Text 31628, 51 rader
Skriven 2009-04-22 10:04:16 av Robert Bashe (2:2448/44)
  Kommentar till text 31562 av Ward Dossche (2:292/854)
Ärende: Piarates
================
Ward Dossche wrote to Bob Ackley on Tuesday April 21 2009 at 12:47:

I've left the subject as it was, since the topic has only changed from Somalia
to the post office...

WD> A lot of consumer electronics are not shipped by boat but by plane.
WD> More expensive...

Not only consumer electronics.

I've just gone through the usual frustration period after realizing that
shipping _anything_ (or even sending a heavier letter) internationally, and
particularly from the USA to the EU - is financially damned near prohibitive.

I wanted to buy a Robert Abels catalog from a guy in Wisconsin. Price of the
catalog $6, price of "shipping" in an envelope (some 140 grams) something over
_eight_ Dollars! Inside the USA some $2.50.

There IS NO COMPETITION in international shipping or mail (at least outside the
EU). In Germany, you use the German post, in the States USPS. The one time my
poor parents tried UPS to Germany was a catastrophe - slow and extra-high
prices.

There is, to my knowledge, NO WAY to avoid this, and I might add that shipments
to the States _from_ Germany are _cheaper_ than the same shipment from the USA
to Germany for the same weight.

There is even a company in the States - unfortunately, I've forgotten the name
- that will, for a fee, act as an agent for you, receiving shipments and
collating them to one larger shipment - simply to save shipping charges.

Unfortunately, this kind of thing also exists inside the EU. Sending a package
from Germany to Austria costs about FIVE times what sending the same package
from Kiel to Freiburg (one of the longest possible distances within Germany)
would cost. I'm still weiting for the EU to "harmonize" postal/shipping charged
within the EU, as they have for bank account transfer charges. This is badly
overdue.

Cheers, Bob

P.S. Inside Germany, there is luckily competition for shipping packages. Hermes
Logistik is reliable and cheap compared to the German post. Recently, a guy
living in Austria near the German border sent me a couple of notebook
mainboards from a nearby Hermes station at a Ford service station just over the
German border. I sent the package back to him c/o the same Hermes station (at
German rates), and he picked it up there. If we had sent everything via the
Austrian post to Germany and the German post to Austria, the shipping charges
would have been some EUR 25 instead of EUR 5.

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