A quick post office horror story; actually two related stories: A customer who regularly sells through us called me about a week after I’d sent his check out. He was rightfully concerned about the status of his payment and I checked my records and saw that the check had indeed been sent out a week earlier. Together we cursed the post office and I told him that if the check hadn’t arrived by early the next week, I’d happily wire the funds to him and cancel the check on my end. The day I was going to wire the funds, the envelope shows up at the customer’s home in a USPS emblazoned plastic bag. There had been an incident with the mail sorter. The check was salvageable, but just barely, so the story had a relatively happy ending. Fast forward to this week, and the same customer, in order to avoid the same issues, requested that I send the check via Priority Mail. He even agreed to pay for the extra shipping just to ensure that the payment was received in a timely fashion. You can guess what happened! I send the payment 2 day Priority Mail and we are on the 4th day and the payment has still not been delivered! After a call from the customer, whom I relayed the tracking number to, I decided to make a trip to the post office and find out what recourse was available. I should have known better. The clerk had no explanation as to why the parcel had been sitting in Milwaukee for the last three days. He also couldn’t explain to me what benefit had been incurred by spending the extra time and money sending the payment 2 day Priority. He was very happy to explain to me that there was no guarantee that the envelope was going to make it in 2 days however. So, I asked, why do you charge an extra $6.20 if I can get the same delivery using regular mail? Befuddled, his only answer was that I did get a tracking number with 2 day priority.
Many of you have probably received a little padded envelope from us over the years. We like to send small tokens of our appreciation for new customers, and will continue to do so. It’s just incredible how much the cost of shipping these padded parcels has gone up over the past 8 years. When I first joined my dad here at Colorado Gold, we could send these envelopes for $0.75. Now it costs $2.32! Over the years, the post office has mangled quite a few of these envelopes in their sorters, and I’ve ended up having to resend, with full postage. I’ve always thought of that as part of the cost of doing business, but really it’s stealing! They take the money we spent on postage and provide absolutely nothing in return. Isn’t that the definition of theft? It’s certainly not stamp collecting. What really burns me is whenever a new rate hike takes place, I’ll actually get a few of these padded envelopes returned to me with a request for a few cents more postage. Really? You clowns can destroy my mail and fail to delivery my mail and when I happen to short you 4 cents after an annual rate hike, you refuse to serve?
For the reasons stated above, and a few more, we’ve almost completely done away with USPS shipments to our customers. We now ship UPS due to their quicker shipments and much more accurate tracking information. Many of you probably have had dealings with USPS registered mail over the years. The tracking information is almost non-existent and the stated arrival dates are never accurate. To add insult to injury, it always drove me crazy how little anyone at the post office cared! Well screw you guys! We’re going to support the private sector from now on.