Don't be surprised, but Hawaii just joined the Union. When the post office unveiled a service called Global Priority Mail about a year ago, it allowed customers to send mail abroad cheaply, quickly and efficiently. It was available to everyone in the United States, including the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, except for us poor slobs in Hawaii, Alaska and Idaho. Post office offers
a new way to flyThe problem, as explained by Gary Gardetto, manager of the Postal Business Center at the airport, is that GPM guarantees delivery inside of a week, and there was no way delivery could be guaranteed to Western Europe from Hawaii in that short a time.
The solution was to ignore Western Europe. Global Priority for Hawaii now means Canada and the Pacific Rim -- sort of a Pacific Priority Mail. The post office even had some only-in-Hawaii flyers printed up giving general information. Similar solutions are being cooked up for Alaska and Idaho. Your local post office now has a whole new, and mysterious, kind of envelope available.
Priority Mail has been a significant success for the post office, which provides free mailing materials to streamline the process. For Global, these include two sizes of cardboard envelopes and stickers for packages. The envelopes are flat-rate, meaning that the postage is the same no matter what's shoved in there. The large envelope, for example, can be mailed for $6.95 to Canada and $8.95 to everywhere else. (A similar package mailed, say, to Japan via FedEx is $28.50, DHL is $21.60, UPS is $26.50 and TNT Express is $32.50 according to a post office comparison.)
This is expected to be a boon for all the little companies in Hawaii sending products abroad. "Especially with the rise of mail-order fulfillment and Internet sales, it'll be critical to have this mailing status," said David Nada, head of Product Promotions at the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism.
Even so, you still have to fill out the customs-declaration sticker.
By Burl Burlingame, Star-Bulletin