Good lord, $21 for faxing!!!
Yesterday I went to a UPS store to set up a postal box in my destination area.
The distant UPS store faxed the 7-page rental agreement to my local store. I filled it out, signed and returned by fax.
Then I fainted in shell shock when the clerk announced:
“That’ll be 21 dollars and 27 cents, please.”
What?!?!?
That’s friggin’ faxing your firstborn!
I knew I was paying to send a fax. $1.50 plus tax per page to be exact. So $1.60 per page.
(Sales tax here is a hair under 10 percent – and climbing. It’s no secret that Washington state is incredibly expensive and one of the highest-taxed states in the nation. California train wreck / bankruptcy here we come! And for comparison, the same single fax page at my destination is a buck.)
It didn’t register in my overfilled mind that it costs to RECEIVE a fax too — even between two UPS stores.
$21.27. That’s more than a week’s savings!
You want a book on hardship and suffering and survival? You won’t get it from me, though I am one who could pen it.
Instead, it brings it home to write that one 10-minute transaction wiped out more than a week’s savings, savings created from molecules in the air, lack and doing without.
What is doing without? Oh, how can I respond without collapsing into a sob. Doing without means having a diseased dying painful molar, infection and bone loss, a tooth long in need of a root canal (assuming it can be saved) or an extraction and doing without for lack of funds.
Doing without means having basic needs unmet, leaving things broken, belly and thighs and knees and forearms and palms rubbed raw, bloodied and pulpy for the long dragging journey across rough barren landscape searching for that sliver of gold, then another and then another to create the gold piece to leave …
That is how my exit from Tacoma came to be.
And so 21 dollars is a hefty sum for faxing. Half a day later and I’ve still not peeled myself up off the floor!
It was a belly punch. Unexpected. And believe it or not still cheaper than the competitor!
Painful and shocking though it be, I received something of value in return. (And as anyone who truly listens to my words knows, no penny is spent without mindful consideration and weighing of the value returned.)
I received a landing in Colorado. An address for my mail. My first official foot in my new frontier.
And that is not without price and yet priceless.
Barefoot Blogger 
Jun 29, 2011 @ 02:51:09
Hey, its $$$ but they are offering a service and …….. Wonder if it would have been less painful $$$$-wise if you had scanned the hard copy into a PDF file and then e-mailed it.
Jun 29, 2011 @ 10:06:47
@Expat – I don’t have a scanner.
Jun 29, 2011 @ 13:11:10
For the future; go to the nearest Kinko’s with the docs and a flash drive, have them scan it onto/into the flash drive, then you’re set.
Jun 29, 2011 @ 14:38:34
@Expat – Thanks for the tip for the future. I didn’t have the documents on the computer and time was of the essence. Just one of life’s unpleasant, albeit pricey, surprises. BTW, I’m informed our local Kinko’s are more expensive than the UPS store; my general experience bears out more pleasantries at UPS.
Jun 29, 2011 @ 17:36:44
Perhaps more expensive. I just know I shipped a packet from our local Kinko’s to son in Ohio and just for giggles and grins, asked the local UPS store what it would have cost. Was told the price- $15 more than FedEx/Kinko’s.
Jul 01, 2011 @ 10:17:31
@Expat – That FedEx does not deliver to PO boxes is a disadvantage — and in my situation eliminates them as a carrier, leaving it between USPS and UPS (and could those letters be any more potentially confusing, lol).