Originally Posted by
lincolnjkc
Data point: Had to get some documents to Scotland in advance of our wedding there last year.
It was cheaper to fly myself in Polaris (the day after we discovered the need) and rent a car to drop them off personally than it would have been to get them there fast with UPS, FedEx, or USPS global Express mail. It was also several days faster (UPS was the fastest of the three and could only guarantee by 5pm on the last possible day)
Now, I used miles for the flight so only wound up paying g taxes/fees/APDuty, but still...made me rethink actually shipping anything with time urgency, at least to Europe.
It was cheaper to fly yourself in Polaris with miles than ship something? Or it was cheaper to pay the hypothetically cheapest polaris fare than ship them? If the former, I'm not sure that's surprising given the labor and transport costs involved in rapid overnight global shipping. If the latter, i'm not sure how that can be possible unless you found an error fare for <$100, given the flatrate USPS Global Express envelope costs (unless you had a huge box of documents).
Also, even with miles I'm not sure the comparison is fair, since you are valuing the miles at $0.