The other day I mailed out a book the way I’ve been mailing them for quite some time. I weighed it, put on stamps for the appropriate postage, and put it in an outgoing mail box.
However, much to my dismay, our letter carrier refused to pick it up and plastered a little note from the USPS on it. In a move that has received little notice, as of July 30, the post office now won’t let you mail anything over 13 ounces just by putting stamps on it. So I drove my book down to the post office.
The lady at the post office said the new restrictions are because of 9/11. I said, “so it has taken them 6 years to implement this?!” Her response was, “yeah, it’s a wonder we haven’t been blown up, huh?”
Sheesh.
I was furious, since not being able to ship out our books (which are 13.2 ounces, by the way) is a big problem for me. However, after further investigation on the USPS site, it turns out you can use their “Click-N-Ship” service to add postage. Of course, it means I no longer can send anything via Media Mail without going to the Post Office, since Click-N-Ship only works for Priority Mail. It’s also gonna take me a long, long time to use up the $100 of postage I just bought.
Between the new requirements and the recent rate increases, it’s becoming a lot less appealing to ship USPS.