Acknowledgment of receipt

The notion of Acknowledgment of receipt is used in certain communications. In general, the concept refers to a service offered by the mail companies to let the sender know that the letter in question has been delivered to the addressee.

The acknowledgment, in this case, is usually a form that the recipient signs upon receipt of your letter and that is then delivered to the sender. In this way, the person who sent the communication has the certainty that it reached destination.

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 may be prepared by the office of mail to which the shipment arrives, exceptionally.

To receive the correspondence, the addressee must then put his signature on a form; Nowadays, it is increasingly common for this procedure to be done by means of electronic devices, so that the signature is made on a touch screen, where the date and the 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 from not reception), the postman must leave a constancy of said rejection, so that the post office can continue with the pertinent process.

If the post office loses the acknowledgment of receipt, it 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 statement of the postman who made the delivery.

Beyond the service or the mechanism implemented by the mail company, the acknowledgment of receipt can also be a Short answer of the recipient when receiving a communication. This type of acknowledgment of receipt is usually delivered by large companies or by government agencies. Condition when the person who has contacted the other party is waiting for a confirmation.

Suppose a person send a letter to Environment Secretary 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 promise to address the situation you mention in the next ten days. Caring for the coastal ecosystem is one of the priorities of our management. Thanks for contacting".

In some communication protocols between computer equipment, the acknowledgment of receipt is a notice that a computer (computer) sends to another, after receiving a message from you. This acknowledgment is also known as ACK, from English acknowledgment, and is used in most of the layers or levels that form a network, such as those specified in the OSI model (open systems interconnection model).

The sending of messages between computers can also have an error detector code to protect the integrity of the data; If the target device has the tools to carry out this process, then the acknowledgment may be proof of the state in which the message was received, that is, if 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 plots (A frame is a successive series of bits, which is organized cyclically).