<p>Poto, we have a videographer who is also a musician doing the actual recording, albeit only with a good camera and good external mic, properly placed. He’s then going to cut the CD/DVD’s for us, as nobody at my house has any time at the moment, least of all my son. I will recommend that they listen back before everyone leaves, though - that’s a great idea.</p>
<p>Does Fedex overnight any day of the week? Including weekends? Does UPS? (We like them better in our neighborhood!)</p>
<p>FedEx does pickups on the weekends–I think they are on Sunday as well. I know that at my local FedEx/Kinkos, the last pickup was 8:00pm on a weeknight and they guaranteed next day/end of day in their express pricing. So an envelope from Texas to anywhere was $24. And they got there. It is a huge relief!</p>
<p>I lie. I don’t think there are very many locations that have Sunday service, but almost all of them will have Saturday.</p>
<p>We have the little UPS Stores all over the place here. You can go on the website and put your zip in and they tell you the closest one. They’re open on Sat.</p>
<p>Yeah, ours has Saturday, too. And they’re so much nicer than the Fedex place! Not sure about Sunday, though. I guess they deserve a day off.</p>
<p>Be careful about the UPS stores (different from a UPS depot). In my city, the store is open until about 3 pm on Saturday, but anything dropped off on Saturday does not actually leave our city until Monday! Call you UPS store ahead of time to verify when your stuff will leave your city if dropped off by a certain time on a certain day. </p>
<p>Both Fedex and UPS are amazing for delivery speed. Once the stuff leaves your city, if you use a high priority service, it will arrive the next day. I live in northwestern Canada and stuff picked up from my workplace at 4 pm by either service always arrives the very next morning by about 9 am in some little podunk town in NJ or Texas after 4 flights including clearing international customs. Beats the pony express!</p>
<p>I thank you all - Your express shipments are helping to pay for my D’s college. If anyone has specific shipping questions, please PM me. While I work for one of the carriers mentioned, after this many years, I can probably give you details about either.</p>
<p>Not to cut BeezMom out of any profits, but I have also used the regular old post office and asked for delivery confirmation. It costs all of $3 and made it halfway across the country in two days. You can track it on the website just like UPS and it will give you a delivery receipt with the date and time. Same service at UPS cost me over $15. Sorry Beezmom. However, I used UPS again today just cuz . . .</p>
<p>POTO Mom - not to worry. I use the Post Office as well. I just put my two cents in because I thought it might be funny! and couldn’t we all use some humor right about now?</p>
<p>HUMOR -YES!!! I made my first (that I’m aware of) screw up on Friday. My D was sitting at the computer burning CDs and I read off the wrong repertoire to her. She burned it, labeled it, listened to it, mailed it and thank goodness, while standing in the shower yesterday, I had a flash of memory and ran to check the spreadsheet. ARRRGGGHHH. So that’s where UPS came in and a note of apology to admissions. The story nightmares are made of.</p>
<p>I think admissions people must be used to it…somehow D and I both missed the requirement that copies of her music needed to be sent three weeks in advance before the audition…that would be this weekend’s audition. Fortunately, they were very gracious about accepting an email copy!</p>
<p>Stradmom - Good luck this weekend! My D is ready to get started on auditions. She is SOOOOO over this senior year in HS. Let us know how it goes.</p>
<p>Thanks, POTO Mom! D feels as if the audition went pretty well, despite one of her strings slipping as she walked into the room. Now we just have to wait until April (!) to find out what the school thought about it…</p>
<p>And D found out that she needs not one, but two, bananas to conquer the nervousness!</p>
<p>I think the “waiting” game is the hardest on the nerves. Seems like if you audition in December you would hope to get some kind of feedback before April. I can hardly remember what I did last week, much less five months ago.</p>
<p>Question: did you do “signature required” with your various choices of delivery (UPS/FEDEX/USPS Express)???</p>
<p>I don’t remember asking for the signature but when I looked it up on the UPS website, it gave me the name of who signed. On the US Post Office Delivery Confirmation, it just tells you what time it was delivered during the day. In both cases, I confirmed with the admissions office that the application was complete and that they had everything they needed.</p>
<p>Since we’re talking about delivery to schools, most carriers will get a signature, but it will be someone in the mailroom, unless admissions has a separate stop. Under these circumstances, paying for signature required won’t get you anything different from FedEx or UPS - Not sure about USPS.</p>
<p>My question is more about delivery confirmation than anything. I remember reading last year one school lost someone’s prescreen, but they had some sort of proof so the school let them resend or something.</p>
<p>As long as you have the tracking number, you can get proofs of delivery online from both express carriers, and the same holds true for Priority Mail.</p>
<p>Also, depending if you create your shipping label online, you can request email confirmation of delivery - which saves anxiety!</p>