Technological Revenge 4

Banks, restrooms and post offices, OH MY!

Again lead by that bastion of individual freedom of thought and action, The United States of America, we now have unbelievable roadblocks to shipping parcels abroad.  Not that long ago, mailing a package overseas was not all that different from mailing a parcel domestically, apart from the cost.  Given my perpetually busy life, it generally followed a pattern.  The box would be filled and sealed.  The address written on the box itself or on a blank label.  Typically, it would be ready to go for quite some time before my “schedule” would allow me to take it to the post office to mail it.  Often, I would chance upon other things I would like to send causing me to reopen the  box and place these inside and reseal it.  Once I could finally arrange things so that I could take the parcel to the post office, I could have them weigh it and tell me the prices of the various shipping methods.  I would also have to fill out the little green customs label detailing what was in the box, origin and value.

Close up of informational flyer from Japan Post.

All that is now gone.  Gone are handwritten addresses.  Not allowed for US bound packages and in theory to all others.  Before going to the post office, you first must sign up online to an online postal service account.  To do so, you must provide your address, phone number, email address and create a password for the account.  Once that is finished, you must wait for your application to be processed after which a confirmation email with the link to start using your account will be sent.

Once the email is received, you have a certain time period before the link is no longer valid.  Clicking on the link brings you to the PO website and you log in.  Despite it being your account that you logged into with a password. You have to enter your address for each label you wish to print.  Before printing the label, you must enter the date you will bring the package to the post office but it must be within 5 days past the date the label is printed.  The contents must also be entered, along with their country of origin and value.  When entering item information you are notified that your online electronic shipping history is being kept.   You must choose the shipping method without the assistance of a postal scale, unless you happen to have one, and an easily accessible rate chart for the various services.  Will I lose all the data I input if I search through the various service information pages to find the rates?  I had to choose based solely upon my outdated knowledge of rates and time from the prepanic days when I often shopped for friends abroad.

Once the label printed, you can not add anything to the box.

The label prints out to 3, A4 sized pieces of paper.  The actual label is a bit smaller than A4 and can be folded or cut to fit the clear plastic shipping sleeve that will be affixed to the parcel.  Another page is the customs form.  It is up to the shipper to research the rules for each county they wish to ship to to see how many of these custom invoices they must include and how.  The PO no longer provides such information.  It takes a minimum of one full A4 sized sheet of paper.  It is folded to fit inside the sleeve, behind the shipping label.  The third sheet has miniature copies of the above, one of which must be cut cut by hand scissors by the postal clerk and kept by the PO.   OH!  After falling in all the data fields I found that I can not print the labels from my iPad.  Had to crank up the computer and redo it all over again. Hey, wasn’t the purpose of computers to be to reduce paper use? Then why do know need to print out the pages of computer generated forms for each package I mail. So much for that “paperless society” they used to sell this to us.

After hours spent setting up my online postal account and printing labels for four packages (Japanese websites use two different font sizes and how to select between these change with various os, app and website updates) I was finally ready to go to the PO, which I scheduled for the next day.

Heading out the door I see something I had intended to send but as it was not included in the shipping label, I could throw it in, in the last minute.

Although the PO was not all that crowded, it took a tortuous amount of time to mail my packages.  One package was too small…..for air mail.   It being smaller than the huge shipping label we now must use, I expected they still had the reenforced envelopes for such occasions.  Nope.  They were afraid the box would get lost.  I had to buy a larger box to put it in.

None of the surfaces of any of the boxes I was sending was big enough for the large shipping document sleeve, requiring that they be folded around a corner of the package they were affixed to.  All this accomplished, the postal clerk tells me I have to sign the address label and the customs form.  The customs form also needs to be dated.  I had to step out of the line a 3rd time.  I could not easily get the documents out of the sleeves as I had already sealed them.  I had to pull the seal apart and the shipping sleeves partially away from the boxes.  After signing, I reaffixed the sleeves and resealed them only to witness the clerk again unseal and partially remove them again to make some notations and stamp various things on them.  I hope the glue on the back of the sleeves and on their seals holds for the entire trip.  After all that, I was hit with ¥17,000 in postage.  I am certain I could have shipped them for less if I could have chosen the shipping methods after weighing and consulting with the postal clerk.

While it is true that I now know that the paperwork must be signed and I will not seal the sleeves (I am obliged to affix the sleeve with the documents inside, postal clerks won’t do it now.  They do not want the liability if they come off in transit.) it is still a headache.  We now have to basically make a reservation at the post office to send packages abroad and have an online record of what we send abroad and to whom we are sending it and not know how much it will cost until after the PO has our packages and rings us out.  This is in addition to a computer and printer to register and print the label or an idiot phone.  If you do not have a computer, who doesn’t, and a printer, I know many who do not, you can get a QR code sent to you.  This will display on an idiot phone’s screen and allow you to print the label at the PO, and receive whatever data they wish to upload to your phone via the QR Code.  You’ll certainly be getting marketing emails from the postal service.  The PO in Japan offers service besides postage.  They have a savings bank and offer insurance and perhaps other services.

I do not know what is currently required to ship packages from the States, but I do know that shipping and handling charges suddenly shot up a few years ago.  The time it took for packages to reach me also increased.  I also know that my mother will no longer send packages of anything for any reason.  She says it has become too much of a hassle and too expensive.  She just sends money. However, with all the reporting regimes and FinTech working to stop international transfers of any amount of money, that too has become problematic.  None of this is normal.  None of it helps the consumer, the account holders, the shippers, the individual.

The current situation, not possible future, in the here and now, all electronic transactions are monitored, recorded and shared and in Japan, many cash transactions are as well.  All international parcel post is recorded, stored and shared.  In certain shopping areas in Japan, the public restrooms are unusable unless you first make a qualified purchase from a qualified merchant which allows them to share the QR code necessary to access the restrooms.  Participation in group events is rationed through the use of now required QR codes sent out by city government to log in and log out of events.  While not universal yet, it will be as they keep expanding the applications of tech to our detriment, unless we stop it.  The Environmental, Social Justice and Governance (ESG) scoring system already in use worldwide for corporations and being set up for individuals, and the soon to come online Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) will shut the gate of our digital cell and bar the non compliant from accessing all public services.   

Next, the covid panic is not a trial run, it is a step along the path to complete servitude.