I’ve always been a big supporter of the U.S. Postal Service. I know they are the butt of countless jokes, but I think it’s remarkable that they can deliver over 400 billion of pieces of mail every single day with such a high degree of accuracy. No kidding.
But this had me scratching my head.
I ordered three books of first-class stamps through the USPS.com website. That’s 20 stamps x 3 x $0.44 = $26.40. But wait… then they charged me an additional $1.00 for “shipping and handling” to deliver the stamps to my house!
My mail carrier comes to my house six days a week. He doesn’t make a special trip like the UPS and FEDEX drivers. I can’t remember ever — even as overall postal volume drops year after year — that my carrier has skipped past my house with nothing to deliver.
Shouldn’t the Postal Service be encouraging first class mail use?? Isn’t it much more profitable than bulk delivery classes?
I have a simple sales and marketing suggestion. Instead of adding charges for delivery (ridiculous), the Postal Service should sell books of first-class stamps through their website with a $0.44 credit for delivery — the current rate of a single first-class stamp. The tag line could be:
“Hey, we’re stopping at your house anyway… want us to drop off some stamps??”
Mike, do you pay S&H to those who do not even go near your house, but use USPS instead? Do you really care for USPS? If so donate a dollar to them, or write a blog post just like this one…
Thanks
Troll-e-bus
Thanks George!
I totally agree with you! It’s ludicrous that the post office charges to deliver stamps to their own customers. “Back in the day”, the postal employee who stopped by your house would actually have stamps on them they could sell you. My grandmother used to mail many letters this way instead of making a special trip to the post office to buy a few stamps.
I used to be a big fan of the USPS but they really do some stupid stuff. I don’t get it. They are slitting their own throats.
I was just ordering stamps online when I noticed this charge.
This is SERIOUSLY RIDICULOUS!
Are they paying the post office to deliver for them?
NO!
They are the post office!
I called them up to tell tell them how stupid this is, and cancelled my order.
I’ll stop off at the P.O. and get them myself.
I can’t agree more with this! Its bad enough how inconvenient the post office hours are, they open and close when most of America is still at work. My local post office hours are 9:30AM til 4PM. They open after I get to work, and close before I get off work, and NO hours on the weekends. They have a self-serve kiosk that seems to be broken every time I need to use it. Its ridiculous. So why on earth they have the gall to CHARGE to deliver their own stamps is just ridiculous.
I just received a flyer from USPS with an order form for stamps: “Free delivery to your home or office.” But, that seems to be only if you send in order by – you guessed it – mail. If you go to the USPS web site, then they’ll charge for delivery as noted. They’ll even charge the fee to walk the stamps from the post office counter 10 steps to my PO Box (!!!). It may be that the charge is really for the credit card processing, but if that’s the case – why not just say so instead of calling it a delivery charge?
Its March 12, 2018 and I just tried ordering a couple of sheets of stamps myself and low and behold a $1.25 charge for shipping and handling. LOL screw ya, I’ll continue making my payments online. Was trying to help ya out but this is seriously ridiculous.
If your order priority/express boxes from USPS, they’re free. For a lot of 10 or 20.
And they’re delivered… free.
But order a sheet of stamps and you get hit with $1.25 shipping.
I intended to order some stamps today, but charging me for delivery makes no sense at all. I could even see a minimum order of $20, or something, similar to Amazon, but as it’s set up, I’ll just pick them up locally.