Up here in Canada we are charged 93 cents to send a letter to the USA.PLUS....we then have to pay tax on that .93,which brings the cost up to nearly $1.00.Now...$1 Canadian is about .96 US,which is about .33 cents more than it takes for a letter from your end.If I want to mail a chip to the USA.....even 1 chip....we are now charged $1.96 to mail that package to the USA PLUS the cost of the mailer! As an added bunus,we now have to fill out a rather large form and,on that form,we now,once again have to fill out ALL of the mailing info which we have already written on our parcel.
Now...many of you will say:"Why not just fill out the form and not write anything on the package/parcel/envelope?" Well,the post office also makes that difficult because the form we have to fill out does not leave much room on it to enable most of us to fill out that form legibly. BUT WAIT...it even gets better than that! Let's say someone bought a small token from me....maybe the size of a dime.Well,we know that this dime is not very thick right?So,I decide to tape it to some thin cardboard(cereal box thickness),so that I can send it in an envelope with a letter so that I can send it for .93(.99).Well....guess what? I am not allowed to do that BECAUSE...the only thing that can be in an envelope and sent as a letter...is paper! Yep....only paper.So,because this token is metal,I now have to fill out one of those stupid forms again(try and get one of those on an envelope),and send the "letter" as a small parcel for $1.96.
Added to this insult is the fact that mail service within this country is a total joke.I traded with 7 chippers two weeks ago,and.although most of them have received my chips,I still only received chips from one of them even though they were all mailed within 24 hours of one another.One of my packages was mailed from Washington which is a 2 hour ferry trip and that package was mailed almost 12 days ago!
So.....no matter how bad it gets for you down there,remember that you guys have it so good compared to service in other countries,and I hope that your postal service does not ever "catch up" to our antiquated service anytime soon.