Going Postal

A few weeks ago I went to the main post office in our area to do the first bulk mailing for the nonprofit I am the Executive Director of. I had spoken on the phone to several post office employees and researched on the internet all that had to be done beforehand and thought I was pretty well prepared. I had even sorted the 204 letters by zip code as instructed by one of the employees. So, imagine my surprise when it took 3 1/2 hours and then an additional return trip to get the mailing done.

First you see, I was advised to go to the front retail window and ask them if they had 500 precanceled five cent stamps to purchase. I was told that was the minimum and if they didn't have it, there was no point in opening the permit, etc. So, I waited in line in the front lobby for about five minutes. There was one guy working the counter. Did I mention this was around the middle of December? Finally, another woman came out and prepared to open her desk to serve customers. I jumped the line to ask her, if she could just tell me if the office had at least 500 precanceled 5 cent stamps because John from the Business Entry Unit had told me to inquire.

She said "they don't do 5 cent stamps anymore, just 10 cent ones." "Oh," I said, "John had told me specifically that they should be 5 cents." "No," she insisted, "they are 10 cents." "Okay" I relented, "well, do you have 500 of those?" "I think so, I am not sure and I have to wait on the customers." she said and motioned to the line of customers. So, I took a chance and decided to go ahead and pull the permit for the bulk mail, assuming their would be enough stamps.

Pulling the permit entailed getting into my car, driving out the entrance and driving to the second driveway, essentially driving 1/4 of a mile in a circuituous route to the back of the building. There I was met by John with whom I had spoken several times by phone. He was very nice and helpful and immediately announced that the woman who I dealt with, who he decided was "Cecile," was providing inaccurate information. Anyway, John and I spent twenty minutes of him inputing my organization's information (I thought I was all set when I had applied for permission to mail under nonprofit status, however, that essentially just allows you to open a permit-should have known it was too easy...). Once he was done, he instructed me that I had to go back around to the front and pay the $180 to open the permit and to buy my precanceled stamps. Once I had done that he said, I could come back with my mail to the back and mail it with the properly completed forms and the mail in the proper trays, etc. I figured I would cross that bridge when I got to it and off I went back to the front of the building in my car.

When I got back to the front of course the long line was being served by one person only, the other employee (who I later learned was Bill) was off to lunch. So, twenty minutes waiting in line later, I got served by a different woman who had just come on to join Cecile. The new woman was very pleasant and I am sorry I don't recall her name. I asked her for the 5 cent stamps and she said no problem but the supervisor then came out to tell me that the minimum amount of precanceled stamps which could be purchased was 3000! That will be plenty for over two years of mailings! Yikes, but now I was already down the road of commitment, having just paid the $180 permit fee to mail under nonprofit status!

So, off I went, $330 lighter and a massive coil of precanceled 5 cent stamps in my hand, to get into my car and put the stamps on the 204 letters. Once again, I drove around to the back of the building and headed for the bulk mail office. I had downloaded the form for the bulk mail and John had kindly weighed 10 of the letters to get an accurate weight of one piece for the form. The women at the bulk area were very nice and explained how to fill out the rest of the form and in fact, Hortense even filled out much of the form for me. Then she showed me where the trays were to put the letters in which I had sorted by zip code. She then showed me the cardboard covers that went on the trays. So far so good. Finally, she tallied up the sheet and told me that the difference between the amount paid by using the 5 cent stamps and the rate to be paid for nonprofit postage amounted to $13.81 I still owed them.

You guessed it. I had to drive back around to the front to pay that. So back in front and back in line, I finally reached the counter and was served by Bill who by this time was back from his lunch. While waiting I got to chatting with a woman standing in front of me whose name was Barbara and who noticed that I had just been in the bulk mail area around back like she was. Turns out that she runs a mailing service business. Before this day I would have wondered as to the business need for such a service. Now there was no doubt in my mind. I quickly asked for her card.

When I paid Bill my $13.18 I drove back around to the back and gave them the sheet with the evidence of my having paid the $13.18 and they told me I was all set. Off I went home, happy to have this all behind me.

Twenty minutes later the phone rang. It was another woman from the business entry unit. She said the math on my sheet didn't add up. I quickly blamed Hortense who had so kindly helped me. The math was saying that there were 194 pieces (in the end it was my error, I had given her the various numbers). There is a minimum of 200 pieces for bulk mail. I had a moment of panic thinking I had miscounted, but I knew I had 204. I speculated that the missing 10 had to be in either the 060 or 061 zip codes as this was where the overwhelming bulk of our mail went. She said she would count it all and call me back. Ten minutes later she called to say that indeed they were part of the 061 batch.

Then she told me that since they weren't in the calculation, that I owed an additional $1.18. So, off I went back to the post office twenty minutes away from home, to the front window where I had been instructed to tell them I needed to pay for a meter strip of $1.18 and bring it back around to the back to be affixed on my sheet.

Once again, after waiting 10 minutes (the crowd was thinning out in the late afternoon, a lull before rush hour I guess) I got Bill. I told him what I needed. He asked if I had anything to put it onto. I said no, they told me to just get it and take it to the back. He insisted it had to be put on something. So he took a scrap piece of paper and affixed it to it. Off I drove back to the back of the building where I handed the paid meter strip to the lady whose name I don't recall. She looked at it and said "who put it on this piece of paper?" I told her how Bill insisted. She and another employee commiserated how that was NOT how it was meant to be done and Bill knew that full well. "That Bill, he in the KMA club, he just waiting for his time to be up so he be out of here." She told her fellow employee. I started laughing and said KMA, I think I know what that means (kiss my ass!). With that she told me that I was truly all set and I got in the car, sat on my ass and drove around the building and home.