The acknowledgment of receipt is signed upon receipt of a letter.
The notion of acknowledgment of receipt is used in certain communications . Generally, the concept refers to a service offered by mail companies to inform the sender that the letter in question has been delivered to the recipient.
The acknowledgment of receipt , in this case, is usually a form that the recipient signs when receiving your letter and which is then delivered to the sender. In this way, the person who sent the communication is certain that it reached its destination .
Acknowledgment Features
Although the concept of acknowledgment of receipt is the same in almost all countries, the legal regulations of each one may present certain particular differences. In some parts of the world, this document can be prepared by the post office where the shipment arrives, on an exceptional basis.
To receive the correspondence , the recipient must then sign his or her signature on a form; Nowadays, it is increasingly common for this procedure to be done using electronic devices, so that the signature is carried out on a touch screen, where the date and identity document number must also be indicated.
In the event that the recipient rejects the shipment and does not want to sign the corresponding acknowledgment (which is called non- receipt ), the postman must leave a record of said rejection, so that the post office can continue with the relevant process.
The post office losing the acknowledgment of receipt does not give customers the right to compensation; However, if the issuer so requests, it is possible to issue a duplicate, which must be signed again by the recipient, or contain a declaration from the postman who made the delivery.
The idea of acknowledgment of receipt also appears in certain communications that are given through computer resources.
Response to a communication
Beyond the service or mechanism implemented by the mail company, the acknowledgment of receipt can also be a brief response from the recipient upon receiving a communication. This type of acknowledgment of receipt is usually delivered by large companies or by State agencies when the person who has contacted the other party is waiting for confirmation.
Suppose a person sends a letter to the Ministry of the Environment of a city, asking that the cleanliness of a beach be improved. Days later, an official returns an acknowledgment of receipt: «Dear neighbor: We have received your request and we are committed to addressing the situation you mention in the next ten days. Taking care of the coastal ecosystem is one of the priorities of our management. Thank you for your contact."
Acknowledgment of receipt in IT
In some communication protocols between computer equipment, the acknowledgment of receipt is a notice that one computer ( computer ) sends to another, after having received a message from it. This acknowledgment of receipt is also known as ACK , from the English acknowledgment , and is used in most of the layers or levels that make up a network, such as those specified in the OSI model ( open systems interconnection model ).
Sending messages between computers may also have an error detection code to protect the integrity of the data; If the destination device has the tools to carry out this process, then the acknowledgment of receipt can record the state in which it has received the message , that is, whether it has arrived complete and without errors or not.
On the other hand, for more complex communication protocols there are other elements that can be part of the message , such as data about incidents in the network or the request to resend some frames (a frame is a successive series of bits, which is organized cyclically).