Deposit is instant. Collection is not. Between the two sits a window the operator controls through three levers: when the recipient is told, how long the parcel may stay, and what happens when the window closes. Get those wrong and a station that looks full is really a station that is stuck.
Tell people at the right moment
A notification sent at the moment of deposit reaches people mid-day, when collecting is least convenient, and is forgotten by evening. A reminder timed to the hours when people actually pass the station does more work than the first message did. The aim is not to notify more; it is to notify when acting on the message is easy.
- Confirm at deposit, so the recipient knows the parcel arrived and where it is.
- Remind before the window closes, not after it has.
- Make the collection code retrievable without contacting support.
- Say plainly what happens if the parcel is not collected in time.
Dwell time is a capacity setting
Every extra day of permitted dwell multiplies into compartments withheld from circulation. A short window turns over more parcels through the same estate; too short a window creates failed collections and support contacts. The right figure is site-specific, and it should be tuned from observed collection behavior at that station rather than fixed once for the whole network.
Expiry has to be an action, not a flag
When a window closes, something must happen: the parcel is extended on request, routed back to the sender on the next courier stop, or escalated to the operator. An expired status that sits in a list is how compartments quietly disappear from a network that believes it is at capacity.