On 10/06/2012 09:08 AM, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In ,
Phil wrote:
The Americans do seem generally to be used to sending a lot by courier
when we would just put in the post. Tending to happen in the UK also
even though the Royal Mail / Parcelforce often give a better service
and of course do not charge extra to send further. There has been a
big campaign in the North of Scotland about companies charging extra
for many postcode areas.


That's mostly a business etiquette thing, I think. Sending somebody a
bunch of business documents in the snail mail sort of says that their
input isn't that urgent. Letter mail here is also very secure IME.

Fine if 'they' want to do this and pay for it. My complaint is buying
goods from the US where I'm paying the P&P and not having the choice of a
reasonably priced service. Why would I want to pay in some cases more than
the value of the goods for postage, if I'm in no rush to receive them?


Dunno. It may have something to do with package tracking and fraudulent
claims for loss or damage. The logistics companies give you one
tracking number that works anywhere in the world, whereas the post
offices all generate confusion and duplicated numbers that make it very
hard to establish whether something got delivered, and if not, where it
went.

Here, there's lots of competition in logistics, so the service is
generally excellent and the cost very reasonable.

US postal rates are also quite low, which may make it more difficult for
them to negotiate a revenue sharing agreement with higher cost
organizations. (Canada Post is the example I'm most familiar with--at
one point quite recently, all mail from the US to Canada had to go
through the central Toronto sorting facility, even if it was a letter
sent from Vancouver to Seattle.)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net