PARKERSBURG - As Christmas approaches, many residents are buying gifts for their family and friends to be shipped around the country and around the world.
Harrisville resident Gara Satterfield was in Simmons Station in Parkersburg on Monday afternoon preparing to mail a brightly wrapped box through the U.S. Postal Service. Satterfield said she likes the service provided by the USPS for mailing gifts to relatives in Florida.
The holiday season between Thanksgiving and Christmas is a busy time of the year, according to Lyle Sims, customer service manager for the USPS in Parkersburg.
"The holiday season, just like a lot of retail units, is our busiest time of the year," Sims said Monday afternoon. "Today (Monday) is traditionally the busiest day of the year. Usually it's the Monday that is on the week before whenever Christmas falls."
Sims believes one reason for that one-day surge is because many people spend the weekend shopping for gifts and then preparing those gifts to be mailed out on the first day of the week.
Wednesday is the deadline for people wanting to send cards and letters by priority mail to reach destinations by Christmas, especially for cross-country mailings, Sims said. Those willing to pay the cost of express mail service have until Dec. 23, he said.
In recent years, the USPS has seen some decrease in the number of people coming to the post office to weigh and mail gift packages around the country, but "it's still a pretty darn busy time of the year," Sims said.
He believes one reason for that was the postal service's implementation of a "click and ship" program on the Internet.
Under the program, available at www.usps.com, people who know the weight of their package can pick from options like shipping (parcel post, priority or express), whether to add insurance or tracking and others. The software will then print out a label which can be taped to the package, just like the labels made at the post office.
The cost will be charged to a credit card for the postage and the package is ready to be mailed, Sims said. The postal service has an 800-number people using the "click and ship" program can call to arrange for their regular carriers to pick up the package, at 800-222-1811.
"Some people who do that a lot - people who do eBay business for example - will actually buy labels, but you can just cut it out and tape it on. I've used it myself," he said.
"We've had it now for a few years and it's been extremely popular" in general, Sims said. "We do several million packages now a year."
