And a huge thank you to the USPS...

[anghara]

... for simply declaring that it will no longer carry cheap(er) postage rates for overseas. A book I just sent overseas cost me close to $20 - because the only options left are First Class or Priority Mail. My nieces are going to be awfully short on birthday or Christmas presents from now on, seeing as it will probably cost me more to mail them than it did to obtain them.

Might someone inquire of the USPS whether they thought this out properly? They are a SERVICE ORGANISATION. They exist - or should exist - in order to fulfill the needs of the public in the arena of mail. They do NOT exist - or should not exist - simply and solely to make a profit, especially if that profit is earned by cutting out services for which there WAS a need, seeing as the US is traditionally a country full of people with friends and family overseas to whom occasional parcels might be sent. Just what was so damned difficult about getting together a container-full of sea-mail to ship off overseas every so often? I mean, come on!

Oh, and while I'm at it...? This whole new thang they've got, with postage rates now depending on the item's size, and shape, and weight - this is just a form of holding the public at ransom. Now you have no way of knowing how much postage should go on any given item, you HAVE to go queue in the post office if you have anything remotely unusual and non-standard to send (like a bunch of bookmarks, for instance) - and even if you have a plain and simple envelope, if it has a couple of sheets of paper folded inside it and suddenly weighs more than a certain amount you have to pay not one, not two, not five, but SEVENTEEN cents extra postage for every additional ounce. And God help you if you wanted to send an unusually shaped large birthday card to a five-year-old, for instance.

Feh. Not happy.

Comments

[nycshelly.livejournal.com]

Oversize envelopes have long needed extra postage and I seem to recall paying extra for small, oddly shaped envelopes one year for my holiday mailings, back in the '90s. This really isn't anything new.

The USPS is one of the national agencies that does, as I recall, need to make money to stay viable. Not only does it have competitors now, it also must deal with the erosion of its business thanks to email.

I'm not happy about the higher rates (it's hurting me in my eBay purchases), but I do understand them.

[batwrangler.livejournal.com]

I suspect that this is going to drive business *away* from the USPS and to UPS and other carriers, at least for domestic deliveries.

[nycshelly.livejournal.com]

Yes and no. It's still more convenient for me to mail USPS via mailboxes and the nearby Post Offices than to go to UPS. FedEx maybe, because it's FedEx Kinko's now and we have one of those down the block from work. But they ain't cheap.

I don't mail much anymore, mostly birthday cards and cards and gifts for the holidays and not much of those. I'm sure folks like me are hurting the USPS because we email more than ever.

[khyungbird.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking about it and I am only going to use FedEx or UPS for foreign packages from now on. It's a *few* dollars more expensive to use FedEx (as opposed to three or four times more expensive, like it used to be), but spite is a powerful thing, and as far as I'm concerned the US Post Office can collapse into pieces for all I care.

[anghara.livejournal.com]

*All that being said*, parcels containing small items which used to be sent sea-mail at reasonable rates and kind of got there when they got there and that was fine are not being eroded by email in any way shape or form. *I* have a need for that service. So do a bunch of small businesses who send small things overseas. I don't know the whys and wherefores but this seems to be a question of the corporate entity doing what's convenient for THEM and not what their public actually wants or needs to have them do. And that's just oogy.

[fairmer.livejournal.com]

Libraries in general, and mine in particular, have been especially hosed by this--our international interlibrary loans postage situation is Out of Control, officially.

I don't even want to talk about it. Let's just say, everyone is sort of going crazy, and being the "shipping manager" is no longer the sinecure it used to be.

That said, the USPS is no longer a government-supported organization, and they have to make their own way in the marketplace while still abiding by a number of regulations--all of the crap and none of the benefits of being a federal organization--and if they can't afford to provide the services we need, well, I guess that they can't afford to. As a small example, they can't give a fuel surcharge every time the price of gas goes up, like UPS and FedEx do.

Sure would be nice if the government went back to supporting them, though.