My new Palm took a dump on me last night. Turns on to a white screen. For a while the screen was coming back if I did a hard reset, but now it isn’t even doing that. Plus, it’s turning on intermittently. It is, for all intents and purposes, an ex-Palm.
So, this morning, a couple of phone calls with PalmOne, and I’m off to the post office to schlep the thing off to them so they can (they claim “fix”, but I’m thinking more “replace”) it.
And when I’m sending a $250 piece of electronics through the mail, you bet your ass I’m covering myself, so I bought the insurance, which ended up almost doubling my shipping costs.
And while I’m driving home, I think to myself: what the HELL do I have to buy insurance for? Aren’t I ALREADY paying the USPS to take my package and send it to the location I dictate? Doesn’t it seem reasonable to assume that part of this service would include a) the guarantee that the service so contracted is actually carried out accurately, and b) that the parcel arrives in the same condition that it’s sent in?
If I ran, say, a dry cleaner, and one of my machines chewed up a load of laundry, and I didn’t accept responsibility for the problem when the people came back and received a basket of shredded clothes, I would be out of business before you could say Movin’ On Up.
It’s not their official motto, but it’s on a plaque in front of the main post office in New York, so they should be beholden to it anyhow: “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”
Apparently keeping the package in good shape isn’t a job requirement.
Among the major shippers, the US Post Office charges the most by far for shipping insurance. Both Fed Express Ground and UPS give you $100 worth of insurance coverage for free (included in the basic price). Each additional $100 worth of coverage costs 30 cents or some similar nominal amount. If you have a Kinkos or UPS Mailbox Store in your neighborhood, just send it FedEx ground or UPS next time. You’ll be happy that you did. Also, Airborne Express has some fairly good rates but they aren’t as easy to find. The US post office is good for letters, post cards, and unbreakable non-valuable things that can fit inside a USPS Priority Mail packing box.
The USPS is counting on the fact that people are willing to pay for service that is “good enough most of the time”. If they guaranteed safe delivery of everything, the whole thing would fall apart :-). Hell, Microsoft created a Monopoly based on this business strategy.
-John