#&@!#*!! USPS and Customer Service

[|Zach|]

Recent e-mail exchange between my friends and I.

Guys,

I realize that none of us send a whole lot of letter via regular mail these days, but an increase in the price of a stamp is scheduled for May 12th. This price increase is only $0.01, bringing the new total to $0.42 for a first-class letter, but it also marks the last opportunity to purchase Forever Stamps (at $0.41).

The USPS has printed an estimated 5 billion Forever Stamps to meet their "expected demand", and May 11th will be the last day you can purchase them.

http://www.usps.com/prices/

-Danny

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The moral of the story: For those of you who mail out (on average) 3 checks a month, get in your car and drive to the post office to get your forever stamps NOW! It’s a total savings of 36 cents per year! Also, please disregard the cost of the time you spent getting there and the gas you used.

This also goes to my aunt, who enjoys calling my mom to tell her that she saved 4 cents/gallon at XXXX gas station in Liberty, which is a good drive north and costs at least a gallon of gas just to get there…

-Cam

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Seriously, though. This isn’t a joke, Joel.

If I were you guys, I’d get on this fast. You might think it’s really funny now, but this reminds me of around 10-15 years ago. There were these things called the internets. Well, these internets came together to form this really big thing called ‘The Internet.’ A lot of people thought it’d get pretty crazy and actually save people money and at first it did. The problem was that people thought it would never get ‘too big.’ Unfortunately, the ‘proverbial’ bubble burst, and people lost millions of dollars because of their over-investing. Well, as it turns out, it hasn’t been that great for the economy or people in general. Just look how much people are spending nowadays. I mean, billions of dollars are spent on the internet?! If it didn’t exist, people wouldn’t have to shell out that much money!

I’m telling you, this may look really stupid, but as you know, history has a tendency to repeat itself. Get on this bandwagon NOW. Before you know it, the internet will be history and the crazy new thing will be parcel mail. Trust me, this industry isn’t going to crash like the internet. Hell, if the rising stamp prices are any indication, this thing is just getting started!

That being said, anyone want to carpool to the post office?

- Cam

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Ok, now that Cam has talked some sense into me I am ready to get on board. I am openly inviting all of you to invest in my new company. With all the money that we pool together, I will buy as many forever stamps as possible. I will store these stamps in a fire proof safe. Then in 20 to 30 years, I will sell these stamps for slightly less than their current price at that time. If history is to repeat itself, we should see the prices of stamps raise $.20 every 20 years*. So if we could only get $20,000 together we could buy 48,780 stamps. I will absorb the cost of maintenance on these stamps to keep them in like new condition. Then if history is on our side, the cost of a stamp in 2028 will be $.62. So in order to entice people to purchase our stamps, keeping in mind that at lease 2 of the stamps they buy will be used to ship the product, we will set our price $.05 less than the current price or $.57. That will net us a profit of $.16 per stamp. If we move all 48,780 units we will get a profit of $7804.80. This will give us a return on investment of 39%. But not so fast, this 20 year investment has a Compound Annual Growth Rate of only 1.6%**. In hind sight, you might want to just hold on to your money and invest it in something a little more lucrative.

-Joel

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pwn pwn pwn

-Chris