Mailing and Post Office Experiences

Don't know about Canada, but it is easy to accumulate loads of mint GB Commems from 1972 to about 1990, acquired at a fraction of the current face value.   All my mail goes out with 4 or 5 stamps to make the current rates of £1.25 inland or £2.20 overseas > I just mix and match from my stockpile to get the right amount. There's no law that says you cant put a dozen stamps on to make the rate .


I suggest you get into the habit of keeping  a pile of stamps available, and pre stamping before you go to the Post
I'm often in my local PO two or three times in a week . Such is my relationship with the team, they smile and chat, check the weight, whilst typing up proof of mailing and just accept that I have the right value on board.

Going out tomorrow  4 letters (All contain stamps on card)

Many times I have gone to the Post Office to mail stamps someone purchased from me off of STAMPS2GO. I always ask the clerk before I turn over the envelope that the envelop contains stamps and I would appreciate their using real stamps and not a meter. Of course, I do have one horror story. I went to the PO with a large envelope of stamps and mounts and etc, to send to STAMPS FOR THE WOUNDED. The clerk suggested I put my neatly addressed enevelope as it was quite heavy and expensive to mail. The clerk encouraged me to use one of the USPO large envelopes and gave me a slip of paper and said put your address on this. So like an idiot I put MY ADDRESS. NOT the address I was shipping to. So, I paid $9.90us! The next day I opened my post office box and this envelope came out opened and all the stamps were pouring out of the envelope I had originally put them in and placed inside the USPO envelope, because someone cut my addressed enevelope up both sides. And opened the Post Office envelope as well. They clearly looked through the stamps because there were less supplies in there than I sent. Not sure about the stamps as there were quite a few. So, make a long sad story short I now have to remake an envelope and go back to the PO and attempt to re-send the envelope. So, no matter how careful you think you are there is something that if it can go wrong, it will go wrong.
Nick

Canada Post's definition of 'document' is rather fluid. In my case, sometimes it's in the packaging that uses non-paper-based material, for instance bubble paper for protection or canvas panel as stiffener, but so long as the main content of the mail is document-based, I wouldn't feel guilty for including non-document in the lettermail.

And like hdm1950 , sometimes I mail non-paper-based stuff, including acrylic keychain and wooden postcards, as lettermail from my hometown Montreal. I have never gotten mail returned to me by the custom. I find that so long as the item is within the maximal dimensions allowed (2cm thickness), custom wouldn't give me so much trouble.

As for buying stamps at the same time as mailing items -- I have the impression that a lot of young clerks don't know how postage stamps work and what they represent. It happened to me once that I brought a cover that was franked with a lot but sufficient postage stamps to the counter, and the clerk had difficulty adding digits literally printed on the stamps using a calculator to verify the postage.

If you want your cover to be franked with stamps, it's best that you weight the mail at home (with a kitchen electric balance for instance) and figure out the stamp combination yourself before showing up at the post office. And while there, it's better to ask to buy stamps first (don't tell the clerk yet that you are going to send a mail), and once you have the products in your hand, you then affix X number of stamps on the cover and hand the whole thing to the clerk for postmarking. This way you can make sure that the cover is franked with proper postage stamps instead of a label.

According to my experience, it's not necessarily laziness that makes the clerk unwilling to deal with stamps, but rather, it's that a lot of time they don't know how to handle stamps -- how to add up number, how much facial value a 'Permanant' stamp represents, etc.

The staff at the 2 post offices I go to frequently all know me fairly well. They know that I usually calculate the postage at home, and want the cover to bear a postmarking (that's why I bring the cover to the counter, instead of dropping it into the postbox). And they usually trust me on that I had done a good job at the calculation, so all they do is to postmark (or one of them would allow me to postmark it myself) the cover, then put the mails in the box. No reweighing or verification is necessary.

I found that mails that I post this way -- without a second verification -- passed through easily even when my mail weights 1 or 2 grams extra. It's never been returned to me.

Also, you can buy recent postage stamps on Canada Post's webshop.

I would like to share my experiences as well with shipping national and international. I live in Belgium so the rules are a bit different here.

In my honest opinion it really makes a big difference which postal clerk is helping you. Some are really helpfull while others have little feeling with a stamp collector.

With some international sendings they produced a metered label is because the post office asked if it was just a one time use or that i would send more. Because i said it was just for one enveloppe they produced a metered label. After another visit a friendly postal clerk made a remark about the content of the enveloppe. I had placed the stamps in two little bags which felt a bit lumpy. She said this would not pass through the control and would be rejected. She then gave the enveloppe back with a leaflet explaining the rules about national and international sending.

In Belgium there are two options for international shipping:
- normalized post which may way 0 - 50g and will cost 2.87 euro
this enveloppe can maximum weigh 50 gram and only be 5mm thick while the size of the enveloppe can be a maximum of 125 * 235 mm
- non normalized post starts from 0 - 100 gram and will cost then a minimum of 8,61 euro.
this enveloppe can maximum weigh 100 gram and be 30 mm thick while the enveloppe can have a maximum size of 230 * 350 mm

So for me it is sometimes cheaper to send several enveloppes with a lower weight then 50 gram as long as the content feels like a postcard and has no weird lumps on the surface :-)

Another strange thing in Belgium is the use of old stamps for sending letters national (not sure if it also works international). Since 2001 we use the euro and is printed that way on the stamps ofcourse.
Belgium is one off the few European countries that still allows to use of old stamps with the Belgian Frank on them. They are still valid till the 1st of january 2028. So what this means is that people send you an enveloppe with stamps from 30 years ago and calculate themself on the enveloppe the value in euro. This way they show the stamps are equally to stamps with euro on them.