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The Government's Way Of Thinking...
As a person trying to make a go of a mail-order business, I've got to give credit where credit is due on the fairly new "Flat-Rate Priority Mail" program. The basic theory is that anything that fits in a USPS-provided box ships for a flat-rate. Mind you, the program itself and the website have some silly quirks that you need to learn, their small box could be a little more useful, and their prices could be a bit lower, but all in all, it's a good program.
But here's a silly story...
Background Info: Priority Mail is a 2-3 day service. It's not as fast as Express (which is usually overnight), but it's fairly inexpensive and has a good turnaround time. Plus, they give you boxes for free. The flat-rate program is just a special off-shoot of regular priority mail so you don't have to deal with weighing the box and you can more easily buy the postage online. Plus, due to the recent wave of increases in stamp prices, priority is now often the same price as First Class or Parcel Post.
Anyway, I decided that I have an accurate enough scale to save myself and my customers a few dollars on small orders by using regular priority service when it happens to be cheaper than flat-rate. I checked at the post office and they had no priority boxes on the display--only envelopes. You can order them online for free, but they take up to 3 weeks to get to you.
A few days ago, I tried to ship something regular priority. I weighed it and printed-out the postage sticker online. Looking at the flat-rate boxes I already had, I noted that they're identical in every way to the regular priority boxes. The only difference is the words "Flat-Rate" printed on the side. What's more, I have priority stickers (provided by the USPS) that I could use to cover these words. So, I did.
When I got to the post office to drop them off, the guy looks at me and says, "Um, that's a flat-rate box. If it's in a flat-rate box, you can't go by weight."
I stared at him dumbfounded and said, "It's the same exact box. I covered the words 'flat-rate.' What's the difference as long as it has the right postage on it?" Now, I could understand if the box didn't come free with the other service. I could also understand if they were postage pre-paid boxes. But they're not. They're the SAME boxes and, once you put the postage on them, nobody's ever going to look at the "flat rate" designation again until it reaches its destination.
"It's just the rules," he says.
"Well, you never even have the regular priority boxes," I said, visibly frustrated. "I tried to get them but they're not there," I gestured toward the display behind me.
Honest to God, the guy, with a magician's flair, reaches below the counter and slaps two priority boxes in front of me. Again, same damn box, same everything except the words "flat-rate".
I say to him, "Okay, so you want to upgrade it to flat-rate and charge me?"
He then proceeds to tell me I can just take the sticker off and repack the item in the other box. Mind you, he's doing me a favor here because if he charges me, I lose the Internet discount on the entire package, which amounts to about two bucks more than the upgrade to flat-rate.
"Do you have tape and scissors for me to do this?"
He proceeds to put the box together and cut my sticker off. Then has me step-aside to repack the box. I did it, handed it back to him, asked for some extra boxes, and went on my merry way.
Honestly, you wonder why the USPS is losing money by the buckets. If they keep doing silly crap like this, it's no wonder. They should just have the same boxes for both programs and make flat-rate a payment option if you don't want to weigh it. It'd be much simpler and they'd only have to have one of each size box made instead of two. In my mind, this makes no more sense than McDonalds' pies costing 99 cents for one and a dollar for two.
*shakes head*
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