As far as I’m concerned, the United States Postal Service serves two purposes.
The first is to deliver my monthly water bill to the city of Greeley.
The second is as a secondary delivery service for online vendors and ebay shippers that don’t use Fed-Ex or UPS.
As a result I don’t buy many stamps. With the postal rate CONSTANTLY changing, this sometimes is a problem.
Recently I had to send a personal letter, payment for some candles I ordered from my good friend Marti Jo (I know, candles aren’t very manly, but thats another story).
When I sent this letter I used some stamps I had that were clearly marked “First Class’. A few days later I recieved my letter back marked “Additional Postage Required”.
Additional Postage Required???? I sent first class letter, the stamp was clearly marked “First Class”, why didn’t they honor this stamp???
I know, I know, they raised the rates here recently, but as a none postal employee I’m not really up on the postage rates.
OK, fine, so I go to the post office to buy some 1 cent (2 cent, whatever) stamps so I can use my previous stamps, that I am assuming are the 39 cent variety. Of course, their automated machine that sells stamps doesn’t show anything small denomination.
So, I have to either go to the post office, stand in line, and buy a dollar’s worth of 1 cent stamps, or just use some old 34 centers I already have.
Bottom line, it cost me 63 cents to send that letter to Iowa, all because the post office wouldn’t deliver the letter with my First Class stamp…