|
Post by paquebot on Feb 11, 2013 1:37:32 GMT -5
No problem with Customs forms, fill them in yourself. That's your responsibility. Clerks resist when they have to do it for you. My only objection is that form CN 22 doesn't produce a legible Form 2976 when typed on my Swintec.
Martin
|
|
|
Post by oxbowfarm on Feb 11, 2013 7:06:01 GMT -5
My PO has one full time employee and she still takes all my international packages with the customs form filled out by me. She in fact handed me a wad of them back when they changed the form recently so I wouldn't be inconvenienced. I think you are running into stink PO employees rather than real PO policy.
|
|
|
Post by bunkie on Feb 11, 2013 11:23:06 GMT -5
that might be right oxbow! i'm going to ask about it at the big PO wheen we go this week. No problem with Customs forms, fill them in yourself. That's your responsibility. Clerks resist when they have to do it for you. My only objection is that form CN 22 doesn't produce a legible Form 2976 when typed on my Swintec. Martin they never give me them?! they always fill them out themselves here!
|
|
|
Post by 12540dumont on Feb 11, 2013 14:07:20 GMT -5
Our small post office told me that the new regs require that they type in the to and from address. This takes them a lot of time, and I mail dozens of packages a week. Alas, now I'm out of postage money, so the very last of the last will be going out this week. No more seeds from me for the season.
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Feb 11, 2013 14:32:50 GMT -5
I use the services of 3 different post offices... Each one interprets the regulations differently, so I shop around for best shipping rates and the least annoying customer no-service depending on the nature of the things I'm shipping. I pay $0.93 for postage on flat envelopes at one post office, and $2.07 at a different post office. One office makes me wait while they type up customs forms. A different post office does it in the back-room after I leave. One office doesn't require customs forms on some shipments. Depends sometimes on which clerk is working that day, so I memorize clerk schedules....
Most packages are not inspected in any way by customs agents in any country. They get delivered regardless of what they have in them. The customs regulations are mostly about an illusion of control.
|
|
|
Post by littleminnie on Feb 11, 2013 19:57:49 GMT -5
Wow Joseph you have the same problems I do! I talked with a woman on the phone last Monday and she said I was right. So I went in Friday and that woman knew nothing at all so she gave me the postmaster's cell phone number. i will call tomorrow. they are trained so badly! For those who haven't seen this: www.nerdylorrin.net/jerry/postages/index.html#SmallPackagesPaddedEnvelpespostage tricks and info. Cool link in there too.
|
|
|
Post by Drahkk on Feb 11, 2013 22:08:52 GMT -5
Wow, good info. I've referred to the USPS before as the national landfill redistribution service, and wondered how much money they could recoup by putting recycling bins in the room with PO boxes, then baling and recycling the junk mail people would fill them with. But I didn't know the size of the subsidies that junk mail distributors take advantage of.
MB
|
|
|
Post by steev on Feb 11, 2013 23:13:37 GMT -5
Right. We have a Constitutionally mandated service that has been jiggered to serve business, rather than the general public, as it was originally intended. Further, it has been required to pre-fund retirement 75 years in advance, so that its finances look unsustainable, fueling cries to privatize it, because it's "inefficient". Bullshit! The USPS is a service vital to the bulk of the American public, although many may not realize that unless it's gone. It is Unionized, affirmative-actioned, and employs a VERY high percentage of Veterans, which many like to extol without actual action on their behalf.
I suggest this is not time to bitch about the USPS, but to get that ridiculous (and uniquely anomalous) pre-funding off it, so it can return to doing the service it is capable of doing so well. I further suggest that "business" start paying more of its own way, instead of getting taxpayer-subsidized bulk mail (commonly known as "junk mail"). I don't know when I last did anything with that crap other than put it straight into the recycle. The idea that I'm subsidizing that crap, which I don't want, to the detriment of the postal service I do want, pisses me right off, to be blunt.
|
|
|
Post by bunkie on Feb 12, 2013 8:49:50 GMT -5
right steev about the 75 year crap. no other business hs to follow that!
great link minnie!!
|
|
|
Post by steev on Feb 12, 2013 13:05:16 GMT -5
Nor does any other governmental or Congressionally-ruled agency have to pre-fund like that. It's a poison pill, pure and simple.
|
|
|
Post by stratcat on Feb 15, 2013 17:30:44 GMT -5
I checked with my small-town Post Office yesterday, and I will still be filling out my own Customs Forms as I have for years. That was good news. I make sure to use the USPS often; they serve my family very well.
|
|