That’s good enough for me. Facts are so 20th century.
If you can think of something else that might happen, feel free to post it. It’s like asking for a citation about what happens when a person’s heart stops functioning.
Yes, banks can pass the bill directly, if the payee supports it. When I sign on to my Wells Fargo account, all I have to do is click on the Bill Pay section, and it will tell me if I have any waiting E-Bills to pay. Unfortunately, so far only my Verizon cell phone bill comes this way; the local municipal utility that provides my water/electricity/garbage/internet doesn’t support any kind of e-billing yet. And I have half my mortgage payment directly taken from my checking account every fortnight, a day after I get paid.
In Spain we don’t even get “waiting bills to pay”: once you set up direct payment, the money is automatically withdrawn. Having to remember to pay my bills was almost as alien to me as using cheques, when I moved to the US. But I’m thinking that Canadjun’s question may have been more along the lines of “do you get the same level of detail on the bill’s electronic version if you pay via your bank as on a paper bill or a bill downloaded from the company you’re paying?” My banks tell me who I paid and for how much, but they don’t tell me details such as the list of phone calls made: for that, I need to go to my phone company’s webpage (I’m as paper-bill-free as I possibly can).
No, a standard letter costs 80 yen ($1) regardless of whether it’s being sent next door or from Hokkaido to Okinawa.
One can set up direct withdrawal for a lot of things in the US as well. As I mentioned, I have half my monthly mortgage payment taken out a day after I get my fortnightly “paycheck” (actually, a direct deposit to my account). I could set up my utilities or Verizon cell phone bill to direct withdrawal as well, however they withdraw on a fixed day each month, which isn’t always convenient to when I get paid, and I have heard too many horror stories of them accidentally billing way too much, or taking out a lot more than the bill specifies. For non-fixed bills, I prefer to actively send the money myself, to prevent such issues.
Having seen constanze’s, Hari Seldon’s and cckerberos’s posts, I think that a flat domestic rate is indeed the norm the world over. Do you have a cite for the USPS asserting otherwise?
IIRC the USPS delivers on Saturdays and goes door-to-door everywhere, even in sparsely populated areas.
As a comparison in terms of land size (and with a sparser population) Americans might want to look at Canada Post and the issues it faces (I am not knowledgeable enough about them to post them, tough).
Canada Post doesn’t deliver on Saturdays; I’m not sure it has in my lifetime, or at least in my memory (I’m 30). Canada Post also uses cluster boxes, even in urban (or more suburban) areas rather than door-to-door delivery. I would think these two factors play significantly into the costs the corporation incurs.
Most Canada Post offices are located within other businesses; I can’t even think of a stand-alone post office near me offhand (though there is one in my small hometown). Canada Post has deals with most pharmacies - Jean Coutu, Pharmaprix/Shopper’s Drug Mart, Brunet, etc - and some other shops whereby it has a service station within the store, complete with it’s own storage rooms. This allows them to save a ton of money on building ownership and maintenance and places them in incredibly practical locations where people are likely to go regularly anyways. For me, packages that I’m not home to collect get picked up in a dépanneur/convenience store! I don’t so much think “I need to go to the post office” as “I need more shampoo, and might as well mail this while I’m there.”
I realize that solutions like this mean a major contraction of the USPS, and that really sucks for people affected. In Canada, I suspect the very sparse population density outside of the cities led to this sort of thinking and these delivery solutions, and they’ve been in place for years. On the other hand, these sorts of things might mean the USPS remains viable, which is better than where it’s headed, based on the little I understand of the situation.
Got a cite for that?
ISTR that it did on Saturdays when I was very small, but that would have been the early 60s.
As I understand it, Canada Post still delivers door-to-door in areas that have always had door-to-door service. The “superboxes,” as they are called, are only for communities built after a certain date. I don’t know what that date is, but my house was built in 1979, and I get door-to-door service. Much nicer than having to go down the street to the superbox when it is -30C, as I had to when I lived in Calgary (house built 1999).
Hmm. Now that I think about it, when I lived in Stouffville, Ontario, I lived in a house built in 1870; and in spite of that, we had to go to the superbox. But a new housing development was on our doorstep–maybe that and the fact that our house was carved up into apartments was why. A number of places in other older parts of town did get door-to-door delivery though.
Good points about the one-price domestic rate in this thread. I can mail a letter from Victoria BC to St. John’s, Newfoundland (5000 miles) for 59c. But a letter to Sweetgrass, Montana, USA (60 miles away) would cost me $1.03. It seems odd, but that’s the way it is.