the internet, rather than being #epicfail #lusrz
@Simon: During the course of this long saga, they actually changed their terms and conditions - so the original Royal Mail T&Cs page has changed.
But if you go to the Post Office T&Cs page it still says: "You may not create a link to any page of this website without Royal Mail's prior written consent."
The ParcelForce T&Cs page says the same.
And the page you link to says at the bottom: "Any other type of hyperlink to our site requires written agreement from Royal Mail."
So however you want to look at it, you need to start at my step one and write them a letter (unless you already know the linking page exists - but the pages telling you that you need written permission don't link to that page ...).
It might be worth pointing them at the W3C TAG finding on "deep linking", in particular the conclusions:
http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/deeplinking.html
How odd. I wonder whether a freedom on information request would uncover how many licenses they hold for all those travel insurance links they buy
@Paul Given that PDF they've got, I'm not sure they'd get that
@Matthew - I've just run their travel insurance / cheap travel insurance page through Yahoo site explorer. Ha ha! That is a lot of links that look paid for ...
This is more common than you'd think. I recently worked with a large council website that had such a requirement in the T&Cs.
New media, huh.
I guess they haven't figured out this "URI" thing yet. "Permanent address" and "redirection" are foreign terms to the Post Office...
Not at all, redirection is when you take all of somebody's post and send it to a new address. These things cost money! You can see why they wouldn't want to have to do that every time they move a web page!
Surely the Royal Mails policy goes against the idea of the web to restrict linking, and I can't understand how legally you could be penalised for this. A URL is an address, an indicator. Does it constitute intellectual property breach by copying it?
Well, it's a breach of their Terms and Conditions, and apparently 'once the link is on your page it signifies you do agree with our T&Cs'. Similarly, by putting this demand on their page, the Royal Mail have signified that they agree agree to my T&Cs and will therefore buy me a pony. Yay!
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=royal+mail&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
Google links to 8!
Now that's even better than Hyndburn Council - http://www.markpack.org.uk/the-council-that-bans-you-from-photocopying-pages-printed-from-their-website/
Link, as in "hyperlink"?
Aaw that's cute; they think they have a say in who links to them!
Sweet
Just curious if you know if their "robots.txt" file adheres to that same policy? Does robots.txt only list those 7 pages? If not does Google and other search engines adhere to those policies?
Here's their robots.txt file
User-agent: *
Disallow: /link/link
Disallow: /link/po
Disallow: /link/pw
Disallow: /link/rmg
Disallow: /portal/po
Disallow: /portal/pw
Disallow: /portal/rmg
Disallow: */print?
# 2007-04-12 http://www.royalmail.com robots.txt
Note the link you wanted to ALMOST fits, as it's
/portal/rm/ but not /portal/rmg/
So it looks like Google can link to the page you're listing.
Wow... I would say there is a customer just dying for some support. Just curious. Did we all understand that robots.txt file thing? That looks like some seriously advanced science we've all be missing out on.
Too bad the royal post are weird, otherwise maybe they be worthy of my supreme consultancy.
I'm a gunna go and make me some free templates now. That should revolutionize the future. ON WITH PROGRESS!!!
Sorry... just assumed... if you didn't figure it out already... robots.txt is there to channel search engine's focus on your website. If you don't want it indexed a all you can just put a big fat "disallow *" in there (* being a wild card character). If you want to avoid only some areas you can do as the Royal Mail is doing on their site. Any "full time" webmaster should know this, and if indeed RoyalMail has a policy about linking it should be mirrored in their robots.txt file. (Unless they assume search engines update their links often enough to not be a concern.)
These guys are just so in the past and as others have said there are many other companies that simply do not want you to link to them. Crazy fools, no wonder they make less and less each year.
Royal Mail really don't get small businesses. I had a run in with them when I moved, and wanted my Ltd company mail to move with me.
The paper-based form to request company redirectino required two signatures.
I am the sole director and shareholder of my company, as permitted by the Companies Act 2006.
When I pointed this out to them, the redirection centre simply repeated that their process required two signatures.
I actually thought about faking a second signatory!
Incidentally, a friend with a small business recently tried to set up a BT phone line. Apparently the BT small business office won't let you speak to them on the phone - you have to email them!
Wait, so if I want to bookmark the link to print first class postage, I'm in violation of their T&Cs? But only as long as I use that computer... but if I save the link on del.icio.us? I just want to be able to pay for stamps without having to click through 100 screens*, dammit!
(* or having to queue for half an hour at the local Post Office, or negotiate whatever innovative new gee-whiz customer service system they've presently got being trialled there)