Recently, the price of postage in the US has gone up from $0.33 to $0.34, much to the chagrin of all of us who bought loads of 33 cent stamps. (Since I first wrote this writeup, the rate has again gone up to 37 cents). Yeah, it's a pain in the ass to go out and buy 1 cent stamps or 3 cent stamps to make up the difference, and a slightly smaller pain in the ass to stick both stamps on the envelope, but in the grand scheme of things, the minor inconvenience is well worth it.

No, I don't work for the USPS. But think about it. All you have to do is pay 37 cents, slap one or two stamps on an envelope, and put it in your mailbox. And every day except Sunday, you can rest assured that someone will come by to pick it up, and take it anywhere. Sure, it may take a while to get to its destination if it's not local, but it will get there. And that same person will even put any mail for you into your mailbox. It's like getting a present every day (assuming it isn't junk mail), and it doesn't even cost anything.

As far as I know, the USPS has never lost any of my mail. In fact, my girlfriend was once nice enough to send away for some return address labels for me, but because the stamp had been accidentally defaced, it wasn't valid postage. Unfortunately, she hadn't put a return address on the envelope. A few weeks later, I got an envelope from the US Mail Recovery Center. Rather than simply throw away the unmailable envelope, someone took the time to open it up and see what could be done. Sure enough, my name and address were on the form for the labels, so they took it, put it in a new envelope and mailed it to me. At no charge.

All this for 37 cents? Now that's service.