RE: USPS is excellent on the other hand, despite that you often will hate to
wait in line for a long time for buying a stamp.

My experience with the Post Office (USPS) has been very good to excellent
over the last several years, including a miracle they pulled off yesterday.
As for waiting in line, many (at least mine) post offices now have a 24 hour
lobby with a self serve mailing setup that will handle packages.  This is
very convenient.  And just in the last couple of days I've started using the
online postage capability (in my case through PayPal) for items I've
recently sold on eBay.  One package sitting in the hall to go tomorrow,
another waiting payment from the buyer.  This has included one big, bulky
package sent to Canada.  Very easy to deal with them.  I did sent one very
bulky and heavy item to a buyer on the east coast (he was willing to pay
more for the packaging and shipping than he paid for the item he bought.  In
that case I used the nearby UPS store, it was his dollar.
Now a miracle from USPS.  If you look here you will see a scan of a package
(a CD) that was delivered to me yesterday:
http://picasaweb.google.com/starwagen/AndItWasDelivered/photo#5077136181429552546
This had been shipped by the new UPS/USPS delivery system.  On a UPS truck
to the destination city then into the US mail.  I was about to give up hope,
the USPS and UPS tracking systems both said it had been in the mail system
for 10 days.  It is covered in paint no less and then scrapped and mangled.
The address is virtually indecipherable but USPS finally figured it out and
got it to me.

What does all this have to do with Vanagons?  We are all in the position of
ordering parts and accessories on an ongoing basis and many times have a
choice of shippers.  I personally have opted for USPS whenever possible and
in fact have told a number of online (non VW) vendors that I bought from
someone else when the only option offered was UPS or FedEx.
n