In Germany mail was delivered two times a day, in the city district even more often, up until the 1960s.
Nowadays the mailpeople show up two times a week.
It blows my mind that they don’t pick mail up from peoples houses. I live in a city, so it could be different in more rural areas, but I my closest mailbox is almost a half kilometer away.
Yeah, I was a little shocked too.
Especially in apartment complexes. There’s usually a communal outbox for anyone to send out mail. But no, you’ll have to go all the way to a post office to drop off mail. The nearest one is a 20 minute walk for me.
That is crazy. In the USA they pick mail up at everyone’s house, and there are big mailboxes every couple of blocks.
looks hard at Louis Dejoy
I mean if nothing else, the need for it has just utterly collapsed. Even in a largely still print-driven country like Germany.
Parcels, that’s an entirely different thing. And you will notice that DHL, UPS, they all do at-home pickup. Or DHL and Hermes have drop of spots in what feels like every single little kiosk, bakery or ice cream parlor.
But mail? Actual, proper, snail-mail? That’s mostly on the way out, actually. It’s no longer a big need for virtually anybody. Most people I know check their physical mailbox at most once a week, sometimes once a month (since invoices arrive monthly usually).
In my experience in the U.S. shipping with USPS is the best for smaller packages and UPS for heavier packages. UPS doesn’t run on weekends, but they are still very efficient and they’re unionized, which I support. They also have convenient dropoff locations/lockers inside pharmacies and office supply stores as well as their own storefronts that will accept dropoffs later in the day and on weekends. USPS has dropboxes in their lobbies, which are usually open 24/7. Not sure why anyone would use FedEx unless they get a volume benefit. I’m really not sure why anyone would use DHL in the U.S. unless maybe they’re shipping internationally.
I can’t believe that DHL is popular in most places, because in the U.S. you would be better off handing your package to a random crackhead on the street.
Some years ago, someone half the globe away announced to me he’d sent me a package that day, via DHL. It arrived at my address less than a week later. I’ve recently had packages delivered from across the country that arrived within days.
