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Long story short, I responded to a Craigslist ad for someone looking for an orchid cactus. I have a bunch; it roots easily from clippings. So (didn’t ask for money, the plant didn’t cost me anything) I put a leaf- FLAT leaf mind you- into a 6″x9″ bubble envelope I had. I waited to Monday to mail it so that it would spend as little time in transit as possible, and since the post office is always packed, I used the automated mailer. Sent it as a ‘large envelope’, which seemed to mast the pictures on the screen anyhow. Got it back the next day for insufficient postage- WTH? I’m already mad from work sucking, and now the leaf will take an extra day getting there. So I go down to the post office to find out what gives. (obviously, I paid what I was quoted to mail it in the first place) The lady at the post office was snarky as usual. She informed me that the only things that USPS regards as ‘envelopes’ are perfectly flat and can only contain paper (if you really squeezed, you could feel the leaf’s vein). So, since this was a BUBBLE envelope, not a flat one, and contained something other that paper, it was a PACKAGE in the USPS’ eyes, not an ENVELOPE, no matter what it called itself. On top of that, she charged me an additional $.07 over the $.34 insufficient postage written on the envelope for me to remail it. GRRR! Not the money, it’s the idea. Seems to me, if it’s essentially 2 dimensional, with a flap, and even the post office sells them as envelopes, it’s an envelope. If it is more 3 dimensional and has measurable sides, THEN it’s a package.
And they wonder why people don’t want to use them anymore. If I send any more cuttings anywhere, I’ll try UPS.I always thought they where called padded envelopes??
well if you try to make logic out of it you will need a padded room!!Well, I learned early on from ‘doing’ eBay that if they can’t run it thru the MACHINE, it is a package. Yeah that makes sense if you think about it. A bubble envelope can’t slip thru that MACHINE, and must be hand sorted, thereby causing an increase in postage rates to pay the employee who had to touch it LOL If you had used a regular envelope, it’d gone first class 😡 But, they may have stopped it because you were mailing a living plant, you can’t win against the post office LOL :O
**SUCK TO WIN RATIO OF THE USPS**
70% SUCK to FAIL
30% WIN…To me it all depends on how you look at it. I’ve had good and bad luck with the PO…And I’ve had UPS tell people I have an undeliverable address before too (although not here), along with Fed Ex… 😕
pipsxlch wrote:Seems to me, if it’s essentially 2 dimensional, with a flap, and even the post office sells them as envelopes, it’s an envelope. If it is more 3 dimensional and has measurable sides, THEN it’s a package.
When you go to the USPS website, a “large envelope” due to fatness is between a quarter of an inch and three quarters of an inch, so your package would likely have been fine for that. However, there is the additional qualification that: “Large envelopes that are rigid, nonrectangular, or not uniformly thick pay package prices.” So I would suppose that your package was regected as a large envelope due to non-uniform thickness, making it not machine processable.
our automated machine here has an option that says package or thick envelope..
on the first screen that pops up it shows different packages and envelopes, you can pick regular envelopes, thick/padded envelopes or oversize envelopes..
if you read everything is says, it’s really easy, but you can’t be in a hurry or it will all come out wrong.. lol
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