USPS Address Change “Convenience Fee”
Are you, like me, moving across town this spring? Did you want to submit a change of address form to the Post Office, online?
Yes, I too want to avoid the hassle of a post office visit to forward my mail, but guess what happens if you aim for convenience for both the post office and you: USPS charges you $1.00 for the time-save of a website transaction.
Don’t believe the “need to verify” bulls**t, plenty of companies verify without charging, or charge $0.03. This is just a way for the USPS, a cash-crunched company, to charge me to save them time and money. I find that more than a little egregious. Kinda like an ATM “convenience fee”.
I just hope this is the last move I make in a long while. That buck smarts and I already refuse to send those paper letter things anymore.
I agree. Then again, if I owned a monopoly my “convenience” fees would be a lot more than a buck.
Even worse is the fee Ticketmaster charges you to print your own tickets. Instead of having them handle the postage, printing and handling costs, you can use your own paper and ink and pay them $2 for the privilege.
These convenience fees would be a lot less insulting if the real convenience wasn’t for the merchant. ATMs, online address changes, movie tickets by phone – all of them result in lower labor costs for the sellers, something they should encourage. Making us pay for their cost savings is insulting.
The Post Office is definitely being disingenuous here. Having written cc processing software I can tell you that you can get an authorization and use address verification WITHOUT submitting the charge.
Don, I know! Which is so why I am pissed. Lies they tell for their buck!