Goodbye Post Office, Hello www.stamps.com!

My ridiculous postman stories are for a totally other post but after finding www.stamps.com I just had to talk about why I will never go to the post office unless it's humanly impossible for me to ship something through www.stamps.com.  Even if I have to pay like $5 more for shipment.

Ann Marie's USPS, now open for business!

Why Am I So Against Going to the Post Office?
To summarize, I disrespect the post office and their inability to adapt.  It's like the boyfriend that you had and realized you didn't respect him (for whatever reason) and then it just needed to end.  Right there and then.  The post office is that person for me.  I've been burned too many times and it's too late for me and the USPS storefront to ever "make it work" again.

While I try to be sympathetic that there are deals out there between them, FedEx, and UPS, they travel into rural areas and they have rates that they have to stay below mandated by the government, there has to be a way for them to figure out how to make the experience less painful and increase their customer base!  Heck they owe it to all of us that pay taxes!  In some way or another we are all paying for their $10+ billion deficit that they will probably see this year!
 
Now onto their super convenient and customer friendly hours.  When my grandmother was a postmaster (a wonderful one at that) it made sense that in our small town that it was only open from 8:30-5:00 PM.  But it's 2011 people.  With locations that were picked out decades ago, lack luster service, and totally unreasonable hours for 90% of the US population, how can a place that is supposed to be service oriented have hours from 8:30-5:00 PM?  It's ridiculous to think that it's even reasonable for their business model to compete in the real world like this!  While I know that they had to make a lot of cutbacks, wouldn't you think that instead of cutting Saturday delivery they could have moved some hours and opened at 7:00, closed mid-day on the check out counter if they had to, and then close at 6:00 like anywhere else that deals with direct consumers?

While I don't know exactly why they haven't capitalized on this extremely obvious solution for making more revenue I can take one guess at it: union.  Enough said.

The Good News?  I Don't Have to Go In There Ever Again!
Now back onto stamps.com!  I LOVE it!  Here's how it works:

1. Take out your cooking scale (or they will send you one for free)
2. Get your package or envelope ready
3. Set up an account with a credit card on www.stamps.com
4. Put some money into your account ($25 is what I did) 
5. Put in the dimension, weight, address (even easier if you have the flat rate boxes or envelopes - which are free at the post office, probably your office, or you can get them sent to your house for free)
6. Print off label
7. Tape on your shipment
8. Stick on your doorstep to be picked up by USPS

Done.  How I didn't find this sooner is beyond me and I hope that all of you believe me when I say that you can now have the hours back that you have wasted on standing in line at USPS on a Saturday just to have them be mean to you!!