The lamestream media told you:
Nothing.
The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that:
The post office will no longer let you mail a package with postage stamps on it, if the package weighs over 13 ounces. Muslim jihadi attacks on 9/11 are blamed by officials for the new approach to U.S. mail. The weight limit had been two pounds, dropped suddenly to one pound, and is now just over 3/4 of a pound, without advanced notice.
The only exception is to stand in line at a post office and hand it to a clerk. Handing it to a letter carrier, using a mailbox, or dropping it off at a post office will get it cancelled and sent back to you. For security. How this might prevent a dangerous package from doing harm is unclear. To everyone. Including the people enforcing the new rules. I’ve asked.
Due to reduced staffing, clerks are only allowed to accept ten pieces of mail at a time (some of the smarter ones however risk their jobs and break the rule to help move the mail despite the insane new policies). I am not making this up.
Time was when the post office was friend and ally, reliably handling mail decade after decade, supporting our efforts, and together we advanced The American Dream in a partnership the Founders would have loved.
This new outrageous denial of service is being done without direct congressional approval, to satisfy new HSA and FAA control over the postal service. FAA rules (for airplanes) apply even if you send books, as I do, by Media Mail, which travels more economically by truck.
The alternatives are to use a meter because it is “traceable,” but that’s a farce. Anyone can get a meter, move it to Idaho, stuff packages with anything, and drop them in mailboxes. Officials insist metered mail is safer. The English language lacks adjectives for how stupid that is.
Traditional personal hand delivery to your letter carrier in front of your own office is no longer deliverable mail, because officials say it’s not traceable if stamped (I know, it’s total bullhincky). In truth, hand delivery is a positive trace, while metered mail is…
Extortion. The cheapest meter for us is about $600/yr., plus supplies, plus the cost of postage. That’s a 60-cent tax increase per item (if you ship 1,000 packages a year) with no congressional oversight. Online stamp tools, like stamps.com and similar, are not available to Apple computer users. At least meters only represent an unauthorized letter increase of about a nickel (people go bonkers when letters go up a penny), and look at the bright side — meters replace exquisite full-color hand-crafted artistic collectible historic postage stamps with attractive bar codes.
The post office is harming productivity instead of enhancing it, devaluing the historical tradition of stamps, interfering with business instead of facilitating it, following mindless rules that make no sense, ignoring its regular customers, bowing to bureaucratic demands from outside agencies, removing customer service, falsely and deceptively claiming to increase security while doing nothing in that regard, and working toward the gradual destruction of America, a role not defined in its charter. Did I mention they’re wasting my time… and everyone else’s?
If you can tell I’m upset after standing at a window for an hour while the clerk put zero-cents postage-meter labels on 70 packages that already had the right postage stamps on them, you’re right. At least, we backed up the other customers out the door, used an hour of a paid clerk’s time to put, literally, nothings on the packages, and got a four-foot-long receipt, total value, zero. To all of our new Heller Case book buyers and other customers — enjoy your books.
