Snail Mail in your country Everyday life and customs

Royal Mail in the UK is struggling with internal deliveries and international mail. What is happening in your country?

Here in the UK we have a "universal service obligation" on Royal Mail, in exchange for a monopoly on letters they have to charge the same price for anywhere in the UK. A letter up to 100g in the UK costs 65p 2nd Class (2-3 days delivery) or 85p 1st Class (next day?). International post used to be £1.45 within Europe and £1.70 for the rest of the world for a 20g letter. Now that Brexit has finally arrived it if £1.70 anywhere for a 20g letter.

A new innovation is the parcel box which will accept small parcels up to 45cm x 35cm x 16cm and 2kg. You purchase the postage online, print your label and go to a parcel box. (Our nearest is 125 miles away) It is a good idea as people are wary of queing at post offices now, (assuming they have not shut down). Delivered 2nd class you can post 2kg for £3.20 if it fits the small parcel dimensions.

Our mail was generally working quite well until the Trump administration took steps to hobble it before the 2020 election in order to prevent some ballots from reaching voters early enough and/or delay ballots from being returned early enough to be counted in the general election. Vote by mail is generally used more by democrats than republicans so reducing the effectiveness of voting by mail favors republicans. Other types of mail has also been reported as being slowed and delayed as a result. It's likely that our Congress will do some investigations of what happened within the postal service.

I haven't sent any snail mail in a long time and my wife takes care of most of our bill payments so I'm not sure what postage fees are these days.