ON MAY 6 I posted an envelope to the United States via air mail at the Rendezvous post office. The envelope was weighed and a $1.80 stamp attached accordingly.
[On] May 15 I received a notice from the Barbados Postal Service notifying that an additional $1 stamp was required . . . . whaaaatt??
Breathing fire, I immediately went to the Rendezvous post office. The postmaster checked the notice, listened to my rant in silence and offered to send the $1 stamp to the General Post Office in Bridgetown to be attached to the letter. The offer was declined and I proceeded to Bridgetown to attach the stamp myself.
A very helpful lady quickly located the envelope and immediately said that she couldn’t understand why the envelope had been withheld for additional postage as the envelope appeared rather light (a normal, but not the smallest available envelope containing a single letter-size page).
When the envelope was weighed it came in at 11 grammes, apparently one gramme more than the weight requiring the minimum air mail rate of $1.80. This nice and helpful lady said that it was not the policy of the post office to make a higher charge for a single gramme.
The end result was that she refused to allow the additional stamp to be attached to the envelope, even after I protested. She said she would put the envelope in the mail bag herself.
So, my letter which had been posted in good time to meet a deadline, has been delayed by nine days and will miss the deadline. The additional stamp has not been attached and should not have been required.
The post office is paying an employee to weigh letters which should not be weighed. It is probably this same bright spark who unnecessarily held up the letter for nine days. And nine days for a notice to be transmitted from Bridgetown three miles up the road?
And we hope to compete successfully for international business?
– Rodney Jones,
CEO, Pencil Lattice Inc.
