When I began RV'ing, I had my mail forwarded to a friend, to the tune of about $300 for two months. Crazy, right? That's when I purchased a box at my local UPS store. They were wonderful! For a mere $85 a year, they would hold my mail, sending it on to me wherever I was.
One day I came home after four months to find the store closed up tight. Out of Business. YIKES!! Where's my mail and my one year's advance payment? I was lucky enough to get some of my bank statements, but everything else disappeared.
Thus began the saga of the Post Office. I went down and rented the largest box they had for one year, to the tune of $300. Yes, I could use a mail service, but it would take days to get my mail when I'm home, let alone when I'm on the road.
It was all working okay when Amazon decided out of the blue to send everything via the Post Office. No more UPS option, which is what I always used. I had items sent to my P. O. Box, which was working okay for awhile.
All of sudden however, Amazon decided things like a popsicle mold and a ramp for Cooper cannot be shipped to a Post Office Box. Since I have a perfectly good house with a brand new mail box out front, I decided to try entering my address.
Nope ... it was all returned. Unable to deliver as addressed. I went to the Den of Frustration to find out why. They said no problem ... they could deliver to my house. I tried it again. Returned and returned twice over.
SEVEN packages later, I'm totally frustrated with Amazon because you can no longer easily get in contact with a human being and those they have don't speak English. Long story short, I've been to the post office three times, only to be told YES, we can deliver to your house if you have a mail box. I showed them a picture, just to be sure they knew I indeed had box out front.
Nothing ... more packages returned, and now I'm fighting with Amazon over credits and returns, and why can't you deliver a popsicle mold to a post office box???
Last trip .... the Supervisor wasn't happy to see me enter the building. He had not called me back like he promised, nor had he solved the situation. I told him I wasn't leaving until this was straightened out. I parked myself at the counter. He got the message.
Here's the thing ..... I had a mail forwarding from the UPS store. It expired after six months. I know this because I received envelopes with their yellow sticker stating such on the outside. The mail carrier however, states that the forwarding is on there forever. Therefore, anything that has my name on it will be returned if there is any address other than the post office box. Doesn't make sense to me at all.
The Supervisor went in the back while I played games on my phone. Might as well occupy myself, because I was NOT leaving. Upon his return, he showed me a sheet with a check by my name. If I cancel this forwarding (that expired four months ago), we can then deliver to your post office box AND to your house. CANCEL it I said!!
That's when the REAL reason happened to slip from his lips. Seems the postal carriers in the County are all contracted. They bid on their area based on the number of homes to deliver to. Since there was a forwarding on my old address, my home address didn't show up in her area. That means she would have to deliver to my house for free basically, because she didn't include that stop in her bid.
So all this mess was because she didn't want to make just one more stop on her route. That's our tax dollars at work. I was turning purple I was so mad and he realized his error instantly. Don't worry he said, I'll take care of this immediately so you can receive mail at both places.
Finally ... resolution! Or at least I HOPE it is resolved. Only time will tell. To make me feel even better, I fueled up my truck on the way home. The story behind our high prices of fuel (which I learned from a delivery man at the Elks) is that we are located at the end of the delivery lines drawn in the sand. We are furthest from the North distributor and furthest from the South distributor. The further away you are, the more they charge for delivery, so the higher the fuel cost. Does that make sense???
I drive fifteen miles to get this fuel for $3.75 while it is $4.39 at my local station.
Now that I've settled all my biggest problems, I'm back on track and back to packing. I could have left earlier, but the heat hitting the west this weekend is going to be terrible. I'm waiting a few days hoping to skate by the 116 degree sun. On the other hand, it's supposed to rain like crazy on my last day of driving. I'm saying lots of little prayers to the weather Gods.
Didn't I tell you to grab your mail person that does your mail route she's the one that sort your mail In the morning before she leaves
ReplyDeleteI know a lot of the driver are bid contract drivers to the route but not to the mailbox. interesting .
As for gas or diesel fuel if you check gas buddy you'll see that the prices change by ZIP Code as well
Most gas is driven by competition as well as financially demographics
The majority of the time you'll find lower gas prices in ghetto type areas of low income we are higher prices are usually and high class demographics
If you have a hiccup and sedan or Saudi Arabia or North Korea will drive Big ass commodity speculators to raise the price .
Oil producing countries sell at one price to a (pool of )speculator even before it goes on the ship and it bid to the refinery to produce that product,
Once the refinery produces the product it's usually put in the pipeline and ship to different states and then transported by truck to the individual gas station The price that you paid for today's gasoline was set months ago provided there was no hiccups.
Think of a gas station that sells gas at four dollars a gallon the gas station makes a profit of anywhere from $.05-.07cents pr, gallon certainly not a lot of money
Most gas stations don't make money per se on gasoline they make it on the junk they sell inside
If you really want to surpriseyourself go to a gas station and look for the tax tag,
it should tell you what the taxes are.that go to the state and the federal government and the county
Now multiply that by 10,000 that's how many gallons that are usually in an average underground storage tank
Now multiply that times three for regular gas midgrade gas and HiTest gas..
Now once you figured that out drive down the street on your way home and count gas stations and then keep adding those numbers for every gas station you pass ,,
At the gas tank integrated oil companies make about 7 cents per gallon. Meanwhile, the government extracts more than 48 cents, on average, per gallon. That's right: Uncle Sam takes nearly seven times more out of drivers' wallets via taxation than "Big Oil."
Remember who's your oil company and your government
If you want to quick read
https://www.forbes.com/2011/05/10/oil-company-earnings/
Sent from my iPad
During the 70s when they had a supposedly fuel crisis I was hauling fuel at the time out of the tank farms
ReplyDeleteThe refineries were calling it a fuel crisis.. every tank farm was topped to the brim on the East Coast we were putting fuel in storage tanks and gas stations that were not even open and gas stations were rationing gas when they had fuel tanks, so they made a profit.
One of my best friends was a first officer on a tanker coming from Saudi Arabia they were literally told to turn around and head back mid Atlantic steam for two days and turn around and come back,
So it was a delay of four days the reason for the delay was to increase the price of fuel by 2 penny per barrel think of 1 million barrels on a tanker he was one of four tanker ships that turned around.
That oil crisis was created (manipulated )by Oil commodity speculators $$$$
The stock market went up investors made money
I have no doubt that stuff goes on every day. But what can we do other than pay the price!!
DeleteThats sounds like your mail problems could very well be resolved, finally, cross my fingers for you too.
ReplyDeleteGet packed up and hit the road.... "On the road again" with Willie.
I sure hope so. On the road again!!!
DeleteThat's quite the tale, my goodness. No wonder you were so frustrated. Hopefully, NOW your mail will come through.
ReplyDeleteGood luck packing, and you'll soon be moving along. :)
Yup ... time to go from hot to hot!! LOL
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