Battleangel | Personal

Postal reforms are a wonderful thing. Or so I’ve been told. But since the Swedish Postal Service (Posten AB) starting playing by strictly capitalistic rules a few years back, it doesn’t really matter that it is still owned and operated by the state. Here is an example of how drastically their so called service has changed: Traditionally you were able to tag a package or a letter with essentially any stamp value as long as it more or less corresponded to the real cost of postage. Nowadays, if you happen to post three letter (A4) pages in a C5 envelope and you only tag it with one standard issue stamp (instead of two), you’ll get the letter in return, after the Postal Service tried (unsuccessfully) to get the recipient to pay for the surcharge. No matter if the Postal Service has to relay it via their oversight authority which in turn OPENS the envelope and figures out the sender address (in case it wasn’t on the back of the original packaging).

Now, which would have been more expensive? Letting the sodding envelope slip and giving up on a few pennies or sending at least three extra notes (one to the recipient, one to find out the address and finally one back to the sender).