I just won a copy of the “Official Monogram Painting Guide to German Aircraft 1935-1945” off Ebay…fantastic price…a mint copy…can’t wait!!!
But…
The guy who sold it posted it Priority Delivery with the USPS…he did this far quicker than I would have expected (thanks Martin!)…great communication and VERY quick service…excellent customer service.
BUT…
The USPS accepted the book…posted in California…it was cleared through a mail sorting centre…in BETHPAGE,NEW YORK!!!
Now…this wouldn’t seem so odd…until you consider the addressed final destination…IN OREGON!!!
There’s a mail sorting centre in Portland…a LITTLE closer to the final destination than New York. At the risk of sounding politically incorrect (WHO CARES!!!)…to the USPS, I say…“Clearly, you’re retarded”.
My brain hurts. No wonder people prefer UPS or FedEx.
It’s not just the USPS. I live in Louisville which is the international hub for UPS. Yet I’ve tracked orders sent via air that have arrived in Louisville by plane, then trucked to Lexington (80 miles away) only to be put back on a truck and driven back to Louisville for final sorting and delivery. My guess is that international sorting occurs in Louisville and that regional sorting is carried out in Lexington. It must just make fiscal sense to segregate these tasks this way even though it seems wasteful to someone living in my area. Perhaps the USPS is set up in similar manner.
LMAO!!! Well, at least I got the book for a great price…I saw one on Amazon for $800, and on another site for $500…then there were the UK sites that had them for 350 pounds sterling…I only paid $125…a bargain.
It just seems a little wasteful to send the thing clear across the country…TWICE…and then have the thing finally end up in a state that BORDERS the state where it was originally sent from. Sounds like whoever decided details on issues such as regional and national sorting procedures simply hasn’t got a clue.
AND…shock-horror…USPS postal cost increases have been announced…color me…surprised…not.
I’ve had problems with the USPS ever since moving here to middle TN four years ago. Invariably they would deliver packages too big to fit in the mail box to the double car garage door on the side of the house instead of the front door. (The distance from the street to the garage door is greater than to the front door). On more than one occasion neither the wife nor myself would check the garage door when we went out the front door to pick up the mail and packages were either run over when one of us backed out of the garage or in one instance, the door crushed a book the wife had ordered for my birthday. On one occasion the wife backed over an out of production kit I had been looking for almost six months. The package was naturally crushed and I don’t think there was a single spru of the kit what wasn’t totalled. Needless to say I was not a happy camper and the length of time involved and frustration in 1) filing a claim with the USPS and 2) locating another kit was painful. I phoned the post master general in charge of the post office responsible for my area, but with negative results. I finally put up a large sign on the garage door - “DO NOT LEAVE PACKAGES HERE. DELIVER TO THE FRONT DOOR” - and the next day Mr. USPS left a package at the garage door, directly beneath the sign. I blew and drafted a formal letter to the regional Post Master General. I basically phrased it with something to the affect that I had a mystery as to how I received any mail at all, that the carriers could not read. So far for the past six months nothing has been left at the garage door, although on several occasions the carrier will attempt to cram a package into the mail box after placing the magazines and other mail in and I end up with ripped and crumpled mail; on two occasions this included the monthly issue of FSM. In all honesty, Mr. UPS also left packages at the garage door (I said he and Mr. USPS were related), but after I put up the sign he stopped. Mr. FedEx has never left any packages at the garage door, but delivered them to the front door and rang the door bell, something Mr. USPS has never done. I figure FedEx hires from the higher end of the gene pool.
In my 30+ years experience with the Federal Gov’t I am firmly convinced if you really want to screw up an operation or program, put the government in charge of it.
Hell, if I mail a letter from my place to an address across town, it first goes to the local branch Post Office, then into a truck that takes it to the Central P.O. across town, then onto a truck to Des Moines… Then it gets sorted, put back onto ANOTHER truck to get sent back to Ames central P.O., and gets to the mail carrier there… It travels roughly 80 miles to make the actual, across-town-trip of about 3 miles…
Don’t trust the USPS tracking system, it is so flawed and they wonder why they are losing money. Their tracking software has glitches, hiccups and fatal flaws. A letter mail from my house to a business across town that had to go registered showed that it had traveled to Arkansas first. Which btw was a complete lie because it delivered the next day. In fact it never left the local postal facility’s control. The system they use is geographically challenged just are many of the younger postal employees.
In years past you could ask a cop or a postman where an address was, today the postmen don’t know anything other than the street they are delivering to or they live on.
Another possibility which happens frequently with an automated sorting system is packages, parcels and letters stick to another and piggy backs to where the item it was stuck to is sent. Our post office though usually pretty good, has a couple staff that do not like to hand handle mail. In fact the tell me that in the near future it will be an add on fee.
What a way to run a business. Lower the quality of the service and raise prices. We keep getting a carrier with a reading disability because he can’t seem to deliver to right addresses. The USPS might not need to raise prices if they would stop over paying the staff. Just check out what they pay their people from top to bottom and you will find exccessive spending and total innefficiency. The precursor to Obamacare and Hillary medicine. We might as well start buying burial policies at birth.
I ordered some more books from Kalmbach 2 weeks ago so they got my order ok ( good job Kalmbach shipping guys) heres where the fun starts. left Milwaukee went to some place in Pennsyvania I for got where then to Cincy Ohio . Then to Indy, Ind. then here total 5 days. I’m Newmen from post I’m here to foul up your mail[snWcm]
As opposed to what we already have, which is the most expensive and inefficient health care delivery system in the industrialized world? It already is run in this manner, and Obamacare changes exactly nothing about that.
BTW the USPS is an independent agency of the U.S. government, and has not been funded directly with tax dollars since the early 80’s other than minor subsidies for disabled and overseas voters, although it currently borrows money from the treasury to pay its deficit. And no, I don’t work for them.
red alert claxon WARNING WARNING thread drift bound for a thread lock!!!red alert claxon
C’mon guys, I know it started with a joke about healthcare, but now we are getting into that dark territory that is gonna get this thread “kilt deder dan ded”
As for the post office…I ain’t saying NOTHING! I hear they all have guns and go crazy once in a while. [:D]
I own a copy purchased new from Monogram Publications in the late 1980s.
Very Nice.
Publication is in a 3 ring binder format and has aircraft photos- some in WWII color- plus paint chips for**:** Interior / exterior of German Military, experimental, export, light aircraft, rocket interceptors,protective paint coatings as well as suggestions regarding mixing colors to match scale ( haze effect ) as well as camoflage pattern 4 views for the most common German aircaft but for some reason not the ME-110 and color profile paintings for some fighters.
OTOH… Modern publications cover much of the 3 view camoflage patterns and photos are available on the internet.
Primary benefit is the very extensive paint chip archive.
Sample paint chips are 5 cm square-much larger than US Gov’t FS samples.
I like the book and it was the most detailed publication on German aircraft colors at the time of printing- but paying the prices [:'(] I’ve seen mentioned in this thread? ----
Someone must offer WWII German paint samples in a modern publication… [:(]