Ah, the good old days. Records were vinyl, pay telephones were everywhere, and gas stations routinely offered full service.

And you could buy postage stamps from a machine in the post office lobby, something that appears to be a thing of the past.

“I had a funny thing happen at the William Street Post Office,” one reader said in an e-mail to Fix It. “I stopped to buy stamps, assuming they had a few machines in the lobby, which is always open. There wasn’t one stamp machine.”

When she asked an employee about the machines, she was told she needed to go to a supermarket.

“Apparently they took the stamp machines out,” she said. “I thought it was very odd, and I would love to know the reasoning . . . that decided to take the machines out.”

According to a post office spokeswoman, the removal of the stamp machines is actually part of a national initiative that started about three years ago.

“We had vending machines in our lobbies across the country,” Karen Mazurkiewicz, spokeswoman for the U. S. Postal Service in Western New York, said Friday. “But they were old, and in some cases the machines were no longer being made, so parts were difficult to find.”

At the same time, Mazurkiewicz said, the number of people mailing with stamps had been going down, so instead of continuing to invest in vending machines, the Postal Service decided to get rid of the machines. Instead, it offered other ways to purchase stamps, either online at usps.com or by mail by calling (800)- stamp24. Or you can simply ask your postal carrier, she said.

In addition, there are about 200 retail sites that sell stamps in the Buffalo area, including Tops and Wegmans, she said. There are also automated postal centers in Buffalo and the nearby suburbs where not only can you buy stamps, but you can use the self-service machines to purchase postage to mail a package.

“That is truly the vending machine of the future,” she said.

Fix It has tackled everything from faulty roads to broken public drinking fountains. Readers may submit suggestions three ways: by writing to Fix It, The Buffalo News, One News Plaza, Buffalo, NY 14203; by e-mail at

fixit@buffnews.com

; or by calling 849-6026.