The Lemon Fool

swill453 wrote:Bargain of the century. Get a physical thing transported hundreds of miles across the country, possibly hand-delivered 10 miles down a single-track dead-end road in the Highlands. All for a fifth of the cost of a cup of coffee!

bungeejumper wrote:You're spending too much on coffee.

Sussexlad wrote:Look on Ebay for unfranked stamps? Apparently RM managers have told staff not to bother if they spot them !

Rhyd6 wrote:Went to buy some stamps today and had the shock of my life. 13/5d for a first class stamp!! I know that it's not advisable to convert into old money, especially if you've got a dicky ticker, but 13/5d was almost two thirds of my first wage packet! As most of my friends are contactable by email or shank's pony I don't think I shall bother sending any cards this year.

bungeejumper wrote:
OTOH, I found out just how cheaply it can be really done a few years ago, when I ordered a 60p length of curtain cord from Ebay, including free postage.(A UK vendor, allegedly.)

I admit that I was a little bit peeved when the envelope didn't arrive within the usual three or four days. But when it finally dropped onto my doormat two weeks later, it became apparent that it had been wrapped and posted in China; that somebody had completed the customs declaration in full; that it had been shipped along with a larger consignment of goods to Uruguay ; that somebody else had completed another set of Uruguayan customs documents so as to send it over the Atlantic; and that it had duly come in via Heathrow before customs clearance so that the Post Office could complete the final couple of laps to my front door.

Just how anybody can make a profit on a consignment like that is beyond me. They certainly don't have that problem in France, where a postcard to London now costs €1.20 - comfortably on the wrong side of a quid. The next time I need to send out a batch of Christmas cards, I'm going to have them collected by a Chinese courier and then re-posted from Shanghai, via Patagonia. It ought to save me a fortune.

BJ

The UPU sets shipping rates for international mail in a way that guarantees lower prices for shipments from developing economies and higher rates for those from advanced economies. This discrepancy has increasingly risen up the agenda of White House economic officials, particularly Peter Navarro, Mr Trump’s hawkish adviser on trade.

Lower costs for developing economies mean Chinese retailers can sell small goods such as phone chargers in the US for less than domestic retailers can. The price for a 4.4lb package shipped from one US state to another is $19-$23, while China Post pays $5 to ship it anywhere in the US, according to the US Postal Service. It lost more than $135m handling imports from across the world in 2016.