Talk about fast action

Yesterday I took a load of boxes and packages from my week-long eBay sale to the Post office for shipment.

When I first moved here, the Bristow post office was down the road and just across the railroad tracks in a small, I mean teeny, tiny, small building that was probably a single car garage in another incarnation. It was little more than a single room with a small entry foyer for the counter. I guess when the built it that was all they needed. The Post Mistress told me that it was the smallest post office in Northern Virginia, and the next-to-the-smallest in Virginia. It was kind of cute in a way, it it was almost fun going there. BTW the carrier folks sorted the mail in an annex down the road, where they had more room.

Then they started building in this area and they needed a bigger building so the PO bought a piece of land (naturally it was further from my home than the old building) and built a new larger facility. That was bout five years ago. Well, over the years, the local population has just kept on growing, and they had to add more and more carriers. At the end of 2006 they ran out of space again and moved the carriers (and the mail sorting facility) to a new, and even larger annex in nearby Gainesville, which is about six miles from me, in the opposite direction from the Bristow facility.

All this is by way of lead in to my trip to the PO yesterday. I got there about 9:15 and the parking lot, which was usually packed with customer and carrier cars and delivery trucks, was empty. My first thought was maybe it was a holiday I forgot about. But no, the PO was open with just the counter personnel there and a few stray customers, and of course now me, my car and my pile of packages.

Last week, I purchased two bookcases for my living room, to give me some place to put my speakers (bookshelf speakers need a bookcase, right?). They were supposed to be delivered yesterday, but unlike most deliveries, that was all I knew, sometime yesterday probably between 8:00 AM and 5:00 PM. I was able to get out to the post office and back by 9:00 so I was pretty sure I didn't miss the delivery (because last time they called me before they came)

So I waited, and waited, but no delivery. Finally at 4:45 PM I called to find out was was happening. They said they would look into it and get back to me. The delivery truck rolled up to my door at 6:45 PM, and the staore called back at 8:00 PM to ask if the delivery had been made.

This morning I was back shipping off more packages. When I got home I continued yesterday's project which was to compose text for a couple of listings on Craig's list. As I was working on the listing for the Rosetta Stone software, I decided to check with Amazon to see what they were listing their copies for. Obviously they had no such restrictions on listing this kind of product because they had several for sale, new and used.

Amazon is price for this kind of thing, their sales commission is way higher than eBay's, I mean way, way, higher. But I figured why not give them a shot. They allow you to list for 8 days, and you don't pay if you don't sell. So I listed my copy with a rather high price (compared to what the other used versions sold for).

Three hours later I received an email from Amazon that the package had sold and payment had been credited to my account. Wow!!! Talk about fast service.