US to withdraw from Postal Treaty

koincollect

Will this make shipping coins from outside of the US more expensive? I think this might be aimed at China and might make my phone charging cable $0.99 with shipping more expensive, but I am worried more about the coins I buy from outside of the country. I know it costs me $35 to register mail something to the UK but it costs them only £6-8 or so to do the same shipping to the US. I hope they don't increase it to £25-30 or so...that will suddenly stop me buying a lot of relatively cheaper coins.

https://bbc.com/news/business-45894346

Kkathyl

Not sure what extra costs or saving it will have to me but I am all for changing treaties and other thing that had been written so long ago.

ShadyDave

I am also for trashing the postal treaty. It will definitely raise the shipping rates from garbage countries like China. Maybe it will help get rid of Chinese eBay sellers or at least discourage people who peddle counterfeit coins...we can only hope.

This treaty was never put forth and voted on by the US legislature, so it deserves to be overhauled and now is a perfect time to use this as further leverage against China. The US is taken advantage of when we don't demand payment from foreign countries for delivering THEIR products the last leg of the journey...which ironically is the most costly portion of a packages trip.

Here is a good podcast on NPR discussing the postal treaty in question and how it is implemented and why we have it:

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/episode-857-the-postal-illuminati

SaorAlba

The one thing I know from getting mail from the UK is that it is cheaper for recorded(cannot send registered to the USA) But once it hits the US tracking drops off and they treat it like regular mail. That is a bit disconcerting when you have an $8K gold coin coming in the mail like I did a few years ago but it showed up fine.

A couple of weeks ago I received a registered parcel from Kyiv, Ukraine(I do business there, and have lived there) that was trackable until it got to US customs in NY and then dropped off the face of the earth until it showed up in my PO box.

It may make shipping to the US more expensive, but I hope the PO ups the ante and starts tracking registereds from overseas like they are supposed to under the UPU regulations.

koincollect

Thanks @ShadyDave for the interesting podcast. @SaorAlba the tracking dropping off once it hits the destination country depends on the treaty being done by the country. I had a first hand experience of this when a rather expensive parcel was "lost" in the UAE. The buyer (read conman) had multiple lower value transaction with me on eBay and then bought a few expensive coins which I shipped registered mail as usual. He claimed it was never received and had to refund his money. I later heard from a couple of other folks that he had pulled the same trick on them. Since then I only ship registered mail to countries which have an agreement with the US for full tracking. This list is available at the USPS site.

JBK

Interesting news. Thx for posting.

I bought a silver dollar sized medal on Ebay. It was being shipped from China and the total cost was 75 cents, for the token and postage.

Such deals are great for the buyer but are hardly fair to the post office or retailers here.

numismagram

Domestic delivery of international packages has definitely slowed a bit of late. For example, I have a registered package from Germany that sat in NYC for four days after clearing customs, and has not been scanned or updated since it finally departed there. That was 12 days ago. The USPS had been better about getting things scanned and delivered within a few days after clearing customs, but that's certainly not the case right now.

messydesk

"Registered mail" does not mean the same thing in every country. For some, it's simply like certified or signature confirmation. Registered mail from outside the US does not travel with registered mail inside the US, and the post office doesn't put it in their registered mail holding locker.

SaorAlba

@numismagram said:
Domestic delivery of international packages has definitely slowed a bit of late. For example, I have a registered package from Germany that sat in NYC for four days after clearing customs, and has not been scanned or updated since it finally departed there. That was 12 days ago. The USPS had been better about getting things scanned and delivered within a few days after clearing customs, but that's certainly not the case right now.

I'd been getting packages from Finland and Netherlands in two days, in contrast the record is just over 6 weeks on a Scottish banknote coming in from Aberdeen Scotland.

Timbuk3

Interesting information, thanks for the heads-up !!!