OT: US Postal Service is about to make our hobby more expensive (a lot more!)

[Chuck Munson]

Hi everyone,

With the talk of facsimile issues (if that were to
happen) and our overseas friends needing issues
shipped to them, an article that appeared in the
latest issue of Linn's Stamp News, which I receive for
my other hobby of stamp collecting, will be of
eye-opening interest.  In an effort to "simplify" its
services and eliminate "marginal" classes of mail, the
Postal Service will drop all international surface
mail, including parcel post. In this case, surface
mail from the US reportedly still has 2.4 million
pieces per year, but that's evidently a drop in the
bucket of a total of 1 billion pieces that the US
Postal Service handles each year.  This change will
cost those of us who mail books, which rapidly pile up
in weight, very dearly in airmail charges.  Which are
also going up by the way.  What added insult to injury
in the article was that the Postal Service
representative suggested that if the airmail charges
were unacceptable that the sender simply forward the
money to the recipient so that the items could be
purchased in their country.  Hello, what was she
smoking!!!!!!  If the items were available in the
country of the recipient, would we go to the expense
of mailing them something already available.  I swear
these people dont use the brain that God gave them.  I
so want to contact the rep to "enlighten" her. 
Obviously, she doesn't mail anything overseas. 
Anyway, for those of us on this side of the pond, I
suggest we find out who's on the committee that
oversees the Postal Service and lobby them on behalf
of ourselves and our friends.  I know that the Postal
Service is only a "quasi-governmental agency, but I
have a real problem with classes of mail that still
have volume in the millions being eliminated
wholesale, especially when I would guess a substantial
amount of it is involved in individual transactions.

OK, that's enough of my fuming,
Take care everyone,
Chuck


 
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