Apparently the U.S. Post Office has a plan to bring themselves back to prosperity one non-returnable roll of 17-cent stamps at a time!

Okay, here’s the deal.  Weekly I mail a large envelope.  It always requires over $1.00 in postage.  So a couple weeks ago I was almost out of the 17-cent stamps that could be combined with 44-cent stamps to make the different combinations of postage, so in a moment of “plan ahead” verve, I used the orange envelope the mail carriers supply to order stamps and ordered a roll of one hundred 17-cent stamps.

A few days later, I heard on the news that the first class postage was staying the same, but the price of any larger amount of postage needed was going to be increased.  So the 17-cent stamps would be replaced now by a 20-cent stamp.

Rats.  I now had one hundred stamps that didn’t work without a 3-cent stamp being added.

So I put the roll back in the mail box with three dollars and asked the mail carrier to exchange them for 20-cent’ers.  Today I got her answer — the best she could do was that she enclosed 100 3-cent stamps for my three dollars to go with the 17-cent stamps.

It was hard for me to believe that I was going to have to use allllll those 17-cent stamps, so I went to the post office to see if they could help.  The man at the desk couldn’t help.  I would have to talk to the supervisor.  I just called the supervisor.  No, they never exchange stamps.  “The board of health won’t let them.”

So now on the large envelopes I mail with lots of stamps on them, there will be even more stamps.

Maybe it’s just me, but I  feel like this just isn’t very good customer service.

Oh well.  I know the U.S. Post Office is in the red so I guess if making me keep a large number of odd postage stamps helps them, then so be it.

But I’ve learned my lesson.  “Buyer beware.”  From now on, I will limit myself to just one book of any denomination at a time.