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 explained the flag thing to my German friend and they thought it was brilliant. I always took it for granted.
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).
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, it’s kind of weird that this is one of the things the US got right compared to most other countries. If you’re already sending a guy to every house in town, why not pick up their mail while you’re at it.
But you need to wrap the letter or parcel and pay for postage anyway, so unless you’re regularly sending things it’s still easier just to go to a post office.
And that means the postie has to check every single house even if they don’t have any mail which slows things down a lot.
In the US we have flags. You don’t have to check the box. Just look for a flag when passing
Mailboxes are locked over here, that’s pretty much it. Nobody but you can take anything out of your mailbox:
there’s locked mail boxes here. like at apartments with a shared lobby. the owner just gets a key.
This, and the outgoing box is locked too. Anyone can put mail in, only the postie can take it out
Don’t they? I live in the US and I remember putting mail in the mailbox for the mail carrier to pickup.
They said Germany
The original article by the NYTimes:
The Birth of Cheap Communication (and Junk Mail) - By Randall Stross
