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 made exceptionally worse because it’s heading toward Christmas. Most likely the plane on the 17th was already sold and filled, they’re now sending a second plane which is not full and there’s a premium to put stuff on it because it costs them more to fly it than your sheet of paper accounts for.
I agree that that’s likely something like the underlying factor – they have two services, they named them in such a way that lower cost normally maps to the slower service, and in this unusual case that relationship doesn’t hold.
However, OP’s got a legit point that from a consumer standpoint, where someone only cares about time/money tradeoff, not internal FedEx operations, that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. It’d probably make sense for the “low end” option to just automatically map to the faster service in this case.
Also to OP’s credit they could just eat the price of that one shipment the name of providing a stable end reasonably priced service. The cost of all shipments would cover the cost of the average shipment plus a profit margin.
It’s kind of absurd to consider that there are hundreds of planes making that trip everyday, many thousands of passengers, and the best option we have is sending a letter via cargo plane.
I think it makes the most sense to name it a little more abstractly rather than use words that have an important meaning that they can’t always live up to. It’s different but it reminds me of the TurboTax product called “free” that literally was in no way free and only told you that at the end, as if free didn’t have a strong meaning for a product you would normally expect to pay something for. And they were required by the government to provide an actual free option, which they literally hid from search engines and didn’t link to it anywhere on their website.
This piece of paper better be getting served caviar and Bordeaux on the plane in a fully reclining skybed for that price
I actually just had to send someone a passport recently and had the 12p or the 3p (15h) options. I picked the more expensive 12p and the fucking thing didn’t even show up until 2:38p anyway. Very annoying since it was around $130
I thought I wouldn’t be able to get it to them by Monday, so if it gets there at some point on Friday… they won’t even send me info about it until a week from now at least. I’m trying to get my passport by the inauguration, but that may not be doable. And they now have my US passport. In theory, I can get emergency travel documents.
They keep telling me to send another document and don’t tell me to send it the previous time. So fucked up. Just let me send it all at once.
I’m told this is all due to the Tories.
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.
Facsimile?
If you mean why didn’t I send a fax or a PDF, it’s because the passport office wants original documents.
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I did not. I just used the website. Thanks for letting me know that though.
In the age of cryptography
The US passport service wants to drill its own holes through it.
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
It’s 2024 and we still need to ship a piece of paper. Fuckin embarrassing.
Agreed.
I use FedEx for work, and our account has heavily discounted rates for Priority services - not for Economy. That’s what I assumed was happening here, until I saw that you were dealing with them as John Q Public.
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.
Not if you need a document with an original signature or official stamp etc.
i hope the brits don’t end up bending knee and submitting to everything the new trumpistan demands, but i’m afraid they will, along with most of the others
