When you move you really can’t escape filing a change of address with the US Postal Service. Unless all you want to receive in your mail box is pre-approved credit card offers—those clowns seem to be able to find you in any circumstances. (I imagine that they & insects will be the only survivors of a nuclear holocaust.)
If you go online, which presumably completely automates the process, thus saving both labor & resources, it turns out that you have to pay $1.00 for making their lives easier. & they don’t mention this charge until you’ve already gone through the entire process of filling out your details. You think you’re done & up pops a screen saying that to verify your identity they need a credit card number…& they have to charge you the buck.
Well, that pissed me off, & since I had to go to a post office to mail a parcel anyhow, I decided I’d use the old-fashioned method: fill out their little postcard, with free postage.
Only these days, because they obviously don’t WANT you doing that; you have to go up to a counter & ask for the card. It’s not available amongst the other forms (including the vacation mail hold forms); you have to wrestle it out of a humanoid. & they’re clearly trained to discourage you—“Oh, you don’t want to do it online?”
It’s like buying condoms, or (these days) Benadryl.
It should come as no surprise from an organization that keeps upping the cost of postage (except for junk mailers like pre-approved credit card issuers) every 17 months & is talking about eliminating Saturday mail deliveries along with the next increase. But I find it really annoying that they use what’s already a cost-saving process to suck more money out of us. & I'm happy to do what little I can to foil them.
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