A modest challenge
Go to this site — it’s the U.S. Postal Service — and find out how much it costs to mail a postcard. Click any and every link you can find, in search of that answer. I’ll wait here.
Give up? Then do what I did — go to Google and type in “How much to mail a postcard?” and get the answer in about, oh, a nanosecond. It’s 26¢.
By the time you find that answer on the Postal Service site, the price will have gone up.
January 15th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
When you get to that site hit “Buy Stamps and Shop”. Then search “postcard stamps”. Just two easy clicks. Of course, it took me a looong time to figure out which two clicks to click. As a mailcarrier I want people to be able to get stamps quickly and easily. As a postcard collector, I really want them to be able to get those 26 cent ones.
Also, when buying stamps at the Post Office, on-line, or through the mail, please pick comemeratives. When I’m delievering, I appreciate seeing designs that feature Star Wars, superheroes, famous authors, and lighthouses. And the Frank Sinatra stamp is due out in the Spring.
January 18th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
I click
Calculate Postage
Calculate Domestic Postage – Go
Postcard
Three clicks. About five seconds.
But I use this site a lot.
Chalk up one more on the IQ test.
January 19th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
To the revered Mr. Roesberg, I reply: In most other things, I bow to your wisdom. With regard to this topic, though, I say that if you have to perform a search on the Post Awful’s own site in order to reveal what they charge for something, the site doesn’t work. In general, people use a thing called Google (or sometimes Yahoo) to perform such searches.
To my producer-friend Ms. Storey: You are of course correct about the sequence of clicks, and this may indeed be a result of your familiarity with the site. I don’t associate “calculating postage” with how much a postcard stamp costs; that’s a fixed rate that doesn’t require calculation. (As opposed to parcels, which have to be weighed.) I never doubted that the information was there somewhere. The message of my post is this: They aren’t organizing the data in a way that easily reveals at least this answer.
What spurred my post? We have a postal meter and I wanted to send postcards. So I didn’t need a stamp — although I was keen on learning what that stamp would cost — and I didn’t need a stamped card (which the sight seems keen on selling me). I needed to know how much postage to put on a postcard.
January 20th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
Lee, the link you originally provided is the wrong one. Next time use postcalc.usps.gov, which has postcards as an option on its first page. Hit that item and it will take you to the rates for them, of which there are two, depending on size. Now you know.
And make sure to use those attractive commemeratives. The Lunar New Year issue is available now and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings will be out in February.
January 21st, 2008 at 3:03 pm
OK, now amid everything else I’ve got to do, you guys have me thinking about postage!
Lee, you are right about the postal site being a mess. Out of curiosity, I did try to look up the postcard rate on the rate charts, and they were so dizzying, I had to give up. This reminded me of why I never consult those charts anymore.
I discovered the calculator on the USPS site a while ago and do use that a lot. It tells me what I want to know : how much to mail…anything.
(I believe Rich may be referring to the same calculator. However, when I used his link, it didn’t work for me. I go to usps.com and click on “calculate postage.”)
Hope this is it – before anybody goes postal! 🙂