[Boatanchors] CQ Magazines

[Glen Zook]

I have to type it in each time.  You may disagree with the need to make someone aware that the Post Office, in their archaic regulations, will not accept even 100-year old magazines at the media rate because of advertising.  However, especially when someone sets a total price for the transaction, receives payment, and then goes to the Post Office to mail the magazines, often just the cost of mailing can be substantially more than what was paid for the magazines and postage.

Although there are postal clerks who do not adhere to the regulations, they are supposed to actually open the package and confirm that the items do conform to what is allowed and what is not allowed.  If, somewhere along the line, the package is inspected (and this definitely happens with media mail), either the additional postage is added as "postage due" to the person receiving the item or the package is returned to sender (more likely) and the sender has to option to add the additional postage or just return what was paid and just "eat" the postage.  One is taking a chance when sending magazines at the media mail rate and the odds are against getting away with doing so.

One cannot expect everyone else to know what is in the regulations and, quite often, the person offering to use media mail for magazines has not participated in the forum(s) before the subject has come up in the past.  Other participants have forgotten what the regulations are for media mail.

Frankly, I am trying to help others from getting "stung" like I was when I accepted a nominal amount for quite a few magazines (Popular Electronics Magazines) including delivery using media mail.  Then, when I took the magazines to the post office, the clerk asked me what was in the package and I was truthful in telling that the contents was magazines.  He said that he would have had to open the package to see what was contained if I had not admitted that there were magazines.  The total postage was almost 3-times what I had been paid for the magazines plus what I had thought the postage would be.  However, I had set the price and someone had paid that price.  The fact that I had not verified what items are allowed to be sent using media mail was my fault and I could not, in good conscience, go back to the person, who had purchased the magazines, and demand additional money to cover what was my mistake!

 Glen, K9STH 
Website: http://k9sth.net

      From: Bry Carling <AF4K at hotmail.com>
 To: "boatanchors at mailman.qth.net" <boatanchors at mailman.qth.net> 
 Sent: Saturday, July 28, 2018 8:06 PM
 Subject: Re: [Boatanchors] CQ Magazines
   
Glen - is this e-mail something that you re-run word for word every 4 or 5 years on this list?


Do you just copy and paste it?