Shipped Out
I've talked about the problems with shipping items to Hawai'i before. But recently, things have gotten even worse. Many Internet businesses no longer ship to Hawai'i. This is because their automagic order systems only have look-up tables for the 48 contiguous states. What you have to do is call or fax your order in if you want to ship to Hawai'i or Alaska.
Obviously, this should cut down on customers from here, although I'm not sure why they would want to decrease their sales. I can only blame the shippers like UPS and FedEx for these problems as they, as far as I know, provide the data in the first place.
All I can say is the U.S. Postal Service provides more reliable, fast, and cheaper service than either of the two above. The problem is, most businesses don't like to use the postal service. I have no idea why, other than the postman comes only once a day.
In either case, two recent orders from Amazon both came via the postal service and each arrived within two to three days. Not bad considering its price is about half the cost of the other two.
I still have to wonder though, why companies write off customers from two states?