Cost of postage rant

No wonder that gift cards have become such a hit. Have you mailed a package to anyone lately? My daughter wanted my husband to buy her friend a globe from the company he works for to give to this friend for a wedding gift. Instead of sending the globe to my daughter, and my daughter sending it to the friend, she thought it would be faster for us to just send it to her friend.

The box is pretty big. The globe comes shipped in pieces and has to be assembled. When I took the box into the post office, the clerk asked me "Can this all be put into a smaller box? It would save you a lot of money." I told her that it was packaged a certain way so the parts don't roll around or break, so the answer is "no, it can't be put into a smaller box." So, to ship it to Philadelphia at regular rate it cost $22.75! Though it was kind of big, it wasn't at all heavy.

Then I had a book to send to my friend in Australia. It's a journal, actually...with colored pens to write with. I also enclosed one of those mini calendars which has photos of U.S. National Parks. That's it. The journal and calendar barely came to $10. To ship it to Australia, however, at the cheapest air mail was $13. 45! More than the journal and calendar combined!

The other day Jon had to mail something to the Secretary of State and he wanted to make sure they got it, so had to send it certified, return receipt...the cost of that? $5.60 for two pieces of paper in a regular business envelope!

What do we get in return for our extra expense? Mail delivery that is crappy. Our mailman can't even bother to get himself out of his truck to bring a package to the door and instead either crams it into the mailbox so we cannot get it out without practically dismantling the mailbox, OR he lays it ON TOP of the mailbox and he may as well include a sign that says "steal me!". We still continue to get other people's mail in our box, and probably other people get pieces of our mail in their box. All the while the rates to up and up and up, while quality and service go down, and down and down.

It ticks me off.