I have family in Australia, based all around Adelaide, and we still do small, oddball Xmas gifts. Modest, fairly trivial things such as Christmas Crackers (American readers, check the web to see what you are missing!) and in return I sent a Yosemite images DVD and, wait for it, Bear Poop (it’s a candy, actually) and an Alessi bottle opener (aren’t you glad you are NOT on my gift list?). The whole entourage was carefully packed and weighed in at under 2 pounds.
I head off to my local UPS store. The cost to ship, a little under $120!!!! I double checked, yup the price was ‘correct’. I declined. The parcel went US Mail for about $28.
It got me thinking though. I wondered how much a first class ticket is, surely it’s not as much (per pound) as that? So I checked, and on American Airlines it cost $12,395 and odd cents. So assuming a 200lb person, that’s $62 per pound roughly. My (slightly under) 2lb package was $120. So with a bit of rounding here and there, I conclude that UPS were intending to ship my package in first class.
Now I’ll bet you want to be on my Xmas list when I ship my packages.