<p>Next time I am gonna see if I can fit his stuff in a USPS box. This was crazy!</p>
<p>jym626, yes, by jiffy bag I was using what used to be a brand name for shredded-cardboard-padded mailing envelopes–they have been largely eclipsed by bubble-padded ones.</p>
<p>jym, I ship priority mail packages from my office via USPS. Periodically, I go to the post office to pick up free supplies (boxes come in flat rate sizes, and envelopes) and I print labels on line. The delivery confirmation is free if you print on line, and there is a discount for doing this. The mailman will pick up the package or envelope when he delivers the mail to the office. Do you mail a lot of stuff frequently? Because if you do not, I think it would not cost you so much more than fed ex. </p>
<p>I know our local fed ex ground at home is a contractor, and when the fed ex website said the box was delivered to us (after waiting for a redelivery) when it was not, I found out that this was the case. Although he scanned it as delivered, it came about an hour and a half later. They called him while I held on the phone, since I was irate about the whole thing to let us know when he would be there. I try to avoid using fed ex ground to my home. If things come that way, I send them to my office. The contractor there apparently is more professional.</p>
<p>Our mail is delivered to a central mail room in another building. I really dont feel comfortable leaving a box sitting there hoping the mailman (and not some random stranger) will pick it up. I also assume this would require an online account to be billed to.</p>
<p>** I just got another call from Cedric with an update that my pkg woudl be re-SWAK’ed tonight. They have been great. The guy who called me from my local hub gave me a cursory response- kinda blew me off.</p>
<p>I guess you can’t get comfortable with the mail room, but you could drop off at the Post office. You print and charge to your credit card for the USPS. Are you dropping off the fed ex stuff now? (We have all our stuff to be shipped picked up by the regular drivers that we get deliveries from if we can.)</p>
<p>Yes, if you print and affix the postage/label yourself you can just drop it off at the post office, and not wait in line. And you can use your own boxes, just specify Priority service. It is a little cheaper if you use theirs, though.</p>
<p>You don’t need a special online account: you can just have them bill it to a credit card. AND they will store all of the CC info except the SVC # so that you don’t have to enter it again but it is secure. AND they have a good address book. AND they allow “batch” labels where only the adressee varies, saving a ton of data entry time if you are sending multiple packages of the same size to various locations.</p>
<p>LOL-- our post office gets very busy,and if looks could kill when someone walks past everyone in line to go up to the counter…</p>
<p>I will look into it though. I am also expecting a follow up call from the nice Fedex guy in the morning.</p>
<p>Update (good news/bad news):
So I go onto the tracking site to see if they updated the correct weight. They had (in fact it weighed in at 6.4 lbs). BUT is now says, on the tracking page, “held at FedEx location for recipient pickup”.** NOOOOOOO!!!** DS has no car there! Its supposed to be delivered, tomorrow. So I start calling numbers I have (someone has to be there loading pkgs or something at 10pm their time). Finally someone answers the phone. She transfers me to a nice guy who told me he personally weighed my pkg, and laughed that it even had the correct (6.5#) weight ON THE PACKAGE (yes I know-- it was on my preprinted label) , and assured me that it was on the trailer to be put on the truck in the morning for delivery. He said they had to key in something to show in the system why it wasnt delivered today so they just put that in, but assured me it’d be delivered tomorrow and Tedric (not Cedric, my error and bad hearing) will call me in the morning when he gets in. Stay tuned.</p>