Amazon Opposes Plan To End Saturday Mail Delivery 504
theodp writes "Online retailer giant Amazon.com has come out against a US Postal Service proposal to end Saturday service, part of efforts to address the USPS budget deficit. 'Amazon's customers have come to appreciate and expect Saturday delivery,' explained Amazon VP Paul Misener. 'If the five-day delivery proposal is not withdrawn,' he added, 'we ask that Congress ensure that Saturday delivery be maintained.' In the past, Amazon has argued that it should not have to help support public services in states in which it has no physical presence." The article adds, "Interestingly, online DVD service Netflix is backing the plan to end Saturday mail delivery, arguing that a 'well functioning' Postal Service is more important than 'maintaining current delivery frequency.'"
Minus one, just plain wrong (Score:5, Informative)
The United States Post Office is self-sufficient [nalc.org]
Re:USPS isn't a State Function (Score:5, Informative)
I think that's referring to Amazon defending its exemption from sales taxes (as cross-state sales typically are, at least in practice), the argument being that it's not bearing its share of e.g. road upkeep costs for the products its delivering.
Of course, I disagree with that argument, since taxes are normally completely decoupled from provision of the government service they fund, but I'm just trying to clarify what (I think) it's referring to.
Canada doesn't have any saturday deliveries (Score:5, Informative)
Not Canada Post, not FedEx, not UPS, not DHL, not Purolator. Nobody delivers on saturday except pizzerias.
Re:A better solution (Score:4, Informative)
"Section 8 - Powers of Congress
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;
To establish Post Offices and Post Roads
; To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;
To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations;
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings; And
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof."
Re:Neflix != Amazon, and postal service == bad (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Neflix != Amazon, and postal service == bad (Score:5, Informative)
It would be a great first step if they simply removed the federal monopoly on first class mail. That certainly wouldn't require changing the Constitution.
Re:Neflix != Amazon, and postal service == bad (Score:3, Informative)
Eliminating the national post office would require a Constitutional amendment. Delivering the mail is in the U.S. Constitution.
No, Congress is empowered to establish a post office, and post roads, but they are not obligated to do so. The USPS could be eliminated without an amendment, but I hope it wouldn't be.
They don't need to. (Score:5, Informative)
That's 17% fewer movies sent and received by Netflix every week. I would expect them to also want more public holidays in a year as well
They don't need to. From their current Terms and Conditions:
We reserve the right to process orders and otherwise allocate and ship DVDs among our members in any manner that we, in our sole and absolute discretion, determine. In addition, we will, in our sole and absolute discretion, determine the quantity of DVDs we purchase for any particular movie, their location within our distribution network and the level of staffing and number of shipments to be processed at each distribution center.
Every new Terms and Conditions, they're putting things in their agreement that allows them not to give you "unlimited" whatever ....
There's verbiage in it that limits your "unlimited" online viewing too now.
Re:USPS isn't a State Function (Score:3, Informative)
... However the USPS is not a govt agency, govt funded maybe but not direct govt.
Interesting that on USA.gov where they list all the government agencies they list the postal service. http://www.usa.gov/Agencies/Federal/All_Agencies/P.shtml [usa.gov]
Also my two BIL's that work for the post office are in the government retirement plan and don't get social security.
Re:USPS isn't a State Function (Score:1, Informative)
Why should a company have to pay taxes to a state simply because they're delivering something there?
There's nothing immoral about it. State's are running up deficits because they're run by people the corrupt and incompetent. Instead of fixing the problems, they are looking for their next revenue stream.
This is not just about Amazon. If a mom and pop shop sells a dress from their website to a person out of state, why should they have to pay the taxes of that state? Talk about an unnecessary cost of doing business.
As others have pointed out: they have a duty to pay for shipping (either directly, or indirectly by charging the consumer), but otherwise the services of that state should be irrelevant to that company and those people.
Re:Jack up the price? (Score:2, Informative)
Amazon offers flat rate shipping subscriptions (their Prime service), anything that costs more money to them hurts their bottom line initially until they can figure out how to adjust it later(It's an annual subscription). Just like how they are fighting this "brown bailout" which is UPS's attempt to lobby the law that prohibits fedex ground from unionizing. FedEx unionizes their workforce, and their costs go up. Then UPS can put some slack back in their profit margins. Amazon doesn't want that to happen either. Also if the cost for Saturday delivery goes up, people will be less inclined to opt in for the upgrade in shipping, and instead turn to a local retailer to get their goods in time for their weekend needs.
Netflix is only supporting the USPS change because it'll eliminate 1/6th of their delivery/processing days, and saves them a ton of money. They haven't stated yet if they plan to lower the costs of their service to reflect the loss to the customers. Of course they try to spin it as supporting the well being of their delivery medium, but in reality it again all comes down to the bottom line.
I personally like the option of a cheap Saturday delivery, and hope that the USPS can figure out a way to generate more revenue and keep their 6 day schedule.
Re:Be careful what you ask for? (Score:5, Informative)
Q. Amazon, can you pay some taxes here? A. No way, we don't want to operate this way. Q. Amazon, what should be we do about the spending problem and the deficit? A. Cut your services. Q. Amazon, we are going to cut the services, happy? A. NOOOOOO!
The USPS is funded solely by the sale of postage, not tax dollars and thus has NO impact on the deficit. .
Re:Canada doesn't have any saturday deliveries (Score:4, Informative)
Not true; you can receive Saturday delivery from FedEx if you are willing to pay for it.
Re:Be careful what you ask for? (Score:2, Informative)
of-course, and the social security money is not used for anything else ever, it just sits there collecting the interest.
Re:Minus one, just plain wrong (Score:3, Informative)
Re:End mail delivery on Monday, Wednesday, or Frid (Score:5, Informative)
Many USicans only have Saturdays free to run errands. Ending services on Saturday is a burden to them.
How does a lack of Saturday delivery interfere with running errands? I find your comment confusing.
For comparison, I offer the Canadian system. While delivery only occurs on Monday through Friday, postal services are often available on an extended schedule. Canada Post maintains a network of service counters (often in drug, convenience, and grocery stores) which provide parcel services, sell money orders, and supply copies of frequently-used government documents (passport applications, tax forms). These local outlets also act as pickup points for parcels which are too large for home delivery (the stuff that didn't fit in your mailbox while you were out).
Many of these counters have extended weeknight hours (beyond typical nine-to-five business hours) and offer Saturday hours; some are even open on Sunday afternoons. (The retailers hosting the counters have probably realized that extended postal hours can attract customers.) In other words, Canadian Saturday-errand-runners have no trouble obtaining postal services, even in the absence of Saturday delivery.
Letters and smaller parcels can, of course, be sent at any time simply by dropping in a post box.
Re:USPS isn't a State Function (Score:2, Informative)
However the USPS is not a govt agency, govt funded maybe but not direct govt.
Did you mean to say "the USPS is not a state govt agency? Because it most certainly is a federal funded, constitutionally mandated federal function, with the Postmaster General being a cabinet level position. The specific rules, funding, and post office distribution is certainly up to debate, however. Citation, plz? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Clause [wikipedia.org]
Re:I would make it even more drastic (Score:3, Informative)
Unions won't allow that. The reason they are focusing on Saturday, that way [nearly] all full-time union workers can keep their jobs. Saturday has been an overtime / part-time job for the new guys on the route.
Same argument wnet for the "Drop Wednesday" plan. Keep the same number of days (5), and nobody loses their jobs.
Now those paying attention will notice that you don't save very much if you keep the same number of workers, with the same base pay rate, same benefits, and the same number of post offices open.
Re:USPS isn't a State Function (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know of a state that doesn't have a line on their income tax forms enabling an individual to remit sales tax on out-of-state purchases. The notion is no different from having Oregon (a state with no sales tax) retailers collect and remit for their non-resident customers their state of residence sales tax. It's an unrealistic logistical and administrative burden, especially for small, "out of their garage"/"mom and pop" retailers.
The concept of a sales tax is a piss poor idea from a number of different angles. Of which includes the fact that it's horribly regressive, burdening low-income individuals relative to their income substantially more than others. Only a token gesture is made in some states to offset this fact by not taxing food and sometimes clothes. Having untold thousands of revenue collection points (each retailer) as opposed to a single point (state treasury) has got to rank rather high on the stupidity scale as well; especially when nearly all of these states have an income and/or property tax that they're collecting as well anyway. Why not just lump all of the taxation into one revenue stream, eliminate the substantial costs of collecting and administering multiple streams.
Re:The difference between Amazon and Netflix (Score:5, Informative)
Sure they don't drop it off at your house, and most post office customer areas are not open sundays (they probably can't stop saturday customer house for people who work), but mail that is in the system is constantly moving. If it was going to arrive on monday, it will still arive on monday (with saturday's mail).
I wouldn't be surprised if they still send the trucks around for a daily pickup on the blue boxes on saturdays since this requires significantly less labor than actually delivering mail to every single house in the country.
Re:The difference between Amazon and Netflix (Score:4, Informative)
They do things like mess with your queue. A movie that is ready to ship will appear as "long wait". Your DVDs will be shipped from a shipping center across the country so that it takes 2-3 days to get to you and back, etc.
Ending Saturday delivery will only help netflix screw its customers out of more money. One more reason I don't have a netflix subscription.
Re:Minus one, just plain wrong (Score:4, Informative)
Uh, let's revisit that idea. From the section titled "The Postal Service is self-sufficient" -- there are two columns. One is for 1942-1971 and one is for 1972-2007. Several things wrong. The most grievous is that the numbers have convenient grouped 35 years of operating costs and revenue together. The second is that your stats still show a net loss of $600 million dollars for those 35 years.
But, addressing the more important point, the decline of demand for mail delivery services has happened in the age of the internet. Let's break those out by year instead of grouping them together in a three decade chunk. And instead of citing a website from the National Association of Letter Carriers, let's use the actual financial report from the USPS.
Financial Highlights -- FY2009 [usps.com]
Observe net loss.
Re:Neflix != Amazon, and postal service == bad (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Jack up the price? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Bullshit argument (Score:3, Informative)
And where would they be moving to??
"Global economy" Fine sent from Europe. Guess what tariff on the goods coming in from out of the country would out way the "cheaper" cost of the goods. So consumers in the US would still by at a higher price then from another country. So the company that just moved would then close down.
Why do you think in a global economy most companies that do business globally have an office or plant located in that country.
So it can be made there and avoid the import costs.
I always did love the straw man of "well then we will move and people will be out of a job".
The Mining industry is claiming that big time if they are taxed they will move, and people will loose jobs.
How does one move a mine to a different state and still have the product (gold, diamonds, silver, etc) at the bottom of the mine?