By the way, that’s the cost to send one piece of paper from the US to the UK. Unfortunately, I need to send it quickly and that’s the quickest I can get it there with the reasonable options I have available to me.
It’s 2024 and we still need to ship a piece of paper. Fuckin embarrassing.
Agreed.
It could, theoretically, be like this on purpose, not only due to things like cargo space on specific planes, but also because this sort of pricing can have a psychological effect.
People don’t really know what shipping is supposed to cost, so the way they decide whether a price is good is by comparing it to other prices.
90 seems like a lot, but if it’s cheaper than the “economy” rate, people might be more inclined to purchase it and feel like they got a good deal.
I agree. And the cost itself is outrageous for all of their prices. I’m literally sending two pieces of paper. Thin paper. Not even normal A4 weight. The cost in fuel would be negligible.
In the olden days we would use a fax machine for that.
A lot of times of it’s a very small, light item, there are contracts that allow for expedited shipping through government channels which might reduce cost which is why the faster option is less. Probably if it were a bigger item, the faster option would be either unavailable or way more expensive and the slower would be about the same price. Similar to how in the US the first class mail is very cheap.
Also, it’s probably so expensive because expediting the customs process is mostly there just for rich people to skip the line kind of thing like in many other areas of society. There’s almost always a backlog in customs combined with “antiterrorism” things like radiation detection, xray, pathogen detection, poison detection, etc., that is often done at random in large batches, but with expedited they often have to test every piece rather than rooms full of stuff. And routing is similar. They also can’t wait to add your package to a larger batch of things when moving between various points along the way, so a lot of things are moved in smaller batches or direct courier. All of that makes it very expensive to move something very fast, no matter how small.
Its based on the delivery location. It’s like Alaska, some shit is cheaper to pay for air freight than ground service because the ground service is basically non-existent. Their shit is based on algorithms calculating tons of shop from and ship to locations calculating what hubs they pass thru and what means they’re shipping via. This shit isn’t designed to come out fucky but there are always going to be anomalies.
“This shit isn’t designed to come out fucky”
- 11111one11111, 2024
FedEx is a dogshit company. Their service is dogshit. They are dogshit.
I bet there is a hidden lower bound to the size of packages their Economy rate, so you are essentially paying the same rate for this Economy letter as you would for a small box. While the First Class rates have separate rates for letters vs. small boxes.
Wait, it’s a piece of paper, they can’t send it through first class mail rather than using a shipping service? Can it not be folded to put in an envelope? USPS does this for $1.65 Even if it can’t be folded, USPS does this for less than like $10
USPS does it for less than $10 if you aren’t in a hurry.
First class mail is usually much faster than FedEx Economy. It is sometimes faster than many priority mail FedEx options (FedEx sucks)
No other shipper would get it there that fast except DHL, which was not an option for me because it was 2 hours away and I don’t have the time to drive that far.
I’m sure living in a town in Indiana where businesses who would normally open up in a place with this population size but don’t because the region is too poor doesn’t help.
Twist: It’s just a blank piece of paper that says, “fuck you” on it.
I feel like this is what fax is for. Maybe I’m mistaken. Send it by fax and then send it by snail mail.
They need the original documents and the USPS is slower. Wouldn’t it be nice if they had some kind of “embassy” or “consulate” that you could just send all these documents to in the US and get a passport? Alas.
Yeah. I made my comment before I looked at the rest of the comments and got more context. But in theory you should be able to do that at an embassy. So I dunno.
In theory, but not any more apparently. Only emergency travel documents, not official passports.
That’s just fucked up. This country sucks.
And this is before they hit you with the ol’ surprise brokerage fees.
Tariffs, bitch. Mmmerica
