mikekmac
Member
Posts: 355
Registered: 21-5-2012
Location: Central Michigan
Country Flag: United States
Postcrossing Username: mike_kmac
Member Is Offline
Mood: Muddling through
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Describe postal service in your country/community?
I received a card the other day which showed a Russian mailbox, which reawakened my curiosity about the postal service in other locales - not the
official web site version, but the reality postal users experience. So I'm going to write up mine, and invite everyone (especially in other countries)
to share theirs:
Country: United States
Locale: Suburb of small (~200,000) city
--Daily home delivery Monday through Saturday, usually arriving mid-afternoon.
--No deliveries on national holidays.
--Mail is delivered to box mounted on post at the street, so mail carrier in postal vehicle can drive along the curb to make deliveries
--Box and post are supplied and maintained by the customer, not the post office. Basically there are two approved sizes which you can buy at a home
improvement store for $10-$15.
--If you receive a package too large for your box, carrier might bring it up to the house and leave it on the porch. But they are also allowed to just
leave a notice in the box, and you have to go to the post office the next day to get it. (Our guy is pretty good about leaving them on the porch.)
--Being right at the curb, boxes sometimes get knocked down or destroyed by snow plowing during the winter. No box, no mail delivery.
--You can place outgoing mail (with postage) in the box, and the carrier will collect it. There is a red metal flag you flip up to show there's
outgoing mail.
--Most postage and services can now be bought online and printed at home, but you can also buy stamps and special services by going to the nearest
post office. Ours is only about 2 miles away, adjacent to a shopping mall.
--Like most offices, the lobby of ours has walls full of keyed and numbered Post Office Boxes. These are popular with businesses and with people who
have secrets. (Some very small towns still do not have home delivery; there, everyone has a box.)
--Most advertising mail shows up on Tuesday.
--This household gets mail almost every day--4 or 5 items on light days, but sometimes 20 or more. Hardly any of it--except Postcrossing mail--is from
an actual human being.
Your turn! |
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brassbuttonsand4
Member
Posts: 67
Registered: 16-4-2012
Location: Lincoln uk
Country Flag: United Kingdom
Postcrossing Username: Brassbuttonsandy44
Member Is Offline
Mood: happy x
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from the uk and boy is the cost to post stuff expensive here lol !! |
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cawindt
Member
Posts: 932
Registered: 23-12-2008
Location: USA
Country Flag: United States
Postcrossing Username: cawindt
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
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Just to show the variety within the US:
Country: United States
Locale: Small town (35,000)
--Daily home delivery Monday through Saturday, usually arriving by 10 am in my neighbourhood
--No deliveries on national holidays.
--Mail is delivered to box mounted on post by the front porch, or directly on the house or in a slot in the door
--The post office supplies posts to encourage people to move their boxes down to the sidewalk to save the letter carrier from having to walk
up the porch in the winter time. There is no regulation on what size or shape box to get.
--If you receive a package too large for your box, carrier might bring it up to the house and leave it on the porch. But they are also allowed to just
leave a notice in the box, and you have to go to the post office the next day to get it. (Our guy is pretty good about leaving them on the porch.)
--Being right at the curb, boxes sometimes get knocked down or destroyed by snow plowing during the winter. No box, no mail delivery.
--You can place outgoing mail (with postage) in the box, and the carrier will collect it. There is a red metal flag you flip up to show there's
outgoing mail.
--Most postage and services can now be bought online and printed at home, but you can also buy stamps and special services by going to the nearest
post office. Ours is only about 1 mile away right downtown.
--Like most offices, the lobby of ours has walls full of keyed and numbered Post Office Boxes. These are popular with businesses and with people who
have secrets. (Some very small towns still do not have home delivery; there, everyone has a box.)
--Most advertising mail shows up on Monday.
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Guilty82
New Member
Posts: 28
Registered: 19-6-2012
Location: infront of my computer
Country Flag: Sweden
Postcrossing Username: Guilty82
Member Is Offline
Mood: Great as always
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Country: Sweden
Locale: City 1,5 mil.
--Daily home delivery Monday throughfriday, usually arriving between 11am-4pm.
--No deliveries on national holidays.
--Mail is delivered to box mounted on post at the street, so mail carrier in postal vehicle can drive along the curb to make deliveries or those
living in appartment buildings they are on bikes and run throgh the whole house and put the mail in slots in the doors.
--Boxes and bigger parcels are to be picked up at a groserystoor that have postal servises. The people who lives far out in the woods usually gets the
packages home deliverd.
--We have mailboxes everywhere that is emptied at least once a day. Exept public hollidays.
--all postage has to be bought in a store or kiosk. most places have them, like food stores and so on. i prefer to by mine in the post museum, just
because they have all the different kinds there to choose from.
--Sweden dont have any post offices anymore.
--Most advertising mail shows up on all days.  . a lot of people here
write on their door that they dont want advertising mail. and that is being respected.
--i get mail maybe once or twice a week, mostly bills, but since i joined postcrossing i get postcards a couple of times a week to. i love it when the
mail arrives and get so dissapointed when i dont get any postcards. Today was a good day.  |
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tsvetana
New Member
Posts: 4
Registered: 14-8-2012
Country Flag: Bulgaria
Postcrossing Username: tsvetana
Member Is Offline
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Country: Bulgaria
Locale: capital Sofia, approx. 1.5 mln.
--Daily home delivery Monday to Friday approx. 8 a.m. - 16 p.m., Saturday - delivery until noon. Post offices work Monday to Friday 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.,
some big ones have extended working time till 8.30 p.m.
--No deliveries on Sunday and national holidays
--The mail is delivered to metal boxes adjacent to the entrance doors of the yards (if Bulgarians live in houses, we have fences and doors to the
yards). If the person lives in a block of flats, the mailboxes of everyone in the building are on the 0-floor corridor - rows and columns of wooden or
metal boxes with the number of the flat on each. In both cases, if the parcel is too big for the standard box, the receiver gets a note to pick it up
from the post office.
--Delivery notes sometimes are received not only for big parcels but also for registered letters, although I personally haven't had enough experience
with that to be 100% certain
--post stamps can be bought only at the post offices and the philatelic stores, if any in the city, also from private traders online, but it's no
point since their prices are higher than the post offices. Post offices sell 95% only definitives, which currently are some 5-6 different issues. The
other 5% could be some commemorative stamps, like Christmas issues, but if one wants to send commemoratives, they must go to the philatelic
shops..which till now are about 20 only for the whole country with 2 in the capital..
--One can pay in three ways for postal services (for letters I mean, as I haven;t sent parcels till now) - with postage stamps only, with cash only
(for registered letters) and combined. Postal costs are quite reasonable, e.g. for national mail, if you want to send a postcard or a letter with the
size of a postcard and less than 20 grams weight, you must pay 0.65 leva, which is approx. 0.33 Euro. For international mail the countries are in
zones depending on the distance. E.g. for Europe and similar one should pay 1 lev (approx. 0.50 Euro) for normal delivery and 1.50 leva (approx 0.75
Euro) for fast delivery(airmail).
--One can't send outgoing mail through their personal mailbox. You should go either to the post office where there's always a mailbox (yellow
colour ) or anywhere else where one sees such. It was quite curious
to understand that in fact in Bulgaria we have many more mail boxes for outgoing mail than e.g. in Turkey where I tried to post some postcards but
couldn't find a box even at the main tourist destinations at the centre of one big city! Anyway, anyone from Turkey, please give information, I'm
quite curious about that.
--Some villages don't have working post offices anymore, but post is still delivered by post office personnel from the nearest big town and there's
also a mail box for outgoing mail most often at the grocery store of the village
--We don't have special day of the week for advertising mail, and it depends on the number of population of the town/village or the neighbourhood,
e.g. people living in blocks of flats in the big cities can get 50 ad mails per month (which is a lot), and their fellow citizens in distant parts of
the town, living in an area with houses can get only 10. E.g. I live in a house in a not very populous neighbourhood of the capital - we are approx.
30 000 people there and I get e.g. 10 ad mails per month.
--From our household (4 people living on 3 floors), it's only me who get the 95% of personal mail. Traditional mail is not very popular nowadays in
Bulgaria, with the rise of e-mails the need to send letters has decreased to a minimum. We don't send postcards anymore while we are on holiday, we
just send an sms or an MMS, or just phone our relatives, which is quite sad - not only for the loss of a very nice tradition, but a loss for philately
and collectors in general. So if you get a very specially made postcard from Bulgaria, you have to feel very special - because you'll have something
recent as a memorabilia from here than most of the Bulgarians
If I've missed some topic, you can ask |
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siobhan
Member
Posts: 1269
Registered: 17-5-2009
Location: Leverkusen, GER
Postcrossing Username: siobhan
Member Is Offline
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Country: Germany
Locale: outskirts of a medium town (160,000)
- Daily home delivery Monday to Saturday; times vary depending on where you are on a carrier's route (here: mid-day or later if the carrier comes by
bike)
- No deliveries on Sunday and national holidays, except maybe on the last weekend before Christmas when there may be deliveries on Sundays
- Mail is delivered to mailboxes which are usually located near the front door, or sometimes inside for bigger apartment blocks
- Mailboxes are bought and maintained by the house owners and there are no specified sizes; single houses often have a special tube thingy for
newspapers attached to the mailbox; slits in front doors are also common instead of mailboxes.
- Things that are too big for your mailbox will be handed to you at the door or either delivered to a neighbour or taken back to the nearest post
office for you to pick them up. The carrier must then leave a note in your mailbox letting you know where your parcel is, but they often don't and
instead leave you guessing and running around to your neighbours.  If
you have a special agreement with your mail carrier, he can also leave such parcels in an agreed-upon place - ours puts them on the trash cans that
are hidden behind a door. Packages often have to be signed for, so they can't just be left near the door (houses in Germany normally don't have
porches).
- Outgoing mail must be put into a letter box or handed in at a post office. Packages can sometimes be given to the package delivery guy (if he's not
the mail carrier coming by bike), and of course they need to have the proper postage on and everything.
- Most postage and services can now be bought online and printed at home, but you can also buy stamps and special services by going to the nearest
post office. Mine is a few 100 m up the hill (I never measured, but it's really not far).
- The variety of stamps available is much bigger online than at most post offices. Some post offices have a philatelic counter where you can buy a ton
of different designs, old and new ones. There's no such counter in my town, so I buy online. Priority stickers are much easier to get online, as the
people in post offices tend to tell you they no longer exist, which they obiously still do ...
- There are not many real post offices left, mostly they either share a shop with another business (of various types - mine's inside a
newspaper/magazine/stationery kiosk-type store. Some shops are also authorized to sell stamps, but they don't offer other postal services.
- Most post offices (whether in a place of their own or sharing) have a number of post offices boxes available; mine has about a hundred in various
sizes.
- There is no special day for advertising, but in some places and especially in the summer, there is less advertising on Mondays.
- This household gets mail most every day, although sometimes it will just be bills or advertisments and the only thing personal are my postcards. |
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Mägi
New Member
Posts: 15
Registered: 26-8-2012
Location: Haines, Alaska
Country Flag: United States
Postcrossing Username: Roosterruler
Member Is Offline
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Country: United States
Locale: Wee Village in Alaska - Haines - Population < 1,900 folks
-- No postal delivery routes and mail boxes, everyone has a PO box or General Delivery
-- Most of the postal workers know your name if you live there for a few months
-- Around four to five workers total (that I've seen)
-- General Delivery is common if you're new to town - just tell them your name and they check the box where they sort all the incoming Gen. Delivs. by
last name.
-- Guaranteed to run into someone you know each time you go to the post office
-- PO box room open all the time
-- Front desk open Monday-Friday from 9 AM - 5 PM and on Saturdays from noon to 3 PM
-- Community board inside which everyone checks
-- Many days, the mail doesn't come because we get our letters by aeroplane and the planes don't come when it's stormy
-- Only way to get a package is by going to the barge at the ferry terminal (it comes on Tuesdays) or through the post office by going up to the front
desk |
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mikemoral
New Member
Posts: 3
Registered: 13-9-2012
Location: California
Country Flag: United States
Postcrossing Username: mikemoral
Member Is Offline
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I thought that I might chime in here.
Country: United States
Locale: Small California suburb (pop. ~80,000)
--Daily delivery Monday-Saturday between 10am and noon.
--Mail is delivered to box mounted on wall by the front door, or in a slot in the door, or in some parts of this city in mailboxes along the curb.
--If you receive a package too large for your box, carrier might bring it up to the house and leave it on the porch. But they are also allowed to just
leave a notice in the box, and you have to go to the post office the next day to get it. [Packages are stuck beside our box or on the porch behind the
plants, and larger envelopes to small for the slot go behind the box]
--You can place outgoing mail (with postage) beside the box or if you missed the postal carrier, you can hand it to them.
--Most postage and services can now be bought online and printed at home, but you can also buy stamps and special services by going to the nearest
post office. There's three post offices in this city. The closest one is about a mile away so it's in walking/biking distance. A lot of ATM machines,
grocery stores, and banks sell postage in sheets of 18.
--Like most offices, the lobby of ours has walls full of keyed and numbered Post Office Boxes and an automated postage dispenser which has a scale and
will print stamps or dispense a sheet of stamps.
--Advertising mail shows up on whenever it feels like showing up.
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