Offtopic: Stay away from Poste Italiane at all costs. The worst bank I have ever dealt with in my entire life. I'm glad that I don't have to deal with them anymore. Terrible service and eternal waitings on their branches. They are extremeley incompetent.
They’re actually doing alright on that list — and Belgium isn’t doing too badly either, especially considering it used to rank below Moldova a few years ago. That said, Belgium’s postal service is awful in every possible way. I once had packet losses of 50%, and the ping was miserable too.
During COVID, I needed stamps. The local post office? Closed. So I tried buying them online — and yes, you can order stamps online. But guess how they deliver them? By snail mail. Classic.
Now compare that to Germany. While Germany isn’t exactly a digital pioneer, its postal system has consistently performed well. I think they even offered a letter-scanning service at some point. And for years now, you’ve been able to print stamps at home. No printer? No problem — just write a code on the envelope with a pen. Every stamp includes a tracking code. As for those Amazon parcel lockers? Germany had them ages ago. And if I’m not mistaken, the idea was borrowed from former East Germany.
USPS is actually fairly reliable, but the post offices themselves feel run-down and neglected. Sometimes the solutions are simple. If I were running USPS, I’d tour post offices around the world to see what unique services they offer. What can we adopt, license, or copy? How are they staying profitable? There’s so much to learn.
As a data point CardMarket is an online Europe-wide market for collectible trading cards. Delivery from Italian sellers is usually much slower than from pretty much everywhere else and Italian sellers invariably sell at a discount (even when selling English language cards).
A bit off topic, but how do you guys use banks to buy expensive things? I always run into issues, like I couldn't pay for my dentist because my card had a 300$ tap limit (I had to come back the next day and pay the rest lol), and there's all sort of limits, like I don't think I can spent more than a couple thousand dollars a day even if I physically bring my card and insert it or whatever.
Add your card to your Google Wallet, and then use NFC from your phone for contactless payment. In Ireland the tap limit on a card is €50, but uncapped AFAIK using the same card via your Google Wallet.
Fintech banking like Revolut that comes with a separate IBAN and physical/virtual cards are helpful in such scenarios as well.
Currently, payments from your account to another account (you need the other party's IBAN) cost about 1.50€, probably less if you find a less greedy bank, and are executed immediately.
Retro options include cheques or (better) cashier's cheques.
All the banks I know have some limit over a sliding 30 day window. Some allow for this limit to be adjusted. But the minimum amount I've had was 1000 €.
Contactless is limited to 50 € per transaction. Going above requires inserting the card and entering the pin.
