US Postal Service They increased overseas postage 6 times as much Washington, DC District of Columbia

In May, 2007, the Post Office abolished Surface Mail overseas. I have sent books to a self help medical library in Bombay, India, for people who can't afford medicine, for over a decade. The last rate I was paying was a little over $1/pound, for M-bag rate, and occasionally a loose book or two. I used to send M-bags to missionaries overseas, as have others in my area, and to university libraries in third world countries. There are literally universities in some African countries where they have say 20 books in the entire library. When I was in college, I saw African students shipping huge quantities of even old used books back home, saying anything is better than nothing. Now I am forced to pay Airmail rates, which are 6 times as high. Well, I don't pay it.

Well, who cares about do-gooders. Except that US companies were shipping books and products overseas, using Surface Mail. People in other countries don't necessarily want to pay 6 times as much for postage. So this decision hurts American business big time. What fool dreamed this up, at the Post Office? That's like McDonald's deciding not to carry hamburgers any more.

In the cities I live and work in, there are now lengthy lines to get anything mailed, at lunch, or at the end of the day, because they are cutting clerks way back. The clerks are fine, problem is they'll have maybe 1 clerk for 6 stations, and lines back up. Well, they now have a few more clerks (double what they did have, still only half the stations) because I wrote monthly letters to my congressional delegation, i.e. Representative and Senators, with copies to the Postmaster General in DC. USPS complaint forms are ignored. The only thing they care about is when they get copies of the nastiest letters you can write, to your representatives in Congress. Polite letters don't work, I tried that route. I also passed out unsigned letters for people who don't like to write.

I always say that the Post Office has way to many chiefs, and not enough Indians, and if they would just fire half the supervisors, the Post Office would work a lot better, and the salary for those worthless supervisors would pay for 2 and sometimes 3 clerks. You know, I like the USPS, they are better than UPS, the clerks care more, and they take better care of packages. UPS doesn't like dealing with the public, they prefer to service businesses. However, postal quality is still slipping, vs ever higher postal rates. So I keep writing, and posting to web forums. When I see a full crew of clerks, and have Surface mail back, maybe I'll stop then.

patiently writing
Simsbury, Connecticut
U.S.A.