Poor Skills at the Post Office

[belleweather]

So the USPS just released new regulations about how much it costs to mail stuff, and we got bitten by them. My darling husband was sending out resumes, and since he generally has to send writing samples with them, he had been sending them in 8x10 envelopes. It turns out that with the new regulations, sending documents in an 8x10 envelope even if it

Comments

[blookum]

I belong to an online book swap (http://www.bookmooch.com/m/bio/blookum if you'd like to mooch one from me!) and I mail out all of my books via media rate.

I discovered another first class restriction - if a book is light enough, I used to be able to send first class, but there now an additional restriction that it needs to be less than 1/2 inch thick. I use nice padded mailers that add to the bulk of the size so I have only gotten to send a small, thin paperback first class since the changes.

I'm trying to encourage people to combine shipping & get more than 1 book from me. Here's hoping it works!

[belleweather]

Yeah, I resell my kid's cloth diapers and I've pretty much stopped putting things up for sale for a bit until I get a better feel for the new prices because I like to include shipping in my price and I can't if I have no idea how much it's going to be. It's going to have a HUGE impact since diapers are light but very bulky... and of course would happen right when I need to buy a ton of new stuff!

(And I will check out bookmooch! Thanks for the tip... I can always use new things to read and new homes for the stuff I have.)

[cmarie14]

What I don't get is that there is a non-machinable category and it has to be over 3/4" thick. That and the above are the only two options. What happens if your envelope is, say, 2/3" thick?

All the new regulations are crazy and half the post office employees still don't know what they are doing. Our post office is usually very informed, and the guy I spoke to still didn't know all the rules. He said it was really hard on the employees because before it was just a rate change, but now they have to measure the boxes, etc. Doesn't help when our post offices here in this town are already super slow.

[goldbug]

You can still send light books first class...it's just that there's a difference between first class letter, "flat", and parcel rates. Light paperbacks can go on the parcel rates no matter how thick they are.

[mayna]

You can send book rate though, which might be cheaper than 1st class.