http://auspost.com.au/changes-to-your-letters-service.html?i…
Australia Post is increasing the price to send a letter by 43%. Letters will now cost $1 and take substantially longer. More money for worse service! And I do believe that increase is well above inflation. Discuss.
They aren't permitted to deliver anything under a certain weight. The monopoly is government enforced. Remove that and then we can talk.
ap has a monopoly on letter deliveries that are less than 250g. couriers aren't allowed to deliver letters under <250g. however, they do deliver <250g consignments. their clients can use 500g satchels or their own packaging. it's not as cheap as ap's $2.10, but it's a lot cheaper then ap's retail flatrate satchels.
does this mean that anyone who bought $0.70 sheets will have to go back and get $0.30 stamps now?
Well… yes.
I still have some 45c stamps in my drawer and a thick stack of 5c stamps. So every time they jack up their prices, it doesn't require any trips to the post office.
Just 5c stamps if and when I need them.
Is there even any room left on your letter for the address with all them stamps
I've been doing this to letters trying to use up old $0.60 denomination stamps. These are the smaller greeting card envelopes and not the long form office standard ones, so there's less room than usual. It's like playing tetris at this point.
@babylon: You still don't have enough.
"If you wish to use domestic stamps on international
mail, then you are required to affix postage at 10%
above the rate shown in this guide."
http://auspost.com.au/media/documents/international-post-eas…
@rollo: At the former $2.60 international letter rate, it looks like I'm $0.11 off, Oops. I don't think I would have had enough space to put another stamp though, the address was pretty long.
It ended up being successfully delivered and the stamps weren't even cancelled…so I am unsure whether Auspost workers bother to count it up.
Yes as a business I still need to post envelopes. OzBargain uses standard DL size to post our shopping bag merchandise, which now costs $1. I also use C4 prepaid envelopes to post our T-shirts, which goes up from $3.60 to $4.35 (3 years ago it was $2.80).
Gotta go and stock up some prepaid envelopes next week.
I was just wondering if we could stock up on prepaid somethings… What are the C4 ones though? Can't find on their website.
Thanks… Must only be available in store.
However, it seems that it is (marginally) cheaper to use 3x $1 stamp + TB2 tough bag ?
Shirts?
Hey scotty - I think you maybe have just saved me a lot of money, I have been sending T-Shirts at $7+. Do you just fold the Tees and place in the envelope? Any need to disguise as a rectangular object?
Yes folded and it's okay as long as it's no thicker than 2cm. I shall try TB2 + $3 stamp next time as suggested.
Another thing - a box of 100 TB2 is only around $48 dollars (more than 50% off).
The part that pisses me off is I can buy stuff on eBay including postage that people physically can't even deliver to me for that price.
For example, a $1 cable from Hong Kong. They'll ship the cable, AusPost will get it in Sydney, then ship it to my door. Somehow $ wise this all is fine.
Yet if someone gave me that cable for free from Sydney, they'd be paying a few bucks to even send to it me. Yet AusPost are happy to make 20 cents when the Hong Kong guy sends it and they need to finish the job delivering it the same distance.
It doesn't add up.
There's no way anyone in Australia can be competitive when AusPost is happy to handle overseas deliveries for dirt cheap and charge the local guys a bomb.
Precisely!! Spot on!! as i was thinking, increased the regular pricing locally making things from overseas ever more damn cheap, and all of the money got to overseas people, how does that hell even gonna help the bloody economy in Australia?
It doesn't add up.
The problem is that you need to get $4 million a year to understand the logic.
I dont get either the logic or the $4M :)
It does not address the fundamental issue that something posted from China/Hong Kong is cheaper than something posted locally.
Overseas parcels/letters should only be delivered to the nearest capital city.
The current system is unfair to Australian retailers who are already doing it hard.
It would complicate matters unnecessarily. Keep in mind when you send a letter to China/an overseas country, they deliver to local areas with appropriate compensation from AusPost set by the Universal Postal Union (controlled by the UN), so there is already a mechanism for change.
is that you Gerry Harvey? Not content with the system making it impossible for yourself, instead of asking for it to be fixed, you want the system to be made impossible for everyone.
What I dont understand about this thinking is that if you add on a bunch of postage costs to overseas purchases, and charge GST, etc to online purchases, it still doesn't make local Australian business competitive in most cases.
I spent $5300 on a new camera and lens yesterday at an Australian business because they were globally competitive for that item, but i purchased the memory cards for the same camera in the US a month or so ago because they were 50% of the cheapest price i could find in Australia, even online. Add on 10% GST and hypothetically 10% extra local postage costs, and Australian business is still 30% higher.
And, I got them in 3 days from the east coast of the US, while the same order from the east coast of Australia would take a week or more to Perth…..
AusPost have no choice but to deliver those items with cheap postage from Asia. The reasons postage is cheaper in Asia are: (1) higher population density (so larger volume of letters / packages means they can deliver cheaper per item) (2) the possibility of sea mail from Asia to Australia (again, enough quantities to make the sea mail business worthwhile).
AusPost have high costs in delivery because we have a large area but relatively small population (so low quantity of letters). Basically, the cost for 1 person to deliver 1 letter vs 1000 letters per day is the same. However, if that postman only has 1 letter to deliver, you cannot say to that person we will only pay you 1/1000 of your daily rate.
Unless you send heaps of letters every week, you really don't have any reason to complain. This postage increase won't affect most individuals. Businesses will be most affected, but some of them are already transitioning / offering electronic notification as an alternative.
Should send Fahour packing!
Ahmed Fahour has an income of $4 million, donates $2 million to an Islamic Museum which is linked close to his family. Something fishy? Yes!
Make me CEO of Australia Post and I'll donate $2 million to a general museum that is inclusive of ALL religions (or lack of).
This would be just one of the many useful things I would do as an overpaid CEO.
Make me CEO of Australia Post and I'll donate $2 million to bargain hunters (well, just me. but I'll sound altruistic)
Make me the AusPost CEO and I won't throw away money uselessly as an overpaid CEO.
@FaultyMango: actually, pay me $4 million and I'll spend an additional $2 million to show how to save $6 million by resigning (with additional golden handshake/package for performance savings).
And the donation is …..tax deductible of course. How convenient.
What I do not get, is why he is payed more than the CEO of the United States post office? The $2 million to his brother's museum is a charitable donation, so I guess that was tax minimisation.
He is not the only one at Australia Post with a good deal.
"Twenty of his executives are on packages worth more than $500,000, four of them earning more than $1.2 million each"
Spends our money like a politician and called it corporate hospitality by Australia Post.
"Fahour took 78 people to the London Olympics in 2012. The cost of their airfares, hotel rooms, Olympics tickets and meals was $2.5 million. "
http://www.smh.com.au/good-weekend/ahmed-fahour-delivering-t…
Every time they go on about Aus Post losing money in the mail postal area there is no mention of how much profits are up on parcels or what the total profit or loss is for the company.
The losses in the mail side of the business completely outstripped the profit that was made in parcels this financial year.
What I think people are missing is the fact that due to their service obligation, Australia Post still has to deliver along every route (this increases each day as new residential areas or houses are developed), but the mail on these routes is decreasing at a dramatic rate.
In short, costs are staying flat or even increasing, while revenue is falling off a cliff due to the rise of electronic communication. Can't blame them for doing something to try and stem the bleeding.
Like hiring an overpaid CEO? Yes that'll fix it.
They did this in England too, but the stamps didn't have a price printed on them. As a result I stocked up on stamps beofre the price went up and used them as the year went on. This 42% increase is ridiculous in my humble opinion…! At least they're doing it after Xmas.
As of January my small business is actually going to stop selling lines of products because it's just no longer worth it. eBay fees, GST, Paypal fees, eBay's premium listing service which requires us to offer free shipping otherwise we won't be shown in 'best results' and now a 30% price hike on stamps…
As of the 4th of Jan our store items for sale go from 700 down to 450.. Sigh.
I only take ebay as a single channel out there, I also sell on Amazon and etsy and my website. I will be changing my website to shopify with a huge focus on SEO this time and see how it goes. Also I hear shopifu can easily integrate into Facebook shop with a click so it creates another channel. I would only keep ebay store up if it still makes a profit while you build up the other stores. But yeah aus post sucks, and I really hate how ebay and aus post delivery time is sos vastly different that it creates annoying angry customers who thinks I have the power to change aus post l.
My local newsagent has already said that the letter increase takes place in January, and almost certainly, parcel post will increase in July. So be warned, apparently it happens all the time. JULY.
Well if there was one way to crash the postal letter market it would be to jack up prices to the point that businesses can actually be bothered to spend the time to switch to electronic, bringing the market down even more in one swoop making even $1 unviable. I imagine that private click and collect for parcels is just about to come into the prime time too. Hope Auspost crash and burns and their CEO is disgraced. Auspost will end up being nothing more than a subsidised service to deliver packages to the bush where it is unviable for the private market.
For parcel post, I found Officeworks service cheaper, fast and reliable.
Suck it up buttercup….
Crikey, with posts like this from the OP we should call this site OzWhinger.
Nobody has actually mentioned that this price increase is also partially due to our appetite of ordering items overseas from China and Hong Kong where the postage rates cost mere cents.
It almost costs nothing to send items from China / Hong Kong to Australia and Australia Post has to deliver this mail because of the international postal agreements. In the end it's the local businesses that get slugged the price increase - the ones that pay local tax, gst and all. This is actually a big price increase and I know a lot of small local businesses who would be severely effected with this increase. How can Australia Post even deliver those $0.05 products that come from Banggood, etc? The local businesses and consumers are the ones who pay for that cost in the end.
Australia Post, as Australia's official national mail carrier, gets compensated for letters via a mechanism called "Terminal Dues" through the Universal Postal Union (UPU). In effect all countries agree to deliver each others mail. The balance of surplus/deficit is covered by the Terminal Dues. If China delivered 1 million letters from Australia and Australia delivered 1 million letters from China then they 'cancel out.' Now say if Australia delivered 2 million letters from China and China delivered 1 million letters from Australia then China would pay Australia the difference based on the UPU rules. All member countries are free to implement a mail system as efficient or inefficient as they like.
How come when I get postage from China I have to pay like $600-$1000? Or does that mean if I had to post the same item to overseas it would cost a lot more than that?
So stupid for sellers but buyers don't care as long as it's cheap I guess.
Last couple of standard letters I've sent have taken 6 days to travel about 2km (as the crow flies).
So their slow arse service will remain the same and I'll just have to pay more if I chose to use the service.
i have had 2 letters (tracked and registered goind overseas) lost and one parcel was never delivered to me (from overseas, tracking just says australia) recently. Hard to think service could get any worse, i don't care about killing auspost, compared to foreign counterparts, they are terribly managed and did not take the turn to adapt to taking on local services.
they are also pretty rude when one enquires about missing courrier…
My banks are constantly pestering me to switch to electronic bills. I've refused so far because if I did, I would literally receive two letters a quarter: water bill, and council bill. I do a fair bit of only shopping however, but those packages are too bulky for the postie to deliver.
My prediction? Revenue to tank even more as businesses move to email even more aggressively. Soon won't be a point in having a letterbox.
Except to put the great amount of small parcels people receive in.
That was always going to happen anyway. Even if letter post were cheap there are too many other costs associated with paper mail.
Can you still buy standard prepaid envelopes?
Well, they're losing money because their service is so shitty that less and less people wanna use their unreliable service.
Try calling them, you'll be on the phone waiting for 40mins for them to pick up the damn phone.
Sent a buyer a $600 phone from Sydney to Brisbane, and it took exactly ONE MONTH, and had to wait on the phone for 40mins EVERY SINGLE TIME I CALLED THEM to ask where the parcel was, and to simplify their answer - they had no idea, only their sorting system did. (Thought I lost $600, totally pissed off)
Here's the tracking history if you don't believe what I just said: http://postimg.org/image/4r3ydflfj/
I don't know if a gov owned company can go bankrupted, but if they can… I sure hope AusPost do.
Your argument is based on emotion and not actually facts. Letter-post service is a different ball game compared to their parcel service.
While I do agree on the emotion part, I don't know how anything I stated above isn't "fact", it's not just me that had a bad experience with them, have a look at some other comments in this thread. (Also look at productreview.com.au, and AusPost Facebook page)
There's no argument here, I was making a statement saying I had a crappy experience, and the tracking proved that. My comment wasn't an argument at all, what's there to argue about?
I'm not an insider so I don't know how different they handle their parcel vs letter, but it is the same company.
You said "they're losing money because their service is so shitty" as if it was fact. It's not, the money-losing side of the business is LETTER post not parcel post (of which you described ONE incident). The parcel business has been reported to be VERY profitable in all previous reports. So your statement is FALSE. Show me one legit article that states they are losing money as a result of bad customer service? just one!
Our business sends over 200 eParcels (Regular and Express) and fewer than 1% arrive outside their stated delivery times.
Every postage and courier service has bad feedback. Look at UK Post, look at USPS. Try running a national postage service and maybe you'll know why.
@zhenjie:
I was actually using sarcasm for the first sentence. Saying they must be being dumped by the customers considering they're charging a fortune to send things and still losing money.
Now, are you saying that my parcel being late wasn't their fault? Don't bring Royal mail and USPS into this, are we now following the worst examples?
What does national postage have to do with bad service? Japan post seems fine, Malaysian and NZ have overall pretty good reviews too, what is your point exactly? Are you saying it's good/fine that AP is charging a lot of money to be bad at delivering?
I sent just one parcel and it took one month to be delivered, I really don't care what your experience was, mine was bad, same for many other people.
In that case, you do a pretty bad job of delivering sarcasm. You wrote that sentence as fact without any supporting evidence and a misguided notion that their profit loss was some how related to service levels.
Please quote where I said the lateness in their delivery of your parcel WASN't their fault. Good luck, because I didn't. It was their fault, but that's not what I pointed out in your post. Japan, Malaysia, NZ are not perfect services either. Does it excuse AP for delayed parcels? Nope, but its a fact of life no postage service in the world is perfect.
are you saying that my parcel being late wasn't their fault?
I asked a question, it wasn't a statement. I was wondering because you pointed out that you had no trouble with them and said that Royal mail and USPS are no better. Sounds like it is fine that AP stuffed up my parcel, because RM and USPS would've stuffed it up too, doesn't it?
Of course those three that I mentioned aren't perfect services, but go look at their reviews, they're at least much better than one star Auspost, Royal mail, and USPS. You mentioned national postage, so there is my argument, they don't have to (shouldn't) be rated 1 or 2 stars. You hinted RM and USPS were as bad, so I'm here asking you what's the point of comparing bad apples? Shouldn't AP improve? To at least the standard of some better national postage services that I mentioned?
Quite frankly, you've based your assumptions on one negative experience with them and heavily biased review sites. Have you reference yearly reports from these carriers? Nope, didn't think so.
Then you go onto a forum saying Auspost are losing money because of their poor parcel service. That has proven to be untrue, they are very profitable in their parcel service, and their usage increases year on year. So your statement, which you now claim is 'sarcasm', lol, is entirely untrue. Again, please tell me how this statement of yours was 'fact'? Because you haven't and simply keep going on about your negative experience and few others, you found on the internet.
Then you wish Auspost to go bankrupt for the sake of your one negative experience. So what happens to the 36,000 mums, dads and hard working folk who are employed by them? Not to mention the further tens of thousands of jobs indirectly linked with Australia Post. Have you any common sense?
I've already said your parcel being late was entirely their fault. Read my previous comment - "It was their fault". Please work on your comprehension.
You assume AP doesn't wish or hasn't improved. Well it has, the only problem is your too jaded by your limited experience to actually know.
what's not factual about waiting one month, it may be a "different ball game" but it's still managed by Auspost (or Aus post is the one we contract with)
Lol wow, it got sent back and forth. They probably got confused with the to/from addresses.
Who still sent post letters ?
Don't be naive. Even if you don't send letters, the services which you use that do (eg. local council, utilities) will cost more and they will pass on their increased costs to you.
All the more reason to go electronic. My water and electricity bills are electronic. I'd be happy if my council went electronic, it's the only one left behind.
Yes, you can avoid any direct costs by switching to electronic statements. However, that's only one aspect of costs. How about when they need to physically send documents between their offices or to their employees? They can't exactly charge each other. Where do you think the money will be coming?
Answer: The customers. They'll just increase the prices of the services to absorb the incrased costs.
@ronnknee: A lot of internal documents are sent electronically these days. When's the last time you sent in a paper form by mail rather than fax it in, or scan and email? The transition is inexorable.
Maybe the councils' action is to keep us supporting the aust post CEO by sending paper bills and exaggerating the rates to cover the stamp cost?
All of my bills are electronic, and I assure you, they don't send physical documents internally.
There's just no need for it.
Unless you need to physically send a 'thing' there is no reason for letters anymore and the sooner people are pushed kicking and screaming into the late 20th century the better.
Also worth noting, that large senders of mail pay a lot less, and they have still spent the better part of the last few years pushing customers onto electronic delivery. Successfully.
Of course that's the point, the prices are rising because people are abandoning letters because they're unnecessary. Which is causing increased costs, which is raising prices. They're already losing huge amounts of money on the letter business, there's no choice here.
The idea with the priority mail service is that they're now NOT going to go past every house every day. They'll skip streets some days because there's no priority mail required in that street that day, it's the only way to stop bleeding money paying people to go past houses that may only get a letter once a month.
They are digging a hole. The higher they price it the faster people will abandon it, thereby pushing the price even higher.
Instead of being greedy and quoting exorbitant amounts for leaflet/catalogue drops they should do it cheaply. The postie is already going past every house. Some days I have 5 different people coming past dropping off catalogues, so the money is there on the table Auspost are just too greedy to take it.
I think you're missing the point. Their letter business lost $381 million in the last financial year (without the letter business, they would have made a $159 million profit). Letter volumes fell by 7.3% in one year and it's only going to accelerate as more people use electronic forms of communication. Cutting prices for stamps won't reverse these trends. E-mails, electronic statements etc. are already free. I'm not going to start using letters for things that I can send an email or use a website for.
It's an albatross for them that they would happily ditch if they weren't forced to provide a mail service given their obligations to the public.
Yup all correct. Under legislation, since they have a legal monopoly over 'standard postal article' aka letters and parcels under 250g (AUSTRALIAN POSTAL CORPORATION ACT 1989 Part3, Div 2 - Reserved services), they have a community obligation to provide these services as well under the same Act.
Profits are falling in this area as people move onto digital and it's only going to get worse. Expect costs for these letters to increase over the coming years.
Its a brilliant bit of creative bookkeeping. Pay the posties wages from the letter delivery side of the business but get them to do more and more of the parcel delivery service.
In my experience it's still cheap.
Sure, it'll always seem cheap when people don't use the service but instead find use out of it.
Sorry, but I don't understand what you're trying to say.
You can now get stuff sent from China delivered by Auspost for less than the cost of a domestic letter, I'm not sure how that works. But I don't get 4.6 million dollars a year so I don't know jack.
The agreement between China Post and Australia Post is reciprocal, so to ship packages from China to Australia, you pay China Post.
For small packages below 2kg, China Post rates are currently CNY 5 (AU$1.08) for the first 50 grams and 0.08 CNY (AU$0.02) for each extra gram. So a 500g package would cost CNY41 (AUD$8.84). For large packages less than one kilogram, the rates are CNY143.8 (AU$31.01).
Australia Post charges AU$12.25 (CNY56.80) for a 500g airmail package to China.
So it seems that Australia Post charges about 50% more than China Post for a similar service (500g package).
However, the minimum weight is not equal. So for a very small package (50g) Australia Post charges $12.25 but China Post charges $1.08. These plastic products cost 5 cents to produce, so any extra cost can be profits…
It's an industry with shrinking income but increasing overheads.
When you think that they can take your letter to anywhere in the country for $1 it's still a pretty amazing service.
This price-hike is preferable to privatisation anyway.
OP - "And I do believe that increase is well above inflation"
Historically Australia Post has had price increases below inflation. On the other hand, the increases from 2010 to 2014 were above inflation. And the current increase is surely above inflation.
Using historical prices https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia_Post and RBA inflation calculator http://www.rba.gov.au/calculator/annualDecimal.html
From 1980 to 1990, the price increased from 22 cents to 43 cents. Inflation would have brought it to 47 cents. (Below inflation)
From 1990 to 2000, the price increased from 43 cents to 45 cents. Inflation would have brought it to 53 cents. (Below inflation)
From 2000 to 2010, the price increased from 45 cents to 60 cents. Inflation would have brought it to 60 cents. (In line with inflation)
From 2010 to 2014, the price increased from 60 cents to 70 cents. Inflation would have brought it to 66 cents. (Above inflation)
Fattening! They are fattening up AusPost for sale to the private market.
What are the alternatives to AusPost?
I send my friend in Japan a parcel for her birthday every year. It's already expensive and I'm fearing what it will cost next year.
How can the CEO get away with this? Is no one powerful enough to do something about it? Or do they have something to gain from it too?
1) If you're sending your friend a parcel, then it's not affected by the increase in the price of stamps for letters?
2) Alternatives: https://www.choice.com.au/shopping/shopping-for-services/ser… I think Fedex ships from Australia too.
3) The CEO can "get away" with this because he's being forced to provide a letter service as a Community Service Obligation since Australia Post is a public enterprise. The letter business lost $381 million for Australia Post last year. Unlike a private enterprise, he can't ditch the business or stop providing it. If Australia Post continues to lose hundreds of millions of dollars, the taxpayer will have to foot this bill since it is a public enterprise. Instead of every taxpayer having to subsidise letter users at the existing price, by raising the price of sending a letter, then people or organisations sending letters pay - i.e. effectively a "user pays" approach.
From what I understand, it works like this:
Now a major problem is that when Japan Post Service sends out the parcel, they do not consider wages Auspost pays on their side to the workers. There is quite a large disparity between the wages an Australian postal worker receives vs wages a Japanese postal worker receives, Australian wages are quite high by comparison (minimum wage being $17.29 AUD / hr in Aust vs $8.89 AUD / hr in Japan or 780 Yen per hr @ today's exchange rate.) Neither service really pays the other so Australia post does not get reimbursed for the higher costs they are required to upkeep (+ would be a nightmare to keep track of.)
Due to the disparity in wages, it costs more for Australia post to handle a parcel than it does for Japan Post Service. Therefore, Australia Post is forced to increase the costs for an Australian consumer to deliver a parcel to Japan and this in effect subsidizes the costs they take on when they handle a parcel from Japan.
Hence why it costs you so much to send a parcel to your friend in Japan. Australia post doesn't actually gain much from this as it is a Public Enterprise, in fact they actually lose millions dealing with international parcels.
This is just a brief summary, the issues at hand are far more complex and cross into international treaties.
Read more here:
Australia Post losing millions on international shipping, Productivity Commission submission reveals
Government report itself:
www.pc.gov.au/inquiries/completed/retail-industry/submission…
Already getting into some deep trouble with this:
Australia Post boss to face Senate inquiry over claims contractors underpaying workers
Didn't the government have to approve these price increases in the first place??
Yes, ACCC had to approve them.
You bet lots of companies will put you on email and charge you for getting a letter including the banks
It's already happening. Maybe a new case for ACCC?
I don't see the problem in passing on a cost that can be so easily avoided.
This already happens…
Agree more and more companies will do that
Oh good, maybe businesses will stop sending me mail, but then they pay a lot less for postage anyway in bulk. Can't think of one use of mail that couldn't be electronic.
wouldn't mind this so much if AUSTRALIA POST ACTUALLY DID THEIR JOB IN THE FIRST PLACE! really wish we didn't have a monopoly in Australia.
Good excuse not to mail out christmas cards
People send less letters now, but most ebay sellers who deal with small lightweight items have been sending as large letters since ebay started. Now it means it not only costs more, it will be harder to compete with sellers in China. If you need a small electronic adaptor for example, are people going to pay more to have it in 6 days within Australia or cheaper for 7 - 14 days from China? No-one would be able to justify paying $6 or more for a tiny adaptor or component when you can get it delivered from China for $1.
I sell lots of small items, not just from China so its making me wonder about solutions for my business for the small items. Larger items of-course people would justify higher postage costs.
There doesn't seem to be a service in Australia for items under 500g now and its unfair and expensive paying the 500g rate for tiny items. The Chinese sellers can send any weight and once it arrives in Australia its delivered as standard post.
They don't give a damn about it. Everyone will buy from China. Local eBay sellers will be goners in no time
In Aus post defence like they said on their website,the price of stamps should have been $1.50 but they had not increased the prices annually,which is their fault.
All first world countries are paying the equivalent of $1-50 at the moment and as usually Aus is late to follow,just like free wifi everywhere in Korea etc.
None the less,having to pay the bloke $4.6m per annum is outrageous.
This is more than 10 times what Obama receives !
@smalltime0:
Open it up and prove it.
Perhaps even mandate that if you deliver in the city in any given state you must also deliver to the country.
Courier companies operate to all sorts of places.