By Jim Mount Santa Monica
As with the I.R.S., I believe that the U.S. Postal Service causes extreme aggravation. I am satisfied that they are doing a reasonable job of delivering the mail in my postal zone, though I hear lots of grumbling from the outskirts. Where they have really gone wrong is in the pricing of their product, and worse yet, in the way they delineate it. We only needed two denominations of stamps then. This didn’t take any extra time and seemed to work perfectly well.
Now, some idiot decided that the whole thing gets changed when your letter weighs over three ounces. You then pay $0.17 for the next half ounce and, worse yet, you pay $0.39 for the next additional half ounce.
Here’s a great way to beat the system if you want to mail something to a friend in town: Just put their name and address in the upper left corner of the envelope and let the post office deliver it to them with returned for postage stamped on it.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 7, 2007. Read the original PDF.