Mail Shops Thriving With Holiday Crunch : Christmas: Business is brisk at private shipping centers as long-distance gift givers seek a way around post office lines.

Business at private mail centers was booming this week as Ventura County residents rushed to ship Christmas gifts to far-off relatives while avoiding lines at the post office.

Workers at places like Mail Call in Newbury Park boxed up teeny stocking stuffers and big-ticket gifts alike and shipped them off via United Parcel Service.

Mail Call, which handles 35 to 50 packages per day in the off-season, has been shipping up to 300 per day this week, said store owner John Apgar.

“You name it, we have it--we have big boxes, we have little boxes, we have computers going out, televisions,” he said. “They come here to do it all in one shot.”

Sherry Thompson of Thousand Oaks shuffled through a stack of wrapped gifts for relatives in Manassas, Va.

“They have everything here I need,” she said, putting the gifts into a shipping box and confessing to feeling a little holiday pressure. “It drives me crazy--I want to get it all done and get it all out.”

Just before noon Wednesday, Mail Call employees Susan Smith and Autumn Hanna darted from store to stockroom, rushing to serve nearly a dozen customers.

While Hanna assembled boxes with a screech and rip of her tape dispenser, Smith punched customer information into a computer that generated invoices for gifts bound for Pennsylvania, Michigan and Perris, Calif.

“I haven’t even done my shopping yet,” Smith said breathlessly, Christmas bells jingling on her socks. “I love it here at Christmas. I wear my bells, I have a different holiday sweat shirt for every day of the week.”

What about the post office?

“Ugh,” groaned Theresa Siddens of Ventura, waiting to ship a Lakers cap and iridescent sunglasses to her family in Texas. “I don’t want to stand in line for the Postal Service. I know these people, it’s sort of like a family here.”

Over at Mail Boxes Etc. in east Ventura, Tanya McCollough of Ventura readied three boxes wrapped in brown paper for shipment to relatives in Washington state and New Mexico.

“They’re much nicer than the U.S. post office, and there’s never a long line here,” she said. At the post office, “they just herd you in and herd you out. Here they’re much more personable,” she said.

Private mail centers cost more to use, but they have become more popular among patrons who want to avoid long lines, particularly at holiday time, said James Baer, founder of Associated Mail and Parcel Centers, a trade organization. Their numbers have increased from about 1,000 shops nationwide in 1981 to more than 8,000 this year, he said.

“The prices are somewhat higher, and we don’t get discounts from the post office or UPS” for shipping in bulk, said Baer, who also is president of the national trade group. “Our people have to add service charges. But you can park up close to the door, you don’t have to wait in line and most stores provide extra services,” such as fax and copy services and sales of office supplies.

However, lines at the post office are not nearly as long as people fear, said Ventura Postmaster Ron Wilson.

With extra staff hired for the holiday season, Saturday openings and floorwalkers serving customers not making cash transactions, “we’ve been getting them through the line in two or three minutes,” Wilson said.

The post office also has increased the number and hours of mailbox pickups, increased advertising for selling stamps by mail and installed separate mailboxes for Christmas cards, all to speed things up, he said.

If lines are longer than they are at private mail centers, the extra wait is the result of extra services--such as registered mail--that are offered only by the post office, he said.

“This time of year, that happens,” he said, referring to the delays.

Sometimes, though, delays begin at home.

Three-year-old Esteban Juarez leaned on his mother, Olivia Juarez of Ventura, as she boxed up a pair of Day-Glo roller skates Wednesday at Mail Boxes Etc., just in time to ship them to her godchild in Texas.

One day later, and she would have risked missing the holiday, store owner Tara Gavigan told her.

Juarez sighed, vowing not to wait so long to ship gifts next Christmas. “Next year, for sure, I’m going to start in November,” she said.