Tech Experts Look To Help Save the Postal Service 398
An anonymous reader writes "Some of the folks responsible for developing and promoting e-mail, e-commerce and social media are banding together in an attempt to save the US Postal Service, the institution arguably most threatened by the technological developments of the past few years. As mail volume continues to plummet and more Americans use the Internet to pay bills and keep in touch, Google executives, social media experts and some of the most passionate tech evangelists are planning to meet in Crystal City in mid-June to sort out how to save and remake the nation's mail delivery service. The conference, PostalVision 2020, is designed to bring together the people who understand what this technology has done, is doing and will do to digital commerce and communication in America. USPS anticipates losing about $7 billion during the fiscal year that ends in September and is in the process of eliminating 7,500 postmaster and administrative positions to save money."
USPS (Score:2, Troll)
Re:USPS (Score:4, Insightful)
If it were solely a Government agency, it'd be doing "okay". Unfortunately, like AAFES, it's a Government owned business. It operates off of it's income and typically doesn't get any pork on it's own. Government is shrinking, yes...this, however, isn't going to shrink it in the right places.
Re:USPS (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm guessing you don't live in a rural community.
"Big government" aka the local post office in my central Virginia hamlet consists of a 400 square foot post office built by sectioning off the local country store. Along with the country store, it's the primary place to go to learn or pass along news, or to meet your neighbors. Of course it's kind of insane from a purely economic standpoint to maintain it, with a full-time postmistress, when there is a medium-sized PO five miles away in the next big town and a full-service PO a dozen miles away. But when that branch closes, and I suppose it will, it will mean one less point of human contact for folks around here, and some not insignificant additional burdens for people without a lot of money or with health problems for whom a trip to retrieve a package at a distance is not trivial.
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if you really want social contact, then perhaps living in the middle of nowhere isn't ideal
Great advice! Farmers and ranchers better be sociophobes, or they must give up on their businesses and move to cities. Since there are no farms in cities they will be collecting some social security and buying food in grocery stores, where it is made, instead of growing it in fields. After all, benefits of civilization should be available only to city folks, not to some useless rednecks, isn't it so?
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No, it's not. Not everything should be run like a business; not everything should be subject to the whims of the "free market". To believe such a thing is to not believe in society.
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Unlike a lot of government stuff, this case is interesting because post offices and post roads are one of the explicitly enumerated congressional powers (and ipso facto responsibilities) in the US constitution.
Though I would argue that what at the time was "post offices and post roads" is now "communications networks of every type"; there just weren't others at the time.
It's dying? (Score:3)
Re:It's dying? (Score:4, Insightful)
Every time I've been to the post office, there's been 15+ people in line. I have a hard time believing the mail system is on the way out any time soon. Telegraphs didn't kill it, telephones didn't kill it, why would email kill it?
Telegraphs aren't secure, but my email client has encryption features built in. Or do I still have to get it through an add-on? Either way it's there.
The USPS is only becoming more incompetent all the time. I just got a letter to a former resident who has been gone for years so I wrote "NOT AT THIS ADDRESS RETURN TO SENDER" with the only writing implement I could find at the time, a pencil, and took it back to the post office and handed it to them across the counter, saying "this is not for me, I don't really need this." They redelivered it to me the next day. The USPS is fucking incompetent at best and they should be left to die.
HAHAHA (Score:4, Interesting)
I just went to report this incident since it occurred to me they probably have a form to do so...
Thanks for your email.
A US Postal Services® representative will reply to your email within 2 to 3 business days.
The case number for request is: Problem processing ticket service request
Stay classy, USPS. They don't even listen to their own automated systems, they're not going to listen to a bunch of eggheads.
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They also have a monopoly on letter mail (save for super urgent mail), to the point that it's a crime for anyone else to use the mailbox IIRC. That's why you see newspapers put up those stupid boxes right next to yours.
Re:It's dying? (Score:4, Interesting)
Goody! More anecdotes!
A couple months back I sold some items to two separate people who knew each other (common message board). While these items were in route these gentlemen each informed me that they had no intention of paying me and that they were going to duplicate my items. They had a good laugh at duping me. I went to the local USPS branch, filled out one form for each package, and had them each intercepted prior to delivery and promptly returned to me. And for good measure I shared the correspondence on the board in questions, used their real names, sat back and enjoyed the show.
Yes, the USPS is clearly incompetent.
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The people in line don't do enough business to sustain the post office. Their bread and butter has always been mass mail, and it's dying as the internet takes over.
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The main problem with the Post Office is that it is a quasi-government operation, much like Freddie and Fanny were.
These never work.
In the case of the Post Office this manifests itself in vast overcapacity in inefficient operation. The management of the Post Office has a pretty good idea that what they need to do is cut down on branch offices and layoff people. But anytime they announce a branch office closing the people in the town that is served by the branch conduct a letter writing campaign to their Con
One question: Why? (Score:2)
- Alaska Jack
here in Italy.. (Score:4, Informative)
Mind you, I cannot but wonder....what would have happened if they auctioned off the post service altogether with the general delivery obligations? maybe large banks would have been interested? and think of the multiple conflicts of interest, since the Post is state owned.... no banking licences in the sticks where a post office is present? is there a ban on opening more post offices in rich neighborhoods? After all, banks are after assets, not post traffic...
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The Italian Post Office? I've heard stories about that. Let's say as evidence of their ineptitude that there are a lot of sellers on EBay that refuse to ship to Italy. There was one story where a guy did a test shipment of 4 bricks in a package to Rome, and the bricks arrived completely smashed into powder.
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For decades there were low-interest postal savings accounts offered in the USA, meant for rural areas not served by banks:
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Cannot resist shameless pun... (Score:2)
If you get a letter from the italian post office, is it a poste.it note?
*ducks incoming tomatoes*
The problem with USPS is ... (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone who shipped a lot of packages through USPS, the solution is very simple. Get a real time tracking system in par with UPS and FedEx (not bullshit overnight updates) and make the insurance for package claims less of a joke than UPS and FedEx.
As bills and correspondence mails have gone down, online buying and selling has taken it's place. But, most people are uncomfortable sending their packages through USPS. The tracking is only delivery confirmation and that costs extra at the post office. With cell phone technology, it should be trivial to implement real time updates.
If a package is lost, the insurance system is a joke. It takes forever and you can only correspond by mail. The insurance is ridiculously expensive and when you need it, it's a massive headache.
If they just fix those above issues, then lots of business would come swarming to them from online shippers.
Another thing, their rates are kinda screwed up. For heavy packages, the rates are much much higher than UPS and FedEx. It comes down to only making sense to send packages by USPS for under 4-5 lbs. They probably should also do the sweetheart deals with big companies that UPS and FedEx do - like shipping for pennies on the dollar for large volume shippers.
And, there are some sink holes like in Bell, CA that if packages get there, they come out weeks later (famous for losing Oscar votes). There are a few of them across the country.
I think USPS should move towards being more geared towards packages. But, that's just my end of the pond where I shipped packages through USPS. Maybe junk mail is the cash cow, or certified mail.
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The problem with those ideas is that they're basically already being covered by two strong competitors who have garnered people's trust. The USPS is redundant and perhaps, as the weaker candidate with little to offer the general public, it should be eliminated.
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Now postal on the other hand, will drop the key to the large mailbox in my box and I g
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Because you run into idiotic companies that only ship to billing addresses.
And UPS is the worst when it comes to cross-border shipments. You never know how much they're going to rip you off just for carrying the package across the border. USPS and DHL
Re:The problem with USPS is ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that the USPS delivers to, and picks up from, every address in the US and is required to do so. UPS and FedEx do not and do not have to. In addition, the USPS delivers a first-class letter anywhere in the US for 44 cents. Not everything can be handled electronically. Want to try sending all your physical letters via UPS or FedEx? Yes, I pay most of my bills electronically, but a few I cannot or there is a service charge that far exceeds the price of a stamp.
Perhaps there are efficiencies to be gained at the USPS and perhaps the prices are actually too low, but their mandate far exceeds the services only offered by UPS and FedEx. The problem with the USPS is that most people don't understand all they have to actually do, yet bitch about the inexpensive and universal services they do provide.
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So they have to upgrade their infrastructure? Mail trucks are not the size of UPS or FedEx trucks. They are designed for letters, so it makes sense to have pricing biased toward smaller items. But hey maybe you're right - that's the problem.
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Last package I got, the UPS tracking system explicitly told me that I should not expect any updates until 10 PM PST. FedEx seems to be on top of things, but UPS seems to be about the same as the post office as far as updates.
Re:The problem with USPS is ... (Score:4, Insightful)
No. Look, there are a lot of annoying things about the USPS, but it has only one real problem: it has to deliver to EVERY PLACE IN THE US. When you compare to FedEx or UPS, you miss the point. They go hub to hub, and they don't deliver to low population areas, more less support offices there.
If they cut back to more profitable services, they'd be well in the black, but their "mission" (which is dictated by the govt) precludes this, so there are problems.
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As a foreigner in a foreign country, USPS is brilliant. It's much cheaper and just as fast as the basic UPS/Fedex options, and despite the reputation within the 'states, I've not experienced any packet loss having things shipped internationally. So please don't kill it. The only folks to benefit would be the commercial couriers.
Re:The problem with USPS is ... (Score:4, Funny)
As someone who shipped a lot of packages through USPS, the solution is very simple. Get a real time tracking system in par with UPS and FedEx (not bullshit overnight updates) and make the insurance for package claims less of a joke than UPS and FedEx.
Overnight updates? What magical Good Luck Fairy is blessing you with so much information? My USPS experiences are more along the lines of:
Monday morning: Order a part online and pay for 3-day delivery. Get an email an hour later saying that my package has been mailed.
Tuesday: Shipping information received from customer
Wednesday: Shipping information received from customer
Thursday: Shipping information received from customer
Friday: Departure scan: Des Moines
Saturday: Arrival scan: Vladivostok
Sunday: Departure scan: Istanbul [customs note: not Constantinople]
Monday: Departure scan: Omaha
Tuesday: OUT FOR DELIVERY
Wednesday: Unattended delivery address: reprocessing
Thursday: Arrival scan: Fresno
Friday: OUT FOR DELIVERY
As far as I can tell, "3 Day Delivery" means 1) the day you ordered, 2) the day the Post Office picks it up, and 3) the day they deliver it, are guaranteed to be three separate days.
New Business Plan (Score:2)
Actually, that's what the USPS should do to raise some cash: sell us out to advertisers. It's not like I don't just throw away 95% of whats in the box anyway. Sifting past a few more dead trees wouldn't really be hard.
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Google should just buy the USPS. Then they'd have everyone's name and address, could mount cameras on the carrier's heads for mapping and insert advertising into each batch of mail. Actually, that's what the USPS should do to raise some cash: sell us out to advertisers. It's not like I don't just throw away 95% of whats in the box anyway. Sifting past a few more dead trees wouldn't really be hard.
That's what they should do? They already have. Junk mail pays for the postal system. Including all that lovely mail to "Current Resident", which is the snail-mail equivalent of a banner ad.
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I installed an ad-blocker in my mailbox. It's a little piece of paper that says: "No Advo please" and my ad-blocker server (read: mailperson) doesn't put that garbage in there.
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Not a bad idea at all, actually. They've already discussed the possibility of using postal delivery trucks as Street View cameras.. they would get everyone's address, and they could do a lot of mail digitization for us (especially since they're already set up to give anyone who wants one a free email address).
Why not Railroads? (Score:4, Interesting)
>> arguably most threatened by the technological developments of the past few years
I disagree! They are most threatened by gas prices! US Postal was originally transported on trains and hand sorted while the train was going to its' destination. Hand sorting on a train meant that everything was ready to be delivered on arrival rather than sorting at the destination postal facility. Airlines under bid railroads to get mail service but now they are having trouble competing. I see no reason why we shouldn't support our railroads and go back to delivering mail from the rails.
So what if it's losing money? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unlike, say, UPS, the US Postal Service is not and has never been a for-profit corporation. It's an agency of the US Government, required by law to exist, serve all citizens, and is granted a special monopoly status. If it's in the public interest, it can run at a deficit, take up unprofitable jobs like serving the people that live in the middle of nowhere (which many private competitors refuse to ship to), or keep prices lower than they would be in a pure market-driven system.
At worst, if the mail volume drops dramatically, they could move to having fewer delivery days in areas that don't get a lot of mail. And they may well be able to use technology to improve their sorting and delivery system, but as it stands they have processes that put FedEx to shame.
Re:So what if it's losing money? (Score:5, Insightful)
What he said. The Postal Service should not be treated like a private business. It serves a basic public need for everyone.
If you want to let something die, let GM or American Airlines die. Quit propping up entities that are actually supposed to be private companies.
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What he said. The Postal Service should not be treated like a private business. It serves a basic public need for everyone.
What is this basic public need? Today we have light-speed communications. We have distributed shopping and shipping. USPS is more expensive than UPS or FedEx for shipping stuff which must be shipped, you know, "stuff". (Defined as having mass and taking up space.) The others also seem to be capable of learning and responding to stimulus, for example I have them trained to deliver my packages to my gate and just leave them behind a bush so I can still have them if my gate is locked. USPS can't manage this, i
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If your cost information is true why does fedex offer smartpost as their cheapest option? Smartpost means fedex takes it to the local sorting center then USPS does final delivery. I can't imagine fedex is trying to lose money.
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FedEx's cost per package for a SmartPost package (vs. Ground or Air) is, in fact, dramatically lower. Granted, they also have smaller margins on SmartPost.
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If your cost information is true why does fedex offer smartpost as their cheapest option? Smartpost means fedex takes it to the local sorting center then USPS does final delivery. I can't imagine fedex is trying to lose money.
Because FedEx is prohibited from delivering to your mailbox. If they could, then they would, they'd have more trucks out, they would make deliveries of flat mail on fewer days unless you actually paid the cost of delivery, because they run like a business, because they ARE a business, not a quasi-government/quasi-private agency operating unfunded mandate.
Re:So what if it's losing money? (Score:5, Informative)
Congress sets the amount of money that the USPS has to pay into its pension and healthcare funds. This money is "held is trust" by congress (i.e. was spent 5 years before it came in.). The USPS has been forced to over pay for pension and retiree healthcare costs by over $80,000,000,000.00. Most of the $7,000,000,000.00 loss this year comes from an $5,000,000,000.000 payment into the retiree health benefits fund. In fact the USPS would have been profitable in the last 8 out of 10 years if it wasn't forced to subsidize congress's spending binges.
Congress requires the USPS to give rates to Non-profits that are below cost. Theoretically, congress is supposed to pay the difference, but hasn't for 17 years.
Periodicals (Time, WSJ, People ect) get preferential rates because of the lobbying power of the press. If I mail a 2.1 oz flat at presort standard rates (after putting the data through the national change of address database, something not required of periodicals) the lowest rate I could possible get is $0.194 per piece. I only get that rate if I bring it to the Sectional Center Facility where the mail will be sorted, and I presort it to the sequence the carrier walks in, and have pieces going to 90% of the residents on the route. That same piece going periodical rate only pays $0.16 for faster service.
I'm not denying that the USPS has problems of its own making it needs to deal with. It caved to the unions far to much in the past, giving it a very expensive workforce that thinks it constantly battling the evil management.
All of this comes from many years in the mail service provider industry. I'm not Aunt Edna that mails 3 birthday cards a year, and thinks that entitles her to complain that the Post Office in town is closing, even though it is within 2 miles of other Post Offices. I do multi-million dollar postage amounts every year. I am on first name basis with several USPS VPs.
Re:So what if it's losing money? (Score:5, Informative)
I posted all that as background for this next part.
Because of all these changes, some employees are under different pensions and healthcare systems than others. The first pension system is over funded (by govt. mandate) by around $70,000,000.00. This money was put into the general govt. retiree pension fund, which was spent by congress years ago. Newer USPS employees are part of a different pension/healthcare fund. Congress mandated that this fund be fully funded before 2020. That meant the USPS had to set aside about $5,500,000.00 a year for a decade to fund retirees that won't retire until 2040. Because the money goes to congress, the budget deficit seems smaller every year the USPS pays. So the USPS has 2 pension funds (more than that really, but this is the simple explanation). One is massively over funded, but stolen by congress. The other has an unsustainable funding schedule to make congress's budget deficit seem smaller.
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it's hard to not treat it like a private corporation when you have to *pay* to use it. it can't be a "service" provided by our wonderful government when it's often LESS expensive to ship something via fedex or ups instead.
i already pay my taxes. if the governments wants to charge me for their "service", i will treat it just like i treat private companies whose products and services i pay for -- such as ups.
The USPS doesn't use a dime of your tax money. (Except, IIRC, to pay the regulatory board)
Eggheads vs. entrenched bureacracy (Score:3, Interesting)
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When an IT worker can tell her supervisor "No YOU do it!" and not be fired
or an IT worked can email a supervisor saying something is "Bull Shite" (yes mispelled too)
[we laugh and laugh about this one] and not get fired do to the union entrenchment
perhaps you all can get a clue as to what USPS really faces..
I don't spell that poorly, but I do tell my boss to fuck off on a regular basis. I do call out bullshit when I see it as well. I am a valuable employee and as such my opinion matters. If an employee does
Prehaps.. (Score:3)
Here's a suggestion for them (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's my suggestion to make the post office more useful. Let everyone register a postal address that is dissociated from a physical address. Then when I move, instead of filing a change of address form and hoping that everyone who wants to send mail to me ever again sends it in the next year, I can just tell the post office "Yeah, that postal address should now be delivered to this *new* physical address"
The biggest problem is the fundamental issue that individual residents make the flawed assumption that they are the post office's customers, when in fact they are the post office's product. They are a product being sold, and if you want to know who's buying you, just look at the ton of spam in your mailbox. Any demands for better service aren't heard as dissatisfied customers, but as disgruntled products.
Postal service is just spamware (Score:2)
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In Canada you can just put a sticker on your mailbox that says "No Junk Mail" or anything to that effect and they actually stop putting that crap in your box. Do they have this kind of thing in other countries?
In Santa Cruz, CA they told us we could put a sticker on the mailbox that says who you accept mail for and they will keep all the rest. They lied. My plan is to move to the boonies and then I won't accept any postal mail. I'll pay a minimal fee to someone to round file anything non-official for me and send me the rest. There must be someone out there who will do that for me; there are certainly mail forwarding services. I don't need the spam, and neither do they.
Seems like if you're going cold in the winter
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Not here in the USA, sadly ;( Largely because the postal service here subsidizes itself with all the ads that it then delivers - offering an opt-out would cost them money. I fail to understand why companies must comply with CAN-SPAM for email, where there is virtually no cost to dealing with spam messages, but there is no such restriction on a consumer's right to have pounds of garbage dropped in their lawn every day and a very real cost is incurred to do it.
It's probably unfixable (Score:2)
Government bureaucracy + unionized workers. I highly doubt it can be "fixed".
Let mail delivery die. (Score:2)
FedEx and UPS could EASILY pick up this traffic. Yes, they'd have to hire a bunch of people. Good thing there will be lots of postal workers becoming unemployed! I'd be perfectly OK with my mail carrier only showing up once a week for regular mail and dropping it off in a big bundle in order to save money, and only make a special trip for packages if the sender pays normal FedUps rates to get it there within X days. They only pick up my trash twice a week, and I'm OK with that.
Hell, for regular mail (non-pa
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They only pick up my trash twice a week, and I'm OK with that.
: Wow, twice a week? Seems like overkill.... the trash get's picked up once every three weeks starting this month in my city. Recycling every 2 weeks and compost every 2 weeks. Twice a week seems like lots of costs could be cut from the local garbage collector. Even with all 3 combined (trash, recycling and compost), it amounts to an average of 1 and 1/3 collection per week, but most people don't put out their compost bin everytime they come by to collect.
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I assume you live outside the USA. I have lived both in EU nations and in the USA. In the USA everything is prepacked. Tomatoes come on styrofoam and wrapped in plastic or in a plastic box. Composting in the USA is very rare, and most people don't even recycle glass and plastic.
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Sure, but then it all gets thrown away, to rot in a landfill forever... Either way, it's bad for the environment.
Easy. (Score:2)
Raise the damned rates! And I do mean by a substantial amount.
If your customer base has shrunken, you've lost out to a competitor. If it's essentially vanished, you offer nothing they don't. Despite what may be said, the Post Office isn't dead -- it's just broke. You want to mail a letter? You want to make sure it gets there?
Five bucks to mail a personal letter. You may hate it, but when it comes time to mail a letter to your girlfriend in California, five bucks won't seem like such a burden after all. And
We need a postal service, but... (Score:2)
We still need a postal system, because we still sometimes need to send physical documents, packages, etc. What we DON'T need is mail delivery six days a week. Mail delivery could be cut down to only four days a week. Carriers could have larger routes, but two or more days in which to run them. The changes which need to be made are not complicated, but the bottom line is that we need fewer postal employees, and that's where it's going to get tough.
Worst kind of government "agency" (Score:5, Insightful)
The United States Postal Service, while operated by the United States government, is required to be self-sustaining. Yet, it is not allowed to be autonomous. It seems like every time they try to cut costs - closing redundant retail locations, eliminating Saturday delivery, etc. - they face extreme opposition from Congress (often saving because the waste benefits their districts). In addition, they are prevented by law from raising postage rates above the rate of inflation - no matter what their costs do. I'd hate to try to operate a business under those conditions.
That being said, there are some areas where efficiency could be improved. I recently started doing mass mailings for my business, and was appalled by some aspects of their processes - the user interface of their employee-facing software was terrible, for instance (and, perhaps more surprisingly, veteran employees seemed unaware of its quirks).
I think that we (as a country) need to realize that delivering small mailpieces to every household and business in the United States will never be a profitable venture, and be willing to ensure its financial viability through subsidies while also enabling and encouraging efforts to improve efficiency. UPS and Fedex are profitable because they skim off the lucrative parts of the business - large package and express delivery - leaving the rest for the USPS. The USPS serves a very valuable role in this regard, especially for certain less-advantaged populations. We can't expect it to operate like a for-profit business while simultaneously demanding that it fulfill these money-losing - yet necessary - responsibilities.
3 deliveries/week, or less (Score:2)
In Victorian London, where postage was the only way to communicate, there were 3 mail deliveries per day. You could toss a letter in the box in the morning, and good odds your recipient would have it in-hand by the evening.
Now, in the age of email and massive abilities to communicate with each other, mail is only useful where the actual physical delivery of something is needed - we have better ways to communicate information.
I'd say that we could easily now drop to 3 or even 2 mail deliveries per week and
6 Days a week is overkill (Score:3)
Mail is down to a trickle. Every time I see the mail lady drive down my street of about 20 houses, she stops at oh, 5 of them, unless it's a day we all get some junkmail.
So, lets back it down to 3 days a week. Mon, Wed Fri? Mon, Wed, Sat?
And for rural areas, lets limit pickup. I used to live down a 1/2 mile dirt road. We rarely got any mail, however, every day the mail lady drove to the end of the road to see if our flag was up. What a waste. How about we make some community drop boxes that can be checked without getting out, going behind it, and dumping a bag.
Keeping the USPS solvent would be easy: (Score:4, Interesting)
I would gladly -- nay, eagerly -- pay a small monthly fee to the USPS in exchange for the mail carrier performing one simple service: spam filtering.
Take all the flyers, coupons, and other advertisements, along with all the mail not addressed to me (I very frequently get mail not only for the previous residents who sold us the home 2+ years ago, but for the residents prior to them, and the residents prior to those residents going back at least a decade), and deliver those items straight to the trash.
Twilight zone? (Score:3)
At the post office, the lines are reasonable, the staff friendly (although I do use the APC for most services.)
I've receive most of my eBay deliveries via regular mail, and it works fine.
The mailperson who works my block knows me by sight.
I actually prefer to use Priority Mail over UPS or Fedex. It's cheap and easy for one, and the post office won't sit on the package if they can deliver it faster than the TOS. If they can do it overnight, they'll deliver it overnight. If it's gonna take three days, they'll deliver it in three days. (UPS? If the deal is to deliver it in two days, its gonna take two days, even if the location is only thirty miles away.)
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Re:why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because it performs a valuable service that there still isn't any combination of complete substittues for. (Anyone who thinks UPS or FedEx could just step in on the mail or stuff-delivery end doesn't know shit about the shipping industry and should be treated as such.)
For example: Do you like Amazon or Netflix? They wouldn't exist without the USPS.
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If they're losing $7 billion/year, it doesn't look like the USPS can handle the job either.
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OTH, if you are losing 7 billion out of say 250 billion, then it is minor, and can be corrected.
The problem is that this is 7 billion out of about 100-250 b.
That amount of money was caused by piss-poor planning from about 5-10 years ago.
What is needed is for them to drop their costs (such as move to 100% electric vehicles) and get more for their labor costs such as collecting utility data on all of their routes
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I always choose UPS or FedEx for Amazon, and stream Netflix.
I only ever use the USPS when I don't have a choice, and I loath it every time. Their idea of package tracking is "we'll let you know around the time it may or may not have arrived".
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I questioned the USPS on that recently. Tracking tells me that my package has been accepted, then processed, then it leaves point of origin - then it's in limbo for 1 - 6 days. Suddenly, the package has arrived in destination city, and it's out for delivery.
The story is, the package is processed, then it goes into a bin. That bin goes into a truck, and the truck travels without ever having that bin scanned again, until it is offloaded in the destination sorting facility. At that point, it MIGHT be scann
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I always choose UPS or FedEx for Amazon, and stream Netflix.
Sure; but neither of those options would exist without free-delivery Amazon and snail-mail Netflix.
There probably will come a day when that isn't true. Today isn't that day.
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Anything you don't care about, can probably be sent electronically just as easily.
Anything you DO care about should never ever be sent by USPS.
I've had nothing but bad experiences with sending stuff via USPS. nothing. Tracking numbers that still read "waiting for pickup" at the origin point days after they've been delivered (i.e. tracking is useless). packages that mysteriously disappear for months at time with nothing but a shrug from the postal service. packages that take days to show up even though they'
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That's exactly it. The USPS does something that, from a profit point of view, is a terrible idea.
Yet that terrible idea provides a huge value to the country, even an economic value in terms of the tax revenue generated by businesses that could not otherwise exist.
That's why the free market can't replace it.
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like delivering junk mail
if i don't check my mail every day in a few days my mailbox is overflowing with catalogs that i usually dump straight into the recycling bin. the USPS makes a lot of money from these and won't stop delivering them and legally the postman can't just dump them in the trash at my request
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Because it performs a valuable service that there still isn't any combination of complete substittues for.
You mean a service that cannot legally be substituted for? [worldsstrangest.com]
Armed USPS inspectors raided the company’s Atlanta headquarters to determine whether or not the letters the company had been sending via FedEx were indeed “extremely urgent” as required by the Private Express Statutes. The letters didn’t pass the test, and Equifax ended up having to pay a $30,000 fine.
Re:why? (Score:4, Interesting)
Exactly. Nobody can even try to compete with a government-mandated monopoly that loses money. The way to 'save' it is probably to destroy it. I guarantee people will still need to send letters, and people will still pay for the service, and someone will step up and handle the issue.
I don't think we even need to be that drastic, though. Just repeal the law and force USPS to make a profit and the market will take over.
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Correct. I've found recently that FedEx and UPS are taking packages from shippers, bringing them to my part of Outback, Nowhere, then handing the packages off to the USPS. This seems odd, and maybe wrong. They are apparently undercutting the USPS on sales at the point of origin, then tasking USPS with final delivery. No, I haven't really checked into this, it may be a good money making arrangement for the USPS, but I doubt it.
What I think is, the USPS needs to be rethought, at all levels, and restructur
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Basically what you're describing is called zone skipping, and the USPS / FedEx / UPS have collaborated and thrown a fair amount of money to make it possible, so I assume it has to work out in the USPS's favor in some way.
Amazon free shipping tends to use FedEx's version of this scheme.
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Private companies, concerned with profits, cannot guarantee that rural residents will receive mail with the same prices and service as people in the heart of downtown. The USPS can.
This is exactly the problem with the USPS. To deliver to my house takes a heck of a lot less effort than to that guy living in the middle of nowhere above the Arctic circle. Why subsidize the rural population? What is it about living from civilization is so great and important that we must pay for it? This isn't 1800, the requirement for vast segments of our population to work the land for food is gone.
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Re:why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this mentality entirely whole American or is this how everyone in Europe thinks about all their government does for them.
Why subsidize the sick population with healthcare?
Why subsidize kids with schools?
Why subsidize roads for those with cars?
Why subsidize those without cars with public transportation?
Why subsidize those in rural populations with Internet/Postal Service/etc?
Because it's what makes a society function. When I traveled abroad and the topic of healthcare came up, to the people I was with (Dutch) it just seemed unfathomable not to take care of your fellow Americans. Where as if it's breeched with a large part of the population it's "This is mine, you can't have any." I'm not saying either mentality is wrong but it just seems like a fundamental difference in thinking.
We watch CEOs walk away from failing corporations with hundreds millions of dollars in their hands and people go "meh". But try to get the homeless addict into counseling, off the street and into a productive role in society and everyone is up in arms. I was watching a documentary and people allow it because it's the "American Dream" and if they should ever magically win the lottery or become a multi-national CEO, the don't want that dream taken away from them.
And the most best part, we're a "Christian" nation. As my AP government told us. Jesus is the most popular socialist of all time.
Maybe I just need to move to Europe.
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USPS actually did a poorer job than Lysander Spooner's company, the American Letter Mail Company. ALMC provided better service to more people, for cheaper prices than the USPS. Then the government shut him down, and gave the USPS a monopoly. Thus there have been rising prices for over a century for mail.
UPS and Fedex and others don't break the monopoly because they can't - they're forced to pay whatever shipping cost the USPS would have charged the customer to USPS, and then add their own overhead on top of
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Those that live on the end of dirt roads don't stay there, once a week they could go into to
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Yeah, government can guarantee any and every single thing it wants - it doesn't have to make money. All this is good until it crashes the economy with its weight and then the guarantees will mean nothing. Who cares that you'll get your check and your paper money if they buy nothing?
Let's see how the government 'guarantee' is working out for the housing market and price stability and SS and minimum wage and Medicare/Medicaid and safety and the value of the dollar itself.
What did Ben say when asked by Ron Pa
Re:why? (Score:5, Interesting)
If the objective is efficiency, you might as well tell any rural areas that aren't totally loaded to shove off and learn to enjoy natural solitude, and let any impecunious urban areas enjoy the newfound feeling of community that comes with being cut off.
I'm not sure that that would be such a popular move; but it definitely would decrease the per-capital cost of infrastructure.
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Re:why? (Score:4, Insightful)
"The USPS's first incarnation was established by Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia in 1775, by decree of the Second Continental Congress. The Post Office Department was created from Franklin's operation in 1792, as part of the United States Cabinet, then was transformed into its current form in 1971, under the Postal Reorganization Act."
It was so important, that the Postmaster General used to be in line for succession to the President. Even in 1775, it was acknowledged that information was one of the most critical functions of a nation. It affects security, commerce, and national unity.
Why does this matter now? Because while paper mail may not seem important, the United States government must ensure information flow. That's why we regulate telephone, radio, television, and the Internet. Rain, sleet, snow or hail, information is arguably the make or break of a nation.
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guess i'm not sure why it should be saved. just because it's been around awhile?
Because it is a service mandated by our Constitution?
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Chug along in the black, year over year, without any government $$$.
Not surprising, when you consider what a miserable experience it is to go to the post office. Lines, attitudes, incomprehensible forms, and shlockly-looking people.
It's like the DMV meets Walmart.
Parent's notion is so flat out wrong that it should probably be flagged as "troll".
to virtually every address in the neighborhood. Every day. The UPS guy might stop at one or two houses within eye-shot every day, dropping off large boxes of stuff, for which the sender has paid many, many times what the sender of all those USPS first class letters paid. The USPS could be profitable without losing business to the private carriers. They are tooled up to handle first class and bulk (junk) mail like no one els
Re:And FedEx and UPS (Score:5, Insightful)
In a sense, the real question facing us about the postal service is approximately similar to the real questions behind rural electrification, or telcom access: There are places in the country where providing infrastructure is, per capita, cheap. There are others where providing it is really, really, really expensive. There are areas where the infrastructure customers are relatively wealthy, and ones where they definitely aren't.
We can definitely trust the private sector(as long as they don't gain monopolies or oligopolies) to serve areas where customer willingness to pay is sufficiently high and cost per capita sufficiently low. We then come to the question of what to do about the ones where that isn't the case.
Obviously, this doesn't imply that the postal system is well managed, or that it couldn't do better(and, if improvement is available, it should definitely be undertaken); but, like rural telco and electrification, the fundamental question is not one of wringing out small operational efficiencies; but of whether or not we, as a society, wish to provide a baseline infrastructure to areas where it is not strictly economically justified. Depending on exactly how efficient you are, these areas may be somewhat smaller or somewhat larger; but it will almost always be the case that you could improve financial performance by just writing off your lossy service areas and letting them suck it up.The question is, is that what we want?
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I would much rather go to the DMV than walmart. Less yelling children, cleaner floors and probably faster service.
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UPS has union drivers? That explains a lot. One of my drivers is great. The other one can't make it gracefully up and down my driveway and instead of leaving packages off to the side where only I can see them he leaves them right under the chain in the middle of my driveway where I just want to slap the dumb bastard. He lost his truck off the side of my driveway one day turning around where I told him not to and spent three hours waiting and getting fished out by a tow truck because he is a big idiot. I hav
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I don't like the first suggestion. I am not about to go to the post office and stand in line for a hour just to get a lot of junk mail, and maybe one letter that matters. If the number of delivery days were cut down to only a couple, and the routes staggered, we could eliminate about half the carriers and other postal staff. This would be a better way to rein in costs and still have mail delivered to your door.
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I have no need to have mail picked up and delivered to my house 6, or even 5 days a week. I would be willing to drive to the post office a couple of times a week. Perhaps most people would. I am sure there are people for whom that isn't practical: they should pay a premium for home pickup/delivery.
Yeah, I would love to wait in line behind the 50,000 people in my county who want their mail today. Fucking brilliant.
Stamps should be RFID tags. Businesses who create large volumes of mail would associate the address information with the tag ID at the time the mail is created. For people who hand address envelopes, the address would be keyed & associated at the post office, once. From that point on the mail could be handled - sorted & routed - automatically.
Letters, magazines, etc already gave bar codes on them. They're run through machines and automatically sorted this way. Hand-written letters have barcodes printed on them when they're first handed in. Have been for decades. It's simple, cheap, and effective. Thanks for trying.
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Junk mail never bothered me since I always figured the senders were footing the bill. Let them waste their money sending me brochures for crap I'll never buy.
Guess I was wrong :(
Re:End the government monopoly - not (Score:3)
the USPS is a goverment monopoly that provides (roughly) equal service to everyone in the country, rich or poor, NYC or Alaska.
If you go to a private company, it may be cheaper, but aside from cutting wages for rank and file, and greatly boosting wages in the c suite, the main way they will save mmoney is cherry picking - what happens in health insurance.
you live in NYC, in an apt building, doesn't cost anything to deliver mail. You live in Alaska, you outta luck.
just what the health i