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United States Government

Are Amazon Packages Disrupting Mail Services in Some Small Towns? (msn.com) 164

Posted by EditorDavid from the boxes-with-smiles dept.
100 miles south of the Canadian border, the tiny town of Bemidji, Minnesota "has been bombarded by a sudden onslaught of Amazon packages" since early November, reports the Washington Post, "and local postal workers say they have been ordered to deliver those packages first."

A spokesperson for the U.S. Postal Service tells the Post that's not true, and that their service "does not prioritize the delivery of packages from Amazon or other customers."

But whatever's going on, the Post reports that "The result has been chaos..." Mail is getting backed up, sometimes for days, leaving local residents waiting for checks, credit card statements, health insurance documents and tax rebates. Routes meant to take eight or nine hours are stretching to 10 or 12. At least five carriers have quit, and the post office has banned scheduled sick days for the rest of the year, carriers say... Dennis Nelson, a veteran mail carrier, said he got so frustrated watching multiple co-workers "breaking down and crying" that he staged a symbolic strike earlier this month outside the post office where he has worked for more than 20 years...

Bemidji is not the only place where postal workers say they have been overwhelmed by packages from Amazon... Carriers and local officials say mail service has been disrupted in rural communities from Portland, Maine, to Washington state's San Juan Islands.

The situation stems from a crisis at the Postal Service, which has lost $6.5 billion in the past year. The post office has had a contract with Amazon since 2013, when it started delivering packages on Sundays. But in recent years, that business has exploded as Amazon has increasingly come to rely on postal carriers to make "last-mile" deliveries in harder-to-reach rural locations. The Postal Service considers the contract proprietary and has declined to disclose its terms. But U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has said publicly that "increasing package volume" — not just from Amazon, but from FedEx and UPS as well — is key to the mail service's financial future. In a Nov. 14 speech to the Postal Service Board of Governors, DeJoy said he wants the post office to become the "preferred delivery provider in the nation...."

In bigger cities, Amazon has its own distribution network, which takes some of the pressure off the post office. But in rural areas, where carriers drive miles of lonely routes in their personal vehicles, the arrangement has caused problems. In the mountains of Colorado, biologists in Crested Butte are struggling with the delay of time-sensitive samples, the Denver Post reported in September, while mail carriers in Carbondale say they are overwhelmed by Amazon packages. Other Minnesota towns including Brainerd and La Porte have been hit hard by Amazon in the past, carriers said...

Partenheimer defended the post office's record in an email, while conceding "much work remains to be done...."
An Amazon spokesperson told the Post "We work directly with the USPS to balance our delivery needs with their available capacity," and "we'll continue to collaborate on package volume each week and adjust as needed."
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Are Amazon Packages Disrupting Mail Services in Some Small Towns? More

Are Amazon Packages Disrupting Mail Services in Some Small Towns?

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  • More business Losing Money? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by n2hightech ( 1170183 ) on Sunday December 03, 2023 @07:50AM (#64050567)
    This makes no sense at all. When business increases they should be making more money not less. Last I heard the USPS was complaining about reduced volume of mail causing losses. Now they are complaining that increased volume is causing losses. Sounds like the wizards at the USPS don't have an understanding of their actual cost structure. This has led to underpricing their service. They need to fix that ASAP.

    • Re:More business Losing Money? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Sunday December 03, 2023 @07:56AM (#64050569)

      They need to fix that ASAP.

      That's why the guy who used to run a boutique firm was brought in. You know, all that private industry experience and what not. The same guy who had the postal service dismantle already working high-speed mail sorting machines right before the presidential election. The same guy whose had the USPS repeatedly raise stamp prices.

    • Sounds like the wizards at the USPS don't have an understanding of their actual cost structure.

      Funny, it sounds to me like you assume that every delivery has a flat rate cost which would be just stupid. I mean if you didn't believe that you'd understand that both your first sentences can be true.

      I know it's Sunday, but please use your brain.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Entrope ( 68843 )

        His first two sentences were:

        This makes no sense at all. When business increases they should be making more money not less.

        Those are both true, and the simplest explanation is the sentence you quoted. That analysis doesn't depend on having a fixed cost per delivery, just on not knowing what the actual cost of these deliveries is -- or more specifically not passing those costs (plus margin) to customers.

    • Re:More business Losing Money? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by serafean ( 4896143 ) on Sunday December 03, 2023 @08:21AM (#64050583)

      Can't speak for the US, but here (Europe) it happens as follows:
      Private delivery companies are almost permanently "optimized", and when an onslaught happens, they struggle to cope. What they do then is offload what they can't handle onto the public postal service, which is in the same boat (optimized + overwhelmed), but worse, because they have nowhere to offload to.
      And customers are pissed at the public service, because the notification is very carefully worded to make clear the PrivCo isn't responsible for any delays.

      • Can't speak for the US, but here (Europe) it happens as follows:
        Private delivery companies are almost permanently "optimized", and when an onslaught happens, they struggle to cope. What they do then is offload what they can't handle onto the public postal service, which is in the same boat (optimized + overwhelmed), but worse, because they have nowhere to offload to.
        And customers are pissed at the public service, because the notification is very carefully worded to make clear the PrivCo isn't responsible for any delays.

        That sounds about right. It's not like I dig into the workings of the USPS but I picked up a few things from the news, problems like these are not new for the USPS. The USPS is legally obligated to offer postal services to every citizen, an obligation that private services do not have. There's some advantage to this in that there's no added cost for duplicated services, but this skews things because there's markets where competition can find cost savings. If any delivery costs too much for some private

        • I remember a news report on how United Parcel Service, UPS, got some kind of certification from the federal government to time stamp tax returns. I didn't think much of it at the time but in hindsight this was likely a big blow to USPS profits. If time sensitive documents need a legally binding time stamp on the package then at one point the only way to get that was the USPS. That was a captive market, and a market that wasn't paying any extra for that time stamp as it was just part of the everyday operations. If a private company is allowed to provide time stamped deliveries, such as to show taxes were paid on time, then businesses on popular delivery routes can choose the cheaper private carrier rather than USPS. It might be difficult to remove this time stamp certification from any private delivery service but perhaps federal government agencies can put some requirements on keeping the certification so that USPS isn't bleeding profitable services so badly.

          You are assuming that the private service and the public service offer the exact same service. Perhaps the private service can actually charge more because it offers something different, like longer hours, different service guarantees, better service, faster systems, etc. In the US, this gets to the heart of how we do things, for most things the government does not have a monopoly and we have competition.

          Certainly DeJoy is hurting and not helping. But it is congress that screwed the USPS in 2006.
          https://ww [pbs.org]

          • TBH, after experiencing public and private health care, delivery service and ISP (community, not public per se), I will always assume that public will offer better service. Mainly in "fewer ways to screw customers", as a public service doesn't have customers (/cash cows), only users.

            Now, on the topic of delivery services:
            For a very long time private delivery services either caught me at home, or ensued a game of tag between me and the parcel. There were no pick up points, and the only option was to negotiat

        • If any delivery costs too much for some private delivery service then they know they can dump it on the USPS to take. The USPS charges a flat rate for all mail and packages, regardless of how far it must go, using the shorter and more voluminous routes to subsidize the long and thin routes.

          No, USPS offers tiered rates for commercial pricing that directly relate to origin and delivery points. Indeed, should you care to use, say, stamps.com to print your own labels and postage, you will yourself gain the be

      • People are already far, far more pissed at the alternative carriers, who are about as reliable as alternative facts.

        Our postal service actually launched a premium service where you can pay to have all your stuff delivered by them instead of the "alternative" carriers. And that service is mighty popular.

        THIS is how fucked up the private delivery services are.

        • Lucky you, our public postal service just got gutted to the core. So much so that it's no longer physically capable of functioning properly -- too few contact points and distribution centers.
          To get an image: Now they're in the process of selling off properties, only to rent space in them after. This is deliberate destruction.

          It's ok-ish in the city, where alternative carriers have regular routes*, but people in the countryside are screwed.

          *Also talk about inefficiency: every day there are 4 delivery vans fr

          • May I hazard a guess? Some populist bullshit peddler won the last election and now guts every public service to buy his electorate with trinkets?

            • Funnily enough, no. The populist bullshit peddler who bought his electorate with trinkets using debt got pushed out, and parties promising decency and "responsible finances" came in. "Responsible finances" are currently causing a breakdown in medical care, the school system* and the annihilation of the post office; while at the same time bailing/buying out some collapsing businesses. To be fair, one of the businesses is a major gas distributor, so keeping the infrastructure is kind of necessary.
              Unfortunatel

      • Europe isn't a country. Each country's postal service is operated different and there's no unified rule in Europe or even in the EU on how it needs to be managed. So which *country* are you speaking for specifically?

    • This makes no sense at all. When business increases they should be making more money not less.

      That of course depends on, a syou point out, the cost structure and marginal costs of each additional package vs marginal revenue.

      Last I heard the USPS was complaining about reduced volume of mail causing losses. Now they are complaining that increased volume is causing losses. Sounds like the wizards at the USPS don't have an understanding of their actual cost structure. This has led to underpricing their service. They need to fix that ASAP.

      I would think the USPS has some power to renegotiate their deal

      • Re:More business Losing Money? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by rudy_wayne ( 414635 ) on Sunday December 03, 2023 @10:05AM (#64050699)

        Last I heard the USPS was complaining about reduced volume of mail causing losses. Now they are complaining that increased volume is causing losses. This has led to underpricing their service. They need to fix that ASAP.

        The current Postmaster General is a corrupt Trump goon and the current president is 183 years old and brain dead. So, good luck with that.

      • The USPS is optimized for postcards and letters with 53 cent stamps, and perhaps makes a profit on a magazine and advertising rates. When the USPS operates any delivery service outside of that core competency the individual margin on single packages goes negatives. The letter delivery part of the industry is shirking the federal mandated services slush fund about 5% per year.

        My address wipes out my individual profitability with the USPS with my wifes orders of stuff that is in the first isle of wa

    • Re:More business Losing Money? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by nukenerd ( 172703 ) on Sunday December 03, 2023 @09:20AM (#64050635)
      From TFA

      that business has expoded as Amazon has increasingly come to rely on postal carriers to make "last-mile" deliveries in harder-to-reach rural locations

      This sounds like what happened in the UK to the rail goods delivery business in the 1950/60s. The railways used to operate a parcel and general freight service whereby you could take amost anything to the parcel office or goods (freight) yard of your local station (even small villages had them) and they would deliver it to anywhere by rail and then their own trucks for the "last mile" by road. But then the road haulage companies (ex-Army trucks and drivers were cheap then) took contracts with factories and wholesalers to carry stuff in lorry-loads the long distance to a rail centre in the general area of the destinations (eg from London to Exeter) and dump it all in the rail freight centre there and leave it to the railway to do the time-consuming and loss-making "last mile" final delivery (eg around rural Devon in the example). The railways had a legal obligation to do this while the road haulage companies had no legal restraints.

      Is this what Amazon are now doing to national Post Offices? The UK Post Office at least has a similar legal obligation to the pre-1960s railway to deliver anything anywhere.

    • USPS is highly regulated and does not have a free hand to adapt to the market.

    • If it is anything like the UK, they have a universal service obligation, where they charge the same price to deliver anywhere in the country. The idea is that they will make a profit in the big cities and that subsidises the remote rural areas.
      If Amazon are only using them to deliver in the remote rural areas, and doing the delivery themselves in the big cities, then that doesn't work.

      • you'd think the red rural areas would just be happy to accept the subsidy from the blue cities but apparently they want to destroy the systems that make rural life livable to own the libs.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      USPS is losing money because they're paying for pensions for people who aren't even born yet.

      One particular political party has been trying to kill them since the early 2000's and the only thing they've been able to do is to force them to maintain insanely high pension reserves that guarantee they lose money.

      Before that, they were quite profitable. These days, when they're paying out for pensions for people who aren't born yet, nevermind even hired by USPS, well, there you go.

      They'd still be profitable tod

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by vlad30 ( 44644 )
      More like a change that they originally were not geared up for instead of lots of small envelopes they are now delivering lots of much larger boxes. Letters would be sorted and dropped of in address order. doing the same with boxes is more difficult they can be wildly different sizes, Less can be put in each truck or it needs to be bigger and the time it takes to take it out and drop it at the door is longer. Then there is the issue of the post office size now needs to be a lot bigger to store the boxes bef

  • And all the packages... (Score:3)

    by LordHighExecutioner ( 4245243 ) on Sunday December 03, 2023 @08:41AM (#64050593)
    ...reaching Bernidji contained this book [amazon.com], each copy signed by your most loved author, Ian Betteridge.

  • Staffing and Compensation based on Seasonal Lows (Score:5, Informative)

    by Aero77 ( 1242364 ) on Sunday December 03, 2023 @09:10AM (#64050625)
    Mail carrier item counts and thus staffing are determined by a count taken during a seasonal low. Seasonal highs will always overwhelm the system. The mail carrier jobs were never that great and online shopping has turned it into a shitty job.

    • Mail carrier item counts and thus staffing are determined by a count taken during a seasonal low. Seasonal highs will always overwhelm the system.

      (The Response) "much work remains to be done...."

      When the concept of hiring for an obvious seasonal high is NOT lost on damn near every other retailer, I'd say "much work" starts by firing whomever came up with the idiotic concept of hiring based on seasonal lows.

      • Re:Staffing and Compensation based on Seasonal Low (Score:5, Insightful)

        by transporter_ii ( 986545 ) on Sunday December 03, 2023 @10:39AM (#64050745) Homepage

        When the concept of hiring for an obvious seasonal high is NOT lost on damn near every other retailer, I'd say "much work" starts by firing whomever came up with the idiotic concept of hiring based on seasonal lows.

        I worked at Walmart in an area that got hit hard during holiday seasons. The management would wait until a few weeks before the holiday to throw some help our way. The new people actually slowed us down, because not only were they not up to speed, they slowed you down trying to help them out and get them trained. Just about the time they were even remotely helpful, the holiday was over and they were gone.

        Don't think for a second that everyone in the private sector is so much smarter just because they are in the private sector.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ranton ( 36917 )

      The mail carrier jobs were never that great and online shopping has turned it into a shitty job.

      What are you talking about? The mail carrier job was a great position for a large subset of the population. It gave a steady job with good enough pay to raise a family, relatively low stress compared to most middle class jobs, and a good pension. I know three people who all started working in the postal service before 2005 and they all were the breadwinner of their families, with one having a good retirement now and another who raised three kids on one income (I haven't talked with him in a decade, so I'm n

  • two points (Score:3)

    by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Sunday December 03, 2023 @09:22AM (#64050637) Journal

    1) this is indicative of two connected other factors: the death of local retail and the likely realization by people through Covid times that, well, they can get everything easier by clicking a button and waiting a couple of days than driving their car somewhere

    AND

    2) someone is completely incompetent in pricing the cost of delivery, or are constrained by unrealistic requirements by law which is just the pricing incompetence at one remove.
    I don't know the details enough to determine which are being dumb: EITHER legislators set fixed prices, or the USPS is mandated to use a flat rate (meaning basically the same price for everyone) then failing to accurately account for their overall costs and distribute those costs adequately.

  • Junk mail is important too! (Score:3)

    by chas.williams ( 6256556 ) on Sunday December 03, 2023 @09:26AM (#64050643)
    Of course, the Postal Service doesn't prioritize mail. If it did, they might not devlier the huge volume of junk mail that I receive.

    • Re:Junk mail is important too! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by MacMann ( 7518492 ) on Sunday December 03, 2023 @10:17AM (#64050723)

      Of course, the Postal Service doesn't prioritize mail. If it did, they might not devlier the huge volume of junk mail that I receive.

      The junk mail you receive is "pre-sorted" and that might not give it a higher priority exactly but by reducing the work the USPS has to do to get it to the destination it means that it moves through their system quickly.

      I'm not sure how pre-sorting works exactly but the general idea, as I understand it, is that the mail is bundled into packages based on the local "last mile" post office so the only point in which the post office is handling the individual items individually is in that last post office before reaching someone's mailbox. There's apparently a large discount for this.

      It sounds like Amazon might be doing something similarly with their packages by sorting out deliveries by that last mile post office, putting in on their own truck, then dropping it off at that post office for them to sort out to deliver to the individual address. It sounds like this last mile delivery was in the past handled for Amazon by services like UPS, FedEx, and DHL. These incumbent package delivery services had been shifting much of their last mile load to USPS for some time. When Amazon decided to do their own deliveries they did it in large part by going to the same last mile contractors that the incumbent services were using, and that included USPS.

      This problem has been growing for some time, and I suspect that Amazon deciding to use USPS for the last mile was the last straw that broke the camel's back.

      • That's exactly how it works. I used to work at a direct marketing company and asked the question why we are only partially filling some pallets before loading them into trucks. The answer is simple. The postal service gave us a list of pre-sort destinations and our job was to break all mailings down into groups. Only a range of certain post codes on one pallet, only a subrange of postcodes in each box, and items in each box sorted sequentially. At the post office they would literally just take the box and h

    • You see that wrong.

      They prioritize junk mail. That's what they get paid for after all.

      • They do not. Please stop getting your facts from Facebook. Any pre-sorted mail at USPS has the same delivery priority. Though that applies to thin mail only, parcels are handled differently.

  • Headline... (Score:5, Informative)

    by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 ) on Sunday December 03, 2023 @09:46AM (#64050673)
    ...should read, "Rural post offices overwhelmed by Christmas season increase in deliveries." I can't see how this has much to do with Amazon in particular. Do they deliver to rural locations only in December?

    • I live in the country and Amazon never delivers here. Anything I order from anywhere comes by UPS or the post office, and rarely FedEx.

      As to the holiday, shipping slows down this time of year. So does regular mail, but not usually very much. Now if a snowstorm shuts down the mountain passes things can get even later. It's something you plan for.

      At work Management learned its lesson too, there is no guarantee of timely wintertime transport. Just in time is not a viable way to run a chemical plant. The key to

    • The USPS has a contract with Amazon that provides a different level of service than everyone else gets. First class mail is sitting in post offices for weeks while dedicated trucks deliver Amazon packages 7 days a week.

  • Tiny? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Pollux ( 102520 ) <`speter' `at' `tedata.net.eg'> on Sunday December 03, 2023 @10:13AM (#64050709) Journal

    ...the tiny town of Bemidji, Minnesota...

    As a former resident of Bemidji, I take umbrage with this demonstrably incorrect portrayal of the community from this Washington Post writer. Allow me to inform our readers that a town with a population of 15,000 residents [wikipedia.org] is not what the casual observer would call "tiny".* We prefer to reserve that adjective for describing certain limp appendages possessed by owners of publications that make such baseless claims.

    * As it's surrounded by forests and lakes, the community also has a substantial rural population around its perimeter, with some estimates placing the population of the total community closer to 45,000.

    • Other Minnesota towns including Brainerd and La Porte have been hit hard by Amazon in the past, carriers said.

      Can we please fire the Post editors for not doing a simple Google to verify the spelling of Laporte [google.com]?

      Seriously, huge shout-out to Laporte. Go say hi to Greg at Mac's Smokehouse [laportegro...dmeats.com], and pick up the best bacon and brats your taste buds will ever have the experience of enjoying. When you're finished, go across the street to the liquor store to get some bottles of Forestedge Wine [forestedgewinery.com]. And because food, finis

    • Yeah, looked it up. Seems to be a local problem if anything.

      I live in a "small town" of ~1,800, and still get my mail at damn near the exact same time every day. That includes amazon packages, although I also get a fair percentage delivered from amazon vans these days as well.

      Doesn't get much more "rural" than were I am either, the closest cities with more than ~50K people are all 1-1.5 hours away. Somehow our mail carriers aren't all collapsing, but maybe they are made of sterner stuff than those Minnisota

    • What a tiny rube.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ranton ( 36917 )

      Allow me to inform our readers that a town with a population of 15,000 residents [wikipedia.org] is not what the casual observer would call "tiny".

      It's all relative. If you live in a city with millions of people or suburbs where every square mile has 5,000 people, then a 15,000 population town surrounded by even less densely populated townships is going to seem pretty tiny. But if you grew up in a similar area, like I did, then you look at towns with 1500 people as tiny. Neither are wrong, just a different perspective.

    • Calling a town of 15,000 people "tiny" isn't quite as bad as calling Portland, Maine, a city of about 70,000 people, "rural".
    • Don't feel bad. The WAPO did an article about MrBeast in which they described Greenville, NC as a small "sleepy" town. They made it sound as if nobody had every heard of Greenville before. Greenville has a year-round population of 88,000. This is a city that hosts ECU University, along with its medical school. The city has a hospital with level 1 trauma care, a cancer center, and a children's hospital. It also has an airport with regular flights to and from Charlotte. Greenville is not a metropolis but
      • I've never heard of Greenville, NC but based on the facts you presented it sounds like WAPO was correct in its description. Having less than 100k people, seasonal residents at a school, a hospital and a tiny domestic airport isn't much.
        • Go back under your bridge. I'm from DC and I'm embarrassed that my home town daily published that article. I remember when the WAPO was a world-class paper.
    • 15K is tiny.
  • Louis DeJoy, the postmaster general, really needs to get fired! No wonder the post office is loosing money. I routinely have packages go to Jacksonville (near me) then to Orlando, then back to Jacksonville, then back to Orlando... back and forth, back and forth for days. And a variety of other cities as well. Once had a package make a round trip of 3 cities in New Jersey seven times before finally making it to Florida.

    • Re:Fire Louis DeJoy (Score:5, Informative)

      by bjwest ( 14070 ) on Sunday December 03, 2023 @11:43AM (#64050825)
      I live in a town of about 10,000, and before the great sorter purge of the Trump administration, our local Post Office sorted our mail here. I could drop a letter addressed anywhere within the county, and it would get there, at the very latest, in two days. Now, after Trump had all the sorting machines ripped out and destroyed, everything goes to the main hub in the capital to be sorted before being sent back here to be delivered. I don't even think we have any regional hubs left with sorting machines in this state, everything goes to the main hub where it takes days to sort and send back. Hell, I can send a letter to my next door neighbor, and they wouldn't get it for a week or more with the way things are run now.

  • Undergraduate economics of 1980 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bruce66423 ( 1678196 ) on Sunday December 03, 2023 @11:10AM (#64050773)

    The issue of privitisation was being seriously discussed as the UK's Thatcher government started to sell off the industries that it owned. One of the issues recognised by economists was that the mail service inevitably includes a cross subsidy if there is a universal price: if it costs a fixed amount to post a letter then some will be delivered far more cheaply, such as those within the same conurbation, whilst others, such as those from the middle of nowhere to the middle of nowhere, will be far more expensive. The introduction of open competition in the last mile service thus allows the private sector to make a profit from the short hops, depriving the universal service provider of the income to keep its prices down for everyone.

    This is what we are seeing here: the removal of the cross subsidy is hurting those who used to benefit from it. The hard question for the taxpayer is whether the previously implicit subsidy should be continued. If it should, then the HONEST approach is to earmark a specific sum of money for the Post Office to continue the expensive rural services. Democracy is not good at honesty in areas like this! Add in the effect of so much that used to be delivered by hand being now done by email etc, and the only surprise is that it hasn't hit harder before.

    • It doesn't help when the population most hurt by the decline in service continues to vote for the party responsible.

  • Externalization? (Score:3)

    by jenningsthecat ( 1525947 ) on Sunday December 03, 2023 @11:17AM (#64050783)

    I'm pretty sure Amazon has quite accurate projections for what Christmas delivery volumes will be. After all, they're both a successful retailer and a successful logistics company. What are the chances they said "Meh, it costs too much to expand our delivery capabilities for a seasonal peak - let's offload that to the Post Office and let them eat the expense and take the heat"?

    Being effectively a logistics company, they either knew or should have known that Amazon deliveries were likely to overwhelm the postal service. A good citizen would at that point taken the undoubtedly minor hit to profits and done the right thing. A good corporate citizen on the other hand...

    • Oh brother. If people order from Amazon and it doesn't arrive on time, who they're going to be mad at is Amazon. Not whichever carrier Amazon chose to use.

      It's so tiring how every story in the press and online gets spun into the same little monologue about how evil capitalism is, whether or not it fits.

    • What are the chances they said "Meh, it costs too much to expand our delivery capabilities for a seasonal peak - let's offload that to the Post Office and let them eat the expense and take the heat"?

      100% and for the same reason why the USPS doesn't do the same to take up the slack. It is highly inefficient to design any system to handle peak volume. You target and average + small buffer. Oh no, your Christmas cards will arrive late! Calamity! Plan ahead, the same thing has happened literally every year for the past decade. If a parcel arrives late you have yourself to blame for the same reasons you're criticising Amazon.

  • Our post office building is tiny, designed years ago for processing letters. They are overwhelmed with packages
    If the USPS is going to be a serious package delivery service, they need to retrofit their infrastructure to handle it properly

    • Our post office building is tiny, designed years ago for processing letters. They are overwhelmed with packages If the USPS is going to be a serious package delivery service, they need to retrofit their infrastructure to handle it properly

      Not just the buildings, but also the trucks, which were designed when packages were not as common or numerous (or as bulky and heavy). There is an ongoing process to replace the trucks (starting in 2024) which is more designed for package delivery, but it is still going to take a long time (and the replacement choice was considered political and has been challenged and delayed at least once). And in some rural communities the carriers are contracted, and use their own personal vehicles (often smaller veh

  • Postmaster DeJoy (who owns a private firm which contracts with USPS) has been intentionally killing USPS services by cutting back on workers and services.
    His intention is to declare the USPS "broken" so it can be privatized (to his profit).
    Our local post office has had the same problems for months. Not enough workers to deliver mail or packages on time.

  • I don't think any other part of our infrastructure gets described in terms like "lost $6.5 billion in the last year". Normally we talk about what it costs to have infrastructure, because we're paying to have a thing we need. We don't talk about the school system in general "losing money", we talk about "what we spend on education".

    That said, it does make sense to think about this somewhat in the context where a for-profit business is using that infrastructure and not really paying for the costs of providing

    • OK, fine. Let's phrase it like this:

      "The US Government spent $6.5 billion last year subsidizing bulk advertising and Amazon deliveries."

      Better?

  • Their web site is increasingly worthless for search capability and they treat their people like crap - not that that makes them much of an outlier in the U.S. mega-corp systems. I do my best to buy as much as I can from other vendors, even if I pay a little more.
    • Their selection of weird Chinese brands with broken English marketing materials is what pushes me away. It feels like shopping on aliexpress without the savings.

  • If I send a not very big Priority Mail box it's $22.

    I doubt they're charging Amazon $2 based on the nonsense non-consolidation they send me. I have some stuff on Subscribe and Save and I can get 8-10 separate packages with 1-2 items each.

    My postal carrier agrees with me that something sketchy is going on - she hasn't seen it prior to the UPS strike.

  • "disrupted in rural communities from Portland, Maine"

    Portland, Maine has about the same population as Palo Alto, California. About the same population density as Ho]phoenix Arizona.

    Rural? Please, EditorDave, stop publishing such crap, the USPS will start believing you and hose up most of the nation. Stupid git.

  • In the past 2 weeks we have been getting a lot more amazon delivery's from USPS and it happens every year after black Friday. I've been at the post office when amazon comes by and they literally dump several large totes on the counter and walk away.

  • The only "traditional mail" I get is junk mail. I'd gladly pay the post office to simply... not deliver it at all.

    Now, if they're delaying my not-amazon packages for Amazon package priority, that's another thing. That's not cool at all, as I'm already subsidizing Amazon's extremely deep shipping discounts.

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