galaxyPaul3 ...anywhere in the 3.8 million square miles of the USA from Machias, Maine to Dutch Harbor, Alaska, from Key West, Florida, to Maui, Hawaii for 44 cents each. For a post card, it's 28 cents. And it'll get there, on average, in 2 or 3 days... Yet Try mailing it across town, or the next town over. It will take 7-10 days. Seriously. Go figure.
Paul3 ...anywhere in the 3.8 million square miles of the USA from Machias, Maine to Dutch Harbor, Alaska, from Key West, Florida, to Maui, Hawaii for 44 cents each. For a post card, it's 28 cents. And it'll get there, on average, in 2 or 3 days...
...anywhere in the 3.8 million square miles of the USA from Machias, Maine to Dutch Harbor, Alaska, from Key West, Florida, to Maui, Hawaii for 44 cents each. For a post card, it's 28 cents. And it'll get there, on average, in 2 or 3 days...
Yet Try mailing it across town, or the next town over. It will take 7-10 days. Seriously. Go figure.
I here you on that one.
If I want to mail something that goes to any town south of where I live. That parcel first has to go to a sorting location 20 miles north of me, then 90 more miles south, and then to the town directly south of me.
If I want to mail something to my neighbor, it has to go the same 20 miles north and arrives at my neighbor's house two days later.
Sometimes I can't help but wonder if the old RPOs were more efficient.
Will
selector MisterBeasley...I pay the balance off every month, and I earn "points" for everything I buy. Ah, another deadbeat card holder. Pays off the balance before the cut-off processing date for billing so that he gets the points, but pays no interest. They hate you, Mr. B.....they really hate you. -Crandell
MisterBeasley...I pay the balance off every month, and I earn "points" for everything I buy.
Ah, another deadbeat card holder. Pays off the balance before the cut-off processing date for billing so that he gets the points, but pays no interest. They hate you, Mr. B.....they really hate you.
-Crandell
Yes, those who pay off their balance every month are considered deadbeats by the CC companies, cuz they only make their processing fee on you.
I pay off the CC at the end of the month or I don't put it on the CC. The EXCEPTION being.....auto repairs. You can go in for $200 repair and walk out with a $850 bill. I'm sure we all know that noise... I will pay interest IF NEED BE ONLY on auto repairs but try to pay off the balance in no more than 3 months.
The CC companies still make a little on pay-the-balance-off people, with very little hassle, but they are greedy and want you paying them interest every month. Selling 200 glasses of lemonade at $0.25 a piece can return more profits that selling only 10 glasses at $1.00 a piece! They forget that...
ANd now some will have changed to a variable rate so they can jack you up when the prime rate rises, IF you pay some interest. Now they also want to go back to charging annual fees to have the card. ANd these days people often "need them". And also to start charging for checking accounts agian unless you carry a big balance, or do things like use AT'M's so they can get fees from you there.
Just like insurance, medical stuff, car buying/selling, real estate, retailing, LIFE...IT IS ALL A RACKET.
If you have $$$, no matter how little you may have, SOMEONE wants your money!
-G .
Just my thoughts, ideas, opinions and experiences. Others may vary.
HO and N Scale.
After long and careful thought, they have convinced me. I have come to the conclusion that they are right. The aliens did it.
blownout cylinder Since Toronto is the center of the universe here, we, in London, see our mail get processed in Toronto before it comes back here---even if it is cross town mail----
Since Toronto is the center of the universe here, we, in London, see our mail get processed in Toronto before it comes back here---even if it is cross town mail----
We have the same thing here -- mail goes to Tucson, Arizona, 70 miles away, to be postmarked and then returned to Sierra Vista for delivery even if it's to an address just in the next block.
galaxyI pay off the CC at the end of the month or I don't put it on the CC. The EXCEPTION being.....auto repairs. You can go in for $200 repair and walk out with a $850 bill. I'm sure we all know that noise... I will pay interest IF NEED BE ONLY on auto repairs but try to pay off the balance in no more than 3 months.
Actually there is a way around the auto repair issue. I take my car to Firestone for most of the normal work. If you have their credit card, they normally have a deal where you can take up to 3 months to pay without incurring any interest. Of course if you don't pay it off in time you get hit with the total interest amount. But if your practice is to pay within 3 months, you should be good.
maxman galaxyI pay off the CC at the end of the month or I don't put it on the CC. The EXCEPTION being.....auto repairs. You can go in for $200 repair and walk out with a $850 bill. I'm sure we all know that noise... I will pay interest IF NEED BE ONLY on auto repairs but try to pay off the balance in no more than 3 months. Actually there is a way around the auto repair issue. I take my car to Firestone for most of the normal work. If you have their credit card, they normally have a deal where you can take up to 3 months to pay without incurring any interest. Of course if you don't pay it off in time you get hit with the total interest amount. But if your practice is to pay within 3 months, you should be good.
I do do my rountine work at my local Firestone. Get good service there. I did the 90 days same as cash once. The problem is that I cannot always guarantee that I can pay it off in three months, so then, in that case I got hit with the total interest as I needed a 4th month to pay. SO I learned the hard way that may not always work either. I pay the interest either way.
pastorbob Anyone stealing my card number wouldn't be able to get much and I feel more secure.
Bob ...All...
One thing I've done to minimize any ID theft is to have a 'dedicated debit card' strictly for electronic transactions on line. I have this linked to a account with a flexible 'limit' that I control.
Each time I'm going to make a purchase on line, I just log in and then transfer the exact amount to cover the purchase into the account. If anybody tries to tamper with it... they get nothing. 7 layer Encryption is a wonderful thing.
Paying bills and perfroming banking on line is a Godsend for me and it save me a lot of time - it is also very , very safe.
I understand and totally respect the traditional methods of payment though and in some cases, like train shows - some vendors will not accept credit cards -so the ol' check book and cash is still good to carry just in case.
HeritageFleet1
In the case of local mail going out of town to go next door, that's all a result of greater efficiency that is forever being pushed at the USPS. Why is sending mail dozens of miles away from it's destination considered an improvement?In the old days, you'd give your mail to a carrier on his route or leave it in the mailbox. At the end of the day, the carrier would take it to the PO and dump it in the outgoing mail tub when he got back to the PO from his route. The clerks would then sort through the tub and pull any local mail, then cancel it and sort it by route (all by hand). The next morning, the carriers would arrive and then sort their route in the case (by hand) with all the local and non-local mail that just arrived by truck. They'd then pull the case into trays, load the truck, and deliver the letter to it's destination.
Today, they have regional sorting offices that are built to sort tons of mail per day. Most of it is completely automatic. A carrier picks up your mail, and takes it back to the PO. All the outgoing mail is loaded into a truck and taken to a regional sorting office where it's placed in the giant sorting machines that cancel and sort just about everything without human interaction. Not only does the machine sort this mail by town, it also sorts it by route in delivery order. The mail is then placed in trays by the machine, then loaded onto trucks and taken to the local PO's. When it arrives, the trays are ready for the carriers to pick then up and load them into their trucks and deliver their route. What delays any local mail is when the arriving mail gets to the regional center and how busy it is. If it gets there just in time during a lull, it'll be on it's way in mere hours. Just miss the truck, or get an overloaded sorting center, and it could take several days to work down the volume of mail.
About the only thing that's hand sorted anymore are "flats" (circulars, flyers, etc.), and they are working today to automate that, too. The days of letter carriers and postal clerks throwing mail into pigeon holes is almost a thing of the past.
To summarize, the old days requred a lot of hands on the mail. Many hands = many salaries, pensions, benefits, vacation days, sick days, etc. Today, machines don't require anything other than maintenance, and can run 24 hours a day. This drive to total automation is all about more efficiency, as in moving more mail for less money. It may take longer for that letter to go next door, but they are moving a lot more of it. Let me put it this way: In the PO Strike year of 1970, the PO moved an average of 270 million pieces of mail per day. Today, the USPS moves 660 million pieces of mail per day.
Paul A. Cutler III
I live in an Atlanta suburb. I have ordered 4 or 5 times from Trackside Emporium in Chama, NM. Every time the package has arrived in two days via 1st class mail. At the same time standard envelopes mailed via 1st class to me from Augusta, GA take 3 days to travel 150 miles.
Jay
BTW--On the check vs credit card discussion, one important difference guides my use of credit cards over checks when possible--victims of id theft involving checks can land you jail while victims of id theft involving credit cards never have this threat.
Why use credit cards? Why mail order?
A few years ago i opened 2 credit cards that payed a bonus of $250.00 each just to open the account. Both offered cash back on all purchases. Cash back not points.
I still get 2-5% cash back. I always pay the balance at the end of the month. Haven't payed a dime of interest in 20 years on any card.
I love mail order with no local tax at 10%. If I purchase on Ebay I get 2% bouns bucks, 2% cash back on credit cards thur PayPal, and both cards DOULBE the MFG warranty. Never had a problem with a credit card. Have saved on average at least 50% on all ebay and mail order purchases.
At least 4 times i have opened new checking accounts that were free and payed $100.00 each bouns just for opening. Used these to pay credit cards.
If you can manage your money it's a big advantage.
Bob
garr,Your package from New Mexico got put on an airplane. Your envelope from Augusta got to you by truck. As for why it takes longer from Augusta, I think it's a matter of the volume of mail.
Put it this way: When my dad was a letter carrier in a town of 15,000 people, they dispatched 4 trucks a day carrying outgoing mail to the regional sorting office: one in the morning, again around noon, another at 4PM and one more after 6PM. Imagine that multiplied by every city and town in a 25 mile swath or so here in a very populated area between Boston and Providence, RI. That's a lot of trucks, and a lot of incoming mail.
This large volume of mail hampers the sorting and dispatching of outgoing mail. I'm sure that all the mail between Augusta and Atlanta does not fit on one truck. Multiple trucks are required, and the timing of dispatching them must be staggered so as to balance out the load on the various systems. This causes delays in local mail speed.
As for the package from New Mexico, I don't think there's as much mail volume interfering with the speedy movement of it through the system until it gets to your regional sorting office. It's possible that it is already pre-sorted by the mail facility at the airport, so it breezes through the regional sorting office and gets right on the truck to your local PO.
I know it seems to fly in the face of logic, that a piece of mail takes longer to go 150 miles than it does for it to go 2000 miles. But people have to understand that their piece of mail is not the only one being carried around. The PO is not a direct courier service. It's not like they get in their mail trucks and drive directly to your mail's destination.
Think of it just like a railroad. Say you are a scrap dealer today in Brockton, MA and you want to send a carload of metal to a steel mill in Pennsylvania. The car is not taken directly to the steel mill by one engine and one crew. First, it has to be picked up by a local freight, and brought to a small yard (Middleboro, MA). Then the small yard switches it onto the tracks of cars going to the local regional yard (Framingham, MA). Then it's carried to the big regional yard (Selkirk, NY), which then must sort it out to another train going to PA. After that, it goes to another big yard in PA, where it's classed again to go to the steel mill by local freight, which then takes it to the steel mill (and perhaps there's more steps in the process). If it misses the connecting train, it may have to wait another 24 hours until the next one. The mail isn't much different, though with trucks it's much more flexible and can eliminate a lot of handling vs. a railroad situation.
It just amazes me that anyone thinks the USPS is not a bargain at any cost. Not one person here could set up a system to do it as inexpensive as the postal service.
I'm now 62 so in about 45 years of using the USPS I have had far, far fewer things go wrong then with UPS. I only deal with some one that ships UPS or FEDEX if I must.
Ken G Price My N-Scale Layout
Digitrax Super Empire Builder Radio System. South Valley Texas Railroad. SVTRR
N-Scale out west. 1996-1998 or so! UP, SP, Missouri Pacific, C&NW.