Sandy Grant
28 August 2006
column
I first picked up the habit when the Post Office raised its charges some years back. The newly introduced rates then were so devastatingly punitive that I developed a morbid fascination with the way it appeared to think. Now, yet another opportunity has arrived to try and decide whether the Post Office really does operate in its own never-never world because, lo, and behold, it has announced that it is making yet another strike, the first since, hold your breath, May 1, 2004 with a new pricing schedule to be unveiled on 4th September 2006.
However did you know that letters are items which contain printed material only? Thus, an old fashioned, hand-written letter ceased some time back to be a letter; it became a packet which could be despatched only at a higher cost than its printed equivalent. And if it is posted to a Botswana destination, it will cost P1.10, not the current P0.80, but would this mean that a hand-addressed envelope containing printed material is or is not a letter? But note that the price increase for air postage applies across the board for letters and packets until the 1000-1500g band when something extraordinary occurs, the price goes dramatically down, from P80.10 to P64.00 for the SADC region, from P87.80 to P76.20 for the Rest of Africa, from P161.70 to P140.10 for the Rest of the World and by surface mail from P100.10 for the Rest of Africa to P67.00 and from P115.50 to P86.00 to the Rest of the World. In surprising contrast to the definition of a letter, a parcel is described as an item which contains non-printed matter. A book, it seems, can be sent therefore either as a letter (which seems improbable) or a packet but definitely not as a parcel. But then those sending parcels will need to know that the new air rates will take their breath away. A 5kg parcel to RSA/SADC goes up from P126 to P145.40, a 10kg air parcel to the Rest of the World is increased from P P480 to P P735.20 but posted to Europe drops, incredibly, from P459 to P419.40. A 20 kg air parcel sent to Colombo 500 will cost P880 on September 3 and P1,351.20 on the 4th! The surface rate charge for a packet weighing in at 1000-1500g today costs P5.40 when sent to a local destination, P66.30 when sent to a SADC country, P72.40 to non-SADC Africa, P78.60 to Europe and P84.70 to everywhere else. How is possible that the difference in cost between sending a packet down the road to Zeerust or Mafikeng and, say Jakarta, on the other side of the world, is a mere P17.40? Curiously those rates are now b eing reduced but the disparities remain.
How does the logic work out with other price schedules? The commission charge for postal orders remains unchanged for P0.50 and P1.00 (is there really a 50 thebe postal order?) and then decreases so that the charge for a P10 order is reduced from P3.00 to P2.50 and for P100 from P15.40 to P12.00. For the sake of consistency, it might be expected that the new charges for Money Orders will reflect those for Postal Orders. They do not. The charges, local and international, for an Order up to P100 leap from P7.40 and P11.60 to P11.00 and P14.50, and for P400-P500 from P26 and P43.20 to P30 and P45.
There are new charges for Money Orders from P500 to P1,000, which presumably reflect a new need for higher, value Orders. And then there are the new charges for other services, the registration fee up from P2.80 to P5.50, for a registered envelope up from P1.40 to P2.20, for advice of delivery, from P10.30 to P13.20, and for International Express Delivery from P10.30 to P13.20. Do these changes increase your confidence in the Post Office or lead you close to despair?
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