Englishmum

Grrrr!!

My silly daughter (who lives in Middlesex) was ordering Christmas gifts online, and by mistake sent a book which was intended for her boyfriend whom she lives with, to her dad instead and sent it to our US address. It was mailed from Gloucester and the book cover price was GBP 19.99

Ironically her dad flew to our apartment in Singapore last week but the book arrived late....he's actually flying to LHR tomorrow and could have arranged to hand it over to her....

Anyway, I went trotting along to the local Post Office here in NJ today and asked for the cheapest available postage rate for the book to go to the UK. Now, this book weighed 4lbs 10oz (the bookseller charged for P&P GBP 5.16 by airmail) and I was charged bloody $40.20!!!

Apparently anything over 4lbs has to go as an air parcel and that was the minimum price. Surface mail no longer exists.

He did tell me though that they were 'giving' me free insurance up to a value of $78.33 for loss or damage (what a weird amount?).

I could wring my daughter's neck......

PS: I pressed alt, 156 on my keyboard but the UK pound sign didn't appear

I'm having a bad day.....also seem to have lost my credit card....

md95065

Sounds like it would have been cheaper (much cheaper!) to just order another copy from Amazon in the UK and have them ship it to the correct address.

Englishmum

Didn't flippin' think of that.....

Then again I don't really want or need a textbook on how to build an eco-house (my daughter says she'd like to live in a 'hobbit house' )

meauxna

Did you hold the alt key down?

£ £ £

chartreuse

Don't get me started on the Post Office. Apparently, it's Federal. Which means, not only do I have to disarm before I go in there, but I have to park on the street, so's I can leave my guns* in the truck.




* Yes, that's right, plural. Who goes out with only one gun?

ChocolateBabz

Maybe this will work (if you are using word)

1. On the Insert menu, click Symbol.
2. Click the tab with the symbol or character you want.
Note If you don't see the symbol you want, in the drop-down menus, click a different font or subset.

3. Click the symbol or character you want.
4. Click Shortcut Key.
5. In the Press new shortcut key box, press the key combination you want to use. For example, press ALT+ the desired key.

Look at Currently assigned to to see if the shortcut key combination is already assigned to a command or other item.
Reassigning a key combination means that you can no longer use the combination for its original purpose. For example, pressing CTRL+B changes selected text to bold. If you reassign CTRL+B to a new command or other item, you will not be able to bold text by pressing CTRL+B unless you restore the shortcut key assignments to their original settings.

Click Assign

Burn1911

Well I sent all my Xmas parcels on December 5th, Seattle to Somerset, my friend emailed me on January 4th to thank me for her Seattle Chocs that had just arrived that day!! That is an entire month - I am sure the flight is only 9 hours!!!!

Kaffy Mintcake

Makes me wonder how Next can charge only $10 shipping for your order regardless of its size. Quite a deal!

Tom60

Well, to save the 10 oz you could've torn out the boring parts. That's stupid, I know...

SarahG

Gotta love the Post Office. I have to go into the one in Carmel tomorrow to mail a load of photos. Got my sons Yearbook photos so have to mail a few to all the relatives.
My dad sent me a cheque for Christmas on December 10th. It arrived on Friday last week. Postmark clearly shows 10 December 2009 and it had enough postage so goodness knows what was going on with the mail delivery. I have told him to pay money into my UK account in future as I don't want to have to deal with the bank again and foreign deposits. First the thought it was Canadian dollars then Euros then German British Pounds! (I don't know what that would be!!)
Hope I survive the post office trip tomorrow or my family won't be getting anything sent to them until Christmas!

AdobePinon

Fixed it for ya!

Mallory

Probably pays a courier service a special price to send things over in batches. Or couriers batches over to the US, and mails from inside US. I'm sure they have some special way of handling it other than mailing by single piece through the PO.

I went to our local PO on Saturday to mail a package overseas. Got to PO at 11:31 a.m. (usually closes at 12 noon). Sign on door "new hours - PO now closes at 11:30 a.m.). Door was locked at 11:31 a.m.! I waited until someone came out, and then sneaked in! Glad I was being CCTV'd by TSA!

Kaffy Mintcake

That makes sense. I ran a study in the UK that required mailing product to consumers and we used a courier service because the Royal Mail was on strike. They did a fantastic job.

Sounds like budget cuts have affected your local post office. At least they haven't closed on Saturday altogether I suppose.

AmerLisa

Mine got there a lot sooner! I mailed my packages from Puyallup, WA on December 5th to Knaresborough and they arrived well before Christmas. I believe my daughter said like the 18th of December. I was pretty impressed.

scrubbedexpat097

Our Post office is closed on Saturday. It also closes for 30 minutes at lunch time and then at 4.15 every afternoon. It takes a lot of forward planning to actually be able to use their services..