CAR POSTCARD

Very hard to get the stamps you want at Australian post offices sometimes (if it's busy), and the range is always very limited at any given time. But I've been hoping for a car PC swap (I have 10 or so PCs of them!) so I've signed up. :) Is more than one stamp part of the '5' rating? I just noticed that. Again, that can be difficult (though not impossible) here because our international stamps are purpose-designed for Postcards, Letters, Parcels, meaning the postcard stamp is one of the cheapest available. (Our domestic stamps are a different range due to GST/VAT considerations.) Therefore, please let us know! Thanks.

I'd like to put in my input here when it comes to sending internationally and what stamps one can use, even if your country does have stamps for overseas, just so long you find out what the equilavent of cost it should be to send to -that- country ( for australia it can be found at http://auspost.com.au/index.html ) then you can use your regular domestic stamps to fill up that cost and just send out your letter / PC / whatever , and remember to stick on the Par Avion lable too.

Also, though I'm not entirely sure if this applies in Australia, one can buy mint postage stamps from stamp dealers (preferably in your own country) and use those of choice on your letters / PC's, just so long they add up to the same cost as it would sending out with an International postage stamp..

Here's a site that sells mint (un-used) australian postage stamps.. http://www.space.net.au/~faldor/category74_1.htm with quite a variety too (even if they are from 2002, I have tendency of buying stamps dating back to 1975 at time, just to get a full variety of fresh stamps to use). I hope this helps :)

Thanks for the mint stamp purchasing link. I might use that one. :)

Not sure if you understood specifically what I meant re GST in my first comment (that AUSPOST link is just the home page) but here's a short (!) breakdown of what I meant in my first comment.

Using domestic stamps on international letters/parcels is a messy affair in Australia, thanks to the issue of GST (Goods & Sales Tax). PO staff like to keep it simple by telling you "you have to use International stamps" for international (air) mail. This is not quite true, but it's all complicated by the fact that we pay GST on domestic postage, but we don't on international. This means that a letter to the US, costing $2.20 normally, would cost $2.42 if we used domestic stamps. Not so much difficult as annoyingly complicated, considering you might have a heap of PCs and letters destined for several different countries, a mixture of international and domestic stamps applied to them, and lack of clarity as to whether you pay GST on the whole letter if you use mixed stamps (it's one service to post a letter, after all), or only on the part that you've covered by using domestic stamps. Welcome to my world! ;) Oh, and never mind that there are no prices in Australia that are not rounded up or down 5c in practice (even though there can be in theory)...

I don't even mind paying the extra 10% - and when in doubt I sometimes overpay just a little even though I'd prefer not to - it's the PO staff who never seem to quite get it, or who assume that we don't comprehend what we're actually doing. I've been navigating postal rules since I was 7 years old! There seems to be a culture in our postal industry that the counter staff choose our options and people like me have to really speak up (which I do!) to get the stamps we want. And that's when it's all quiet on the post office front and they're not flustered or flummoxed by our wishes...! (You can be treated pretty curtly if you want what they don't want to give, depending on the personality of the staff or, understandably, the length of the queue.)

Forgive all the detail - but this is why I usually just organise my postage myself. I get tired of explaining my postal intentions to PO staff, despite being well aware that I'm not breaking any Postal Law. (DUHN DUHN DUHHHHHN!) It's not hard to understand their ways, but for them to understand different users' ways? Impossible! ... YET! Having said all this, staff are usually (uuusually...) great here, and I often have nice experiences w/in the PO, so go figure! :D

(... And so you see, Virginia, there really is a Santa Claus...)

Oops. GST = Goods & Services Tax. It replaced Sales Tax.

The car stamp it is not a requeriment, just put any kind of stamp that you like.

Good grief. Sorry for the endless postal lesson the other day there. Believe me - if I could delete it I would.