I recently had the opportunity to indulge in my impish fantasies of being an international importer/exporter. I’ve always thought that it would be neat to have a network of folks, connected via the internet, that would export specific local goodies to other countries to make them available faster in the destination country. Japanese animation comes to mind specifically.
Anyway, I was sending a couple of toys to Norway, and I found myself at the post office. As it turns out, the only way to avoid spending more than $40 on shipping from the US to Norway is to use first class mail. And when you’re using first class mail, you cannot buy postage online and print it like you can with priority or express mail, even though it’s pretty much flat rate for a box under certain dimensions and weight. No, you must go to the post office.
So I stood in line three times. The first time, I went to ask what forms I needed to fill out to ship the box, including customs, which I’ve still not sure the point of. The second time, I had completed the forms, but my labeling was apparently unacceptable, and I had to buy a 69-cent label to fix that up.
I come prepared to the post office to be exasperated, but it’s still disheartening when it happens. I’m apparently stupid because I don’t know what their machines can accept in terms of addressing. I don’t work at a post office, after all, and when I fill out the forms online (why couldn’t I do that? oh yeah, no good reason) it figures that all out for me, so why should I know? Anyway. Yeah, I’m probably not going to go into exporting things.
