Mail Frustrations

The United States Postal Service has announced that it will no longer send mail to New Zealand for an indefinite period of time. Other countries included in this suspension of service are Afghanistan, Guadeloupe, New Zealand, Tajikistan, Australia, Laos, Reunion (Bourbon), Timor-Leste, Bhutan, Libya, Saint Pierre and Miquelon (Miquelon), Turkmenistan, Brunei, Martinique, Samoa, Yemen, Cuba, Mayotte, South Sudan,French Guiana, Mongolia, and Syria. While this is disappointing from the perspective of missing future holiday and birthday cards, it is borderline terrifying from the perspective of not ever receiving future IRS notices and then finding out somewhere down the line that we’ve missed a notice or some other crucial communication that will be held against us. (If you’re a prospective expat, please do your tax research and talk to professionals who can give you specific advice for your financial situation. You’ve got to file every year no matter where you live and you may or may not end up paying the IRS based on your individual circumstances.) I seriously wonder what the implications are for dealing with American bureaucracies moving forward. I can only imagine the headaches we’re about to face because we’ll simply miss things. Someone else pointed out that some states won’t send ballots electronically - they must be sent via “snail mail.” How will this impact those citizens’ rights? It is scary to think about the election implications of this decision.

The next whammy is FedEx announcing that they will suspend FedEx Express international economy freight service originating in the U.S and heading to New Zealand on October 4. International Priority shipping is still available - and quite quick - but also quite expensive.

I’ve also become extremely dissatisfied with YouShop, NZPosts’ branch that allows for overseas purchasing and delivering back to New Zealand. In the “before times” I posted about my first YouShop experience. Since covid hit, however, prices have gone through the roof and delivery times are astronomical. My latest purchases (some summer clothing picked up during Memorial Day sales) have apparently spend the past 112 days sitting in a warehouse in Oregon and are hopefully going to depart on the 120 day sea journey sometime soon. By the time these clothing items actually arrive it will be winter again! I know there are other services that provide similar shipping options, but many of them seem to be living in a gray zone of following the GST rules. And that makes me nervous.

This one-two punch of bad mail news is really frustrating, especially with Christmas right around the corner. The only bright spot in getting packages from overseas is that DHL seems to have their act together. I’ve successfully received packages from the US in about a week using this delivery service. So if all else fails - DHL.