RE: The Old Dog Challenges: The Modern US Postal Service Vs. The Pony Express!
What The ***
Pffff
Amazing
In 15 days you could have bicycled the distance, that is less than 100 miles a day, very double. I never experienced this. In the Netherlands a normal package is send overnight, before 18hrs collected, is delivered within 24hrs. Ok NL is small, but still, the process is similar. Our fast delivery from our Dutch Amazon (Bol.com) is order before noon and get it delivred before 16hrs. Bol.com use a single logistical centre in NL, so they take maximum 4 hours for order picking and shipping and all other logistics involved. Last summer I had a package send through airmail from Taiwan and one from Hong Kong, both send on Friday their time, and both arrived Monday morning my time at home. Even packages send with super normal mail from the inlands of Laos took not more than 3 weeks to arrive at home, euh, in this case it could also be 6 weeks to be honest, but still we are talking about a country with no real logistics in place ever :)
I guess to be fair I'd have to send 10 packages and test the results for an average. Maybe it was an anomaly but in my experience with sending things to North America they are almost as likely not to arrive at all!
Hmmm interesting! you guys have all these procedures for whatever (goods or people) not to be allowed to enter :) recently when I flew to Florida, I got a 3rd degree interview just before the official boarding gate at Amsterdam airport (standard procedure they told me for flights to the USA) and luckily I passed so I could continue to the real boarding adventure. Interestingly, I didn't had to go through customs at all when I landed in Boston and proceeded to my connecting flight to Florida. Some kind of flaw in the process.