Posting stuff abroad

MooseJam

If I post a parcel to the USA for example why do the US Postal service deliver it, they didn't get any money, an Post did, so how does it work, is it just a gentlemans agreement, i'll deliver your stuff if you deliver mine ?

Ponster

Actually, yes it is.


http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_381.html

Cheap, efficient international mail was one of the great achievements of the Victorian era. Previously, trying to get a letter delivered overseas had been an accounting nightmare. In calculating postage, hapless users had to figure in the local rate in their home country, the rate paid for ship transport ("sea postage"), the rate paid to each country that handled the letter enroute ("transit fees"), and finally the domestic postage in the destination country.

Postage could vary widely depending on the route by which you sent a letter--from five cents to $1.02 per half ounce from the U.S. to Australia, for instance. Detailed accounts had to be kept for each mail shipment so that everybody who got his mitts on it in transit would be sure to get his proper share. We had separate postal treaties with every country, and everybody figured things differently--by the ounce, by the gram, by the German "loth," by the sheet. Predictably, the mail was slow and the rates were exorbitant.

Fed up with this, the U.S. called for an international postal congress, which was held in 1863. This led to the creation of the Universal Postal Union, which established a few straightforward principles: (1) there should be a more or less uniform flat rate to mail a letter anywhere in the world; (2) postal authorities should give equal treatment to foreign and domestic mail; and (3) each country should keep all the money it collected for international postage.

MooseJam

interesting stuff, one less thing for me to wonder about, thx

Ponster

Yep. Sry for the 'non-AH type thread'