Method and device for online processing of forwarding mail

A method for online processing of items of mail to be forwarded, including the following processing steps:

• making an image of a side of respective mail items that contain information including names and addresses, and transporting the items to an intermediate storage;
• digitizing and storing the respective images,
• determining areas containing interesting information, including sender name and sender address, receiver name and receiver address, and instructions for forwarding or returning respective mail items;
• classifying areas containing interesting information;
• automatically reading in of instructions for returning or forwarding of mail items and reading of recipient name and address by means of an OCR reader, including automatically checking of results in a name/address data bank and, in case they do not coincide, in another data bank where forwarding requests relative to delivery points are stored, wherein only the sender address is read in case of a determination of a return notation made by a delivery person on the mail item;
• evaluating recipient names and recipient addresses that are not clearly read by the OCR reader, including checking the name/address data bank, and the data banks for forwarding with the aid of video coding of the images of each item of mail for which at least one forwarding instruction exists for possible deliver points, by taking into account the forwarding or return instructions;
• said evaluating step including:
• transmitting the images of the items, not read with certainty in the automatic OCR evaluation, to a first video coding;
• feeding of those images, which were not evaluated with certainty during the video coding, to another automatic evaluation in the OCR reader by taking into accounting the results of the first video coding;
• and
• evaluating images of items not evaluated with certainty during the further automatic evaluation, said items containing at least one forwarding instruction for possible delivery points, during another video coding by using the results from the additional automatic evaluation;
• printing, legibly and encoded, a new recipient address, and forwarding instructions on the mail items leaving the intermediate storage;
• and
• distributing the mail items according to the new address and the following instructions.