Postage

[hollywood]

So maybe you are doing mailers for certain campaigns.  It occurs to you that it now costs $.56 for a post card and $.73 for a letter.  Nobody works for free.  What happened?

[Steve R.]

When they started issuing "forever" stamps, my wife bought a lot of them.

[hollywood]

Good ROI.

[relbbaddoof]

I take your $0.56 and $0.73 and raise them to $74.90, with no results in sight.

Strolling through Harvard Square my wife  and I popped into the Cambridge Artists Cooperative on Church Street. Seeing scarves we liked, my wife said that they would be perfect for S, S and S (their real initials), close relatives in Birmingham. We bought them and walked through the nearby alleyway, stopping only for ice cream at the oddly hidden cart from the terrific restaurant Harvest (where I once had lunch courtesy of Rupert Murdoch -- but that's another story), to the Post Office. I paid the amount mentioned above for this 8oz package, for what their marketeers have told them to call "Express Mail".

5:42 hours later Boston "accepted" the package.

The next day it was at the "Jamaica International Distribution Center". That sounded promising. Jamaica is a hop, skip & jump from JFK (not that those are any of my moves).

4:08 hours later it had been "processed" by that facility. It took another 18:35 hours for it to get to JFK. ....

You get the drift. Things were no better at the UK end. At this point the package is being "held" at some local Birmingham office. "Held" because they want to charge the recipients export tax. When I called the USPS today to complain and got through after two hours I was told "It's up to you to know the rules of the country you are shipping to."