pendell

Current Hyperfixation: Wizard of Oz

  • He/Him

I use outdated technology just for fun, listen to crappy music, and watch a lot of horror movies. Expect posts about These Things. I talk a lot.

Check tags like Star Trek Archive and Media Piracy to find things I share for others.



pendell
@pendell

I want to mail order something. Just once. To try it out, you know? I want to handwrite (or typewrite 👀) a personal check and fill out a physical order form and put it in an addressed envelope and put a stamp on it and mail it to some building, where a guy will open it and read my form and see my check and then put something in a box to send back to me. I just think it would be a fun experience.

I won't get a tracking number or any updates, so it will literally just be waiting until it gets here, no idea what day or time. That almost makes it more exciting to receive Something.

The fact that this was how the vast majority of long-distance commerce was done up until like 2004, and already we view it as this antiquated, strange, and insecure way of doing things is wild to me. How quickly the internet shifted the cultural zeitgeist in so many ways, in ways we don't even consider.

So yeah. Anyone know like a cool book seller or some independent shop I can still mail order from.


pendell
@pendell

not quite the same but my boyfriend insists on sending me money to buy a video game he really wants me to play and i said if he really wants to go around sending me money like that, i won't make it easy for him! so he may possibly be considering sending me a postal money order in the mail for $60 just because i'm a little bit of a bitch sometimes who likes to see their puppy do tricks


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in reply to @pendell's post:

looking at the tags and thinking co-post but it refers to the post office and not posting on cohost.

i used ot receive catalogs from mac catalog resellers and a couple times they were like "write what you want in here!" (on the worst extant color paper) , but in the late '90s and early 2000s most of the focus there was on calling and talking to a person, which, like, okay, i answer phones professionally as my day job and i can not imagine how terrible "order taker for computer catalog reseller" would have been as a job

but also imagine, you mail off your check and you're like "omg some sweet new bernoulli carts are gonna be any day now, allowing for six to eight weeks of processing and transit!" and it turns out you calculated the tax wrong and the vendor sends you back a letter going "lol please send us a check for 7 more cents"

(disclaimer: i have never mail ordered something so i'm just purely guessing as to the potential problems, but i suppose you can avoid this by just mailing your credit card number in plaintext!)

I've seen boxes for credit card info on some old catalog order forms, although it's undeniably less secure than a check (which at least requires the name on the check to match the person/company depositing/cashing it) but I've also found they usually include solid guidelines on calculating sales tax.

In many cases, if you're outside of the state of the seller, no sales tax applies. Cool thing I learned of recently, if a business or seller does not have any base of operations within the state of the buyer then no sales tax need apply. I've seen it on some of those forms where they were like "apply 1.15% sales tax only if you live in Maryland."

Also given a stamp today at its cheapest is like 57¢ I think they'd rather eat the lost 7¢, but who knows haha