Don’t Let the Post Office Overcharge You

I have a love/hate relationship with the U.S. Postal Service. We get along when packages and handwritten letters from my grandma are delivered on time. But then there are the times when I mail a letter to my mom in Illinois and a friend in San Diego, Calif. and my friend gets his letter five days before my mom. How is that possible? Illinois is so much closer to the Carolinas then California.

There’s an interesting column by Vicki Lee Parker in today’s News & Observer addressing a reader’s inquiry about being overcharged at the post office. Parker reminds us that “the U.S. Postal Service is a business, not a civil agency whose sole purpose is to serve us.” She explains:

It stopped receiving federal funding 1971 and has struggled since to strike a balance between being a quasi-federal agency and a major corporation. As a federal agency, it is under a mandate to provide mail service to all U.S. residents, even if that means keeping an office open in a remote area that serves just a few people.

But as a for-profit corporation, it has to make money, even as it contends with increasing competition from overnight delivery companies and other mail-services businesses.

Parker concludes by explaining why postal employees always quote the most expensive price first, and offers some suggestions on how to get a good deal.