I’m trying to get a 1-oz envelope sent to Philippines from US. Online rates are the same as always (USPS, Fed Ex, etc.), $30-40 or so’ But at the desk, I can’t get a rate of under $100, at several locations in two states. Don’t tell me online rates, I can look them up. Has anybody actually shpped anything for under $50 in the past few months? How?
USPS First Class Mail from the US to the Philippines is $15.25, though that does not have a tracking number. (Slightly cheaper if you use PirateShip.)
I just shipped a package to Russia last week and the price at the USPS location was exactly the same as online. If you’re getting such wildly different quotes you must be entering something wrong on the website or giving them the wrong info at the window. The prices should be the same.
Just shipped a shot glass and stuff to the UK. Cost $42.50 by whatever means they used. I told them “the cheapest short of tossing it out back and hoping he trips over it.”
At one PO, she handed the clerk the envelope and he said "We’ll send it Fed Ex. $119, there is no functioning postal service in Philippines’, which is truer.
Got a post offics to accept for $35, with tracking number. Let’s see what happens next.
Just a word of warning; USPS first class international is pretty slow right now. I’ve had three things mailed from the States to Australia, all on USPS, and all of them took two-and-a-half to three months to get here - one birthday card, one package with a T-shirt*, and one check from the Treasury.
Mail travels via passenger airlines, I gather, and there just aren’t that many flights. Hope what you’re sending isn’t too time-sensitive!
*The seller actually used UPS…who passed it straight onto the USPS.
Just an update. It was mailed in metro Tampa Monday, and last night it arrived in Miami, after three straight days tracking “in transit to the next facility”,