Rae Trees

Just wondering how other Countries compare to Australia with Christmas postage?

On Thursday I paid 0.55 cents for small cards (I only had one) 5x7 were $1.20 which added up to be quite expensive! but on a comparison to other places may not be so bad?

Would cost a small fortune to post A4 cards, and with so many crafters who make them I'm thinking maybe postage is cheaper overseas.

I did get great service though as the girl behind the counter stamped them all for me

Margaret McCartney

Our first class stamps are 46p and second class 36p. At the post office they have a metal guide where they measure the size of the envelope to determine the cost of the stamp. On this metal guide is a slot and if your letter does not pass through this slot easily then it will need the large stamp costing 75p.

I find that the amount of decoupage on a card can add to the cost of the postage, even if it is a small card. If it can't pass through the slot then it will need the 75p stamp.

Sometimes when making a card I will leave out some of the layers of decoupage so that postage is not too expensive.

Margaret

Rae Trees

Hi Margaret, I'll be leaving some decoupage off when posting from now on too as I noticed she weighed some of the cards.I think for Christmas I'll reduce the size from now on, just send the bigger ones for birthdays, even though the bigger ones look lovely!

Gillian Mahoney

Hi Rae. Your question started me remembering(which I've been doing a lot lately with all the talk of snow at Xmas).
When I left England,ALL letters that were un-sealed went at the same price - regardless of size or weight.The same was true on my arrival in Australia.Somewhere along the line the postal SERVICES went corporate & devised a way to charge more.I agree that it's costly & I hand deliver as many as I can.

Vicki Avcin

Yes I remember that ......didn't matter what size a card was it went for the one price.
Now it can only go if you put 'card only' on it. And I've found some PO's will weigh and use that 'slit' too and make you pay the extra.
So the only cards that get decoupage is ones that go in boxes or mailbags with a present in.

I went to print out a few cards today and quite annoyed......the transfer drum needs replacing as its putting lovely red lines on what I printed out......so this year its the $2 box of cards from Woolies that everyone is getting!! ($2 cos I brought them last year! )
So they'll just get the one size fits all stamp when I post them

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Margaret McCartney

Originally Posted by Rae Trees

Hi Margaret, I'll be leaving some decoupage off when posting from now on too as I noticed she weighed some of the cards.I think for Christmas I'll reduce the size from now on, just send the bigger ones for birthdays, even though the bigger ones look lovely!

Yes I will be doing that too Rae. I love the 8x8 cards too but they are too expensive to post.

Margaret
www.craftsuprint.com/margaret-mccartney

Diane Scotland

The way the postal service works here has changed so much in the last few years, when I worked at the Post Office any letter or package less than 60 grammes in weight would be ordinary 1st class, simple, but, as Margaret expalined it's also now about the length and thickness of your letters, it's all mad if you ask me, the try to slot your letter through this tiny slot and if it doesn't fit then you're charged more, but, the little slot isn't even as wide as a letter box, not by a long chalk!!! plus, and this is ridiculous, if I'm sending a tall DL card they try to fit it through the slot lengthways, why not turn it around !!?????? it would fit no trouble if they just turned the darned thing, but, Royal Mail do things the hard way !!!! I sent off 2 packages on the 1st of December, 1 down to Sue Maycock for wee Callum and 1 to an area just outside of Edinburgh, say about 30 miles away from me, the package for Callum got there the next day, the other took 8 days !!!!!! 8 days !!! ridiculous , but hey ho, it got there in the end, thank goodness as it was a package with my own cards which the person had ordered from me, think I'll jump on the bus and deliver them myself next time haha TC Diane xx

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Why not have a look at my finished CuP cards here..... http://www.craftsuprint.com/diane-scotland/

Joan Prince

I ordered a parcel of things from UK on the 11 November and they have still not arrived. Have contacted the company and they have agreed to send them again to an address in UK for me to collect. I just hope they arrive before Christmas so I can pick them up.

I was told that anything being posted to Spain and France was being held up for up to 4 weeks. It must be due to the weather because our ferry to UK has been cancelled too.

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http://www.craftybob.com/shop/jp-cards.html

Gwyneth George

Any of you seen the Royal Mail's "Mail Made Easy" document? You can see it - here. Don't know how anything that long is making anything "easy". You have to scroll down pages before you get to something useful like "How to work out your UK postage price". Anybody wanting to know actual postage costs can have a look at the pricing scale - here. Keeping a card less than an A5 in size in both directions, less deep than 5mm so that it slips through the slot, and less heavy than 100gms, is a challenge at times, but if it's more it's up to a large letter size with the few extra pence postage on each one. OK for special birthday cards. Disaster if posting a lot of Christmas cards.

GG

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Rae Trees

It was a bit of a disaster for me Gwyneth, cost me heaps as all my friends and family live away...my fault though, I could have down sized the sheets. I'll certainly do it differently next year.