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  Edition # 108  
San Francisco, 09-14-2014


Figure [1]: Our neighborhood post office.

Michael Despite fierce competition in the package delivery market from private sector companies like UPS and Fedex, the United States Postal Service (USPS) is still in business and offers unbeatable prices on sending letters and packages. Many mail customers appreciate the fact that a standard letter still only costs 49 cents to deliver, regardless if it's just around the corner or if it needs to fly as far as 6,000 miles to Hawaii. I have a hard time believing this kind of legacy deal is sustainable and wouldn't be surprised if USPS ran into financial trouble one day (Rundbrief 09/2011).

Regardless, I'm going to talk about another great deal today. What even many Americans don't know is that USPS offers great prices on sending small packages across the country as well. It's called "First Class Package". Customers unaware of this offering pay between $5.60 and $6.95 for "Priority Mail" packages, but frugal users keep an eye on the package weight not exceeding 13 ounces (368g) and pay between $2.30 and $4.25 for First Class instead.

Figure [2]: The yellow bubble wrap envelope costs more than a Dollar, while the gray one is only 20 Cents.

When shipping items which already weigh close to a dozen ounces, it's a good strategy to avoid heavy cardboard boxes and go with bubble wrap envelopes for packaging instead (Figure 2). Clueless newbies buy bubble wrap envelopes at Walgreens at $1.50 a pop, while experts order a hundred of them on Ebay at $0.20 a piece. But don't be suprised if the box containing those 100 envelopes is a giant cube measuring 30 inches in each dimension!

Figure [3]: The shipping service on paypal.com takes payments for USPS postage and prints posting labels.

However, if you think that a bubble wrap mailer passes for large envelope postage, you are sadly mistaken. Even if it's slimmer than the maximum allowed thickness of 3/4 inch, according to our post office guy, a bubble wrap envelope won't pass as a "large envelope" but needs to be sent as "first class package". Paying online is cheaper than at the post office, but since the USPS website is being operated by clueless people, it's almost impossible to pay for your postage there unless you're willing to jump through a lot of hoops. I recommend using the secret Paypal shipping site instead, which accepts your Paypal account balance or a credit card for payment and lets you print shipping labels to be fixed onto the package, which include both the recipient's and the sender's address. Pros print on adhesive labels.

The "Media Mail" option is even cheaper than "First Class Package". But only specific shipments qualify, like books or magazines, or DVDs and CDs including the sometimes heavy slipcases. It only takes a handful of dollars to get a package shipped to the opposite end of the country. Alas, USPS reserves the right to rip open the package during shipment and check if it really contains only media items. And, according to my experience, they sometimes put the shipments on temporary hold for no good reason except sticking it to you for choosing the least expensive option, apparently between unloading them from one truck and loading them onto the next one. When the packages finally arrive at the recipient's address, they often look like they've been exposed to circus elephants stomping around on them.

Figure [4]: Mail deposited into the box at our post office in Noe Valley gets collected on a regular basis.

The bureaucrats in charge of running USPS also have enacted a regulation that says that you can't drop any package into a mailbox that weighs more than 13 ounces (368g). Instead, you have to bring it to the post office even if you paid for postage online! This is a major inconvenience, especially if you know that many post offices in major metropolitan areas are manned by extremly sluggish employees who don't care one bit about providing good service to their customers.

Nothing ruins my day more quickly than after a long day finding a note on our mailbox saying that there was a delivery attempt by USPS and I need to pick up the package at the post office. Because, for some strange reason, this means that I can't pick it up at the nearest location, which is just five blocks from our home, but I need to drive across town to the post office on 18th Street in the Castro district. This location employs the slowest postal workers on earth who hate their lives and I always wonder how it is possible that noone has noticed this and fired them yet. It usually takes them 20 minutes to service five people in line. Luckily, today's smartphones are equipped with the Kindle app that lets you read great American novels while you wait.

Figure [5]: The USPS website shows astronomical shipping fees on the first page for regular packages to drive customers away.

In the better run USPS branches, however, the employees there will spot package drop-offs and let you proceed right to the front, even if there's long lines at the counters. When I'm entering our local post office with a package, for example, all I need to do is signal the postal employees at the counters and ask them if it's okay to drop off the package at one of the unmanned counters, and they usually let me proceed and I don't have to stand in line and wait to drop it off.

Shipping cost for "First Class" packages is determined by weight. Packages up to 5 ounces (142g) are only $2.68, regardless if they're destined from San Francisco to a neighboring town in Silicon Valley or at the other end of the continental United States in New York City. A package weighing in at 13 ounces, on the other hand, costs $4.12, that's a bargain often taken advantage of by Ebay sellers!

Figure [6]: If you're unlucky, there's a senior citizen at the counter selecting stamps and holding up the line.

If the scale shows more than 13 ounces, but still less than a full pound (16 ounces or 453g), the charge for "Priority Mail" to a nearby destination is $5.60, and $6.95 across the country. If it's more than one pound, the package could as well weigh two pounds, because the long distance shipment goes up to a whopping $11.25. If postal employees are weighing the package at the counter and by accident it's only a half-ounce over the limit, then they'll cold-heartedly charge the more expensive rate. In my experience, there's no such thing as a postal worker in the United States who's even slightly bending the rules to give you a break.

One regulation I wasn't aware of until recently determines the dimensions of postcards or envelopes so they still qualify as "machinable". Recently, Angelika sent a birthday card to Germany, contained in an envelope that measured 6 by 7 inches, i.e. almost had square dimensions. It weighed less than 1 ounce (28g), but didn't qualify for the standard international shipping to Germany rate of $1.15. Instead, the post office charged $1.35 for it, because it deviated from the required rectangular shape, being too square-ish. And indeed, as I found out later, section 201.2.0 of the postal code requires not only mininum and maximum width and height of a shipment, but also defines that the ratio of width and height can't be less than 1.3. Doing the math, a 6 by 7 inch envelope has a width/height ratio of 1.17, which is less than 1.3, and therefore shipping cost is more, triggered by the envelope not being "machinable".

Figure [7]: Printing shipping labels at home for USPS shipments is easy.

If you can manage to figure out how much to pay for shipping and print the label yourself at home, it's often 10-20% cheaper on Ebay or Paypal. Of course, that's out of the question for international shipments, this is when the postal service requires you to show up in person at the post office and fill a paper form only available there. When you hand it to the postal worker behind the counter, they copy the content verbatim into their computer and then glue the label onto the package.

If the shipment goes to Germany, by the way, according to my experience, German customs often halts it and lets it rot in dusty storage rooms for a couple of weeks, while they're rummaging through the content, until they get tired of it and finally hand it to a delivery person. One of these days I'm going to write a lengthy treatise on the topic of why German customs is a taxpayer funded organisation but apparently sees no need to follow any rule of law.

Figure [8]: Amazon.de won't ship beauty products to the U.S. anymore.

It's telling that Americans still say "shipping" when mailing packages, although, even internationally, hardly anything gets actually sent by ship anymore, unless it's a really heavy item like a table saw. But as the restrictions for airmail in the U.S. continue to become more and more ridiculuous, shipments by ship may become viable again. Recently, the German Amazon.de site even stopped shipping beauty products like bottles with hair shampoo (Abbildung 8) to the U.S.!

Greetings from bureaucracy central:

Angelika & Michael

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