Janet Kaiser on sun 27 jan 02
John Hesselberth said: book rate shipments will take a few days
longer--surface mail to Germany and Australia--well they will get there
when they get there.
Just a point of interest for people who send via "surface mail",
"economy" or whatever your national postal service calls their "slow
boat to China" shipments... When we were looking into this, we were
informed that very little post is actually sent via sea these days,
because it takes a very long time to fill a container with letters and
small packages destined for a particular country or port. The six-eight
weeks delivery span quoted by your mail service can be an awful lot
longer if your package/s are actually unlucky enough to find themselves
in a mailbag to be shipped from one continent to another by sea.
However, most mail of 10 kg or less is transported around the world by
air these days, even if you have paid the reduced surface mail rate. At
busy times of the year (like just before Christmas) the surface mail is
put to one side until there is space in a mail cargo (which is actually
rented by the mail service), but at other times it can get processed
fairly quickly. You may therefore be surprised that a package only takes
a couple of weeks and in some cases, packages actually arrive just as
quickly as via air mail.
Of course the reverse is also true... On January 12th, we received a
Christmas card (with full $3 airmail postage) posted from New Zealand on
December 9th. The same thing happened last year to a calendar my cousin
sent via airmail. That was not only six weeks getting here, but was all
stuck together because it had obviously been soaking wet at some
stage... May have been in a container on a lower level... Either that,
or it decided to swim part of the way.
Janet Kaiser
The Chapel of Art . Capel Celfyddyd
Marine Crescent . Criccieth LL52 0EA . GB-Wales . UK
E-MAIL: postbox@the-coa.org.uk
WEB: http://www.the-coa.org.uk
TEL: (++44) 01766-523570
Home of The International Potters' Path
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