Door-To-Door Mail Delivery To End Under New Plan 867
First time accepted submitter Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Reuters reports that under a cost-saving plan by the US Postal Service, millions of Americans accustomed to getting their mail delivered to their doors will have to trek to the curb and residents of new homes will use neighborhood mailbox clusters. 'Converting delivery away from door delivery to either curb line or centralized delivery would enable the Postal Service to provide service to more customers in less time,' says Postal Service spokeswoman Sue Brennan. More than 30 million American homes get door-to-door delivery and another 50 million get their mail dropped at their curbside mailboxes. But the Post Service, which is buckling under massive financial losses, sees savings in centralized mail delivery. Door-to-door delivery costs the Postal Service about $353 per address each year while curbside delivery costs $224, and cluster boxes cost $160 per address. But unions say it's a bad idea to end delivery to doorsteps and will be disruptive for the elderly and disabled. 'It's madness,' says Jim Sauber, chief of staff for the National Association of Letter Carriers. 'The idea that somebody is going to walk down to their mailbox in Buffalo, New York, in the winter snow to get their mail is just crazy.'"
Already happening (Score:5, Informative)
We have been doing this for new homes in San Antonio for the past 5-10 years. My house was built in 1993 and it's like this.
Every other day delivery is much better..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Every other day delivery is much better..... (Score:5, Funny)
Without this "almost free" mail, another segment of the economy collapses. Print shops would disappear, for one.
Look at it this way: Advertisers hire people to create copy and design layout, which goes to print shops that buy ink and paper, then bulk send the result via a postal service to my home - where I retrieve the contents and promptly deposit them in the recycling bin.
But it doesn't end there! Then the waste management company comes to collect those, deliver them to paper mills that supply the print shops... Cue Elton John! It's the "Circle of Life"!
Somebody is gainfully employed at every stage of this pipeline, and it is no more or less absurd than any other form of socially connected human endeavour. Everything is social policy, like it or not. Wait on the mail? Only at an overall social cost which, like the beat of a butterfly wing, may be of inestimable consequence.
Re:Every other day delivery is much better..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Every other day delivery is much better..... (Score:5, Funny)
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One IS a constructive activity. :-)
I won't labour arguments about that. It is fairly self-evident that one scenario involves violation of property, coupled with an element of coercion and violence. Let's not think of the ramification of encouraging a certain segment to violent, destructive action, while inuring another segment to the inevitability of such violence...
The other involves a sequence of activities that generate marginal commercial value and opportunity for greater social benefit.
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Unlike the REAL pretense of servicing financial derivatives, or selling cable subscriptions to watch "It's Always Hot in Cleveland"?
All value in an economy is not transactional profit.
In fact, that is the difference between an "Economy" and a "Marketplace". The difference is not taught, and in fact? The confusion is actively promoted.
But the difference between these two things is analogous that between the concepts of "Strategic" and "Tactical".
Re:Every other day delivery is much better..... (Score:5, Funny)
A LOT more.
BTW: I asked my Dominatrix for a "happy ending".
She sang me "The Pina Colada Song", and sent me home.
Re:Every other day delivery is much better..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Right. The existing economy of institutionalised graft, extortion and threat of incarceration is infinitely preferable.
Inefficiency is a point of view - a pipe through which one may look at a system. Efficient to what end? Are you accumulating fat for winter? Or are you efficiently burning everything from your intake?
Some inefficiencies are virtues.
Re:Every other day delivery is much better..... (Score:5, Interesting)
Face it, we don't get any mail anymore that can't wait a day.
I do. One of my credit card companies is trying to force me to go paperless, so they're delaying the processing on the outgoing statement, putting a ridiculously short due date on it, and then applying late fees when my check doesn't show up in time. A couple of other companies, including my city water department, are pulling the same stunt.
This is the kind of company I'll feel just peachy about letting have unfettered access to my bank account? Right.
Oh, I should add, to keep from getting socked with a late fee two months ago when I realized my statement hadn't come, I called these slime on the phone and paid that way. They screwed up the account number, the payment was refused, and instead of notifying me of the problem in a timely manner they simply added a late fee to the next bill. And since the previous bill wasn't paid, they sent the matter to their collections department, so I started getting calls once an hour at 8AM in the morning. The third one actually had a customer service person (predictive dialers should be outlawed), who asked me for account number and other identifying information before she could tell me why she was calling. Right. Sure.
When I spoke to a supervisor about the problem, she claimed that they did try calling me to tell me about the failed payment. It was "in the computer". I promptly picked up my caller ID box and scrolled back through the last month's worth of calls and found nothing from them and told her so. Her response? "Let's move forward...". And I pointed out that the reason I was calling them was because THIS months statement hadn't arrived yet, either.
So, yes, a day can make a difference.
Re:Every other day delivery is much better..... (Score:5, Informative)
To discourage such shenanigans, many states require that creditors allow a certain minimum amount of time - typically 14 days - between actual receipt of your bill and the payment due date. You might want to look into this.
Re:Every other day delivery is much better..... (Score:5, Informative)
This is the kind of company I'll feel just peachy about letting have unfettered access to my bank account? Right.
I pay all my bills electronically. Wells Fargo has a "Bill Pay" service where you can instruct the bank, online, to either transfer the payment electronically (if the service company registered for that) or to mail a check (if they haven't done so.) Both payments are one-way and one-time (unless you want them to be recurring.) The receiving company does not have an "unfettered access to my bank account." Some companies offer automatic withdrawals, but I decline such offers for the same reason as you do.
Another good aspect of this service is that all payments are registered at the bank. If some service company mixes up the paperwork, I have the proof that is pretty heavyweight - records of a major bank that document everything that happened to every sum of money that moved around. This service is free (to me, at least - don't know if they tie it to some other conditions.) I would be better off even if it costs 45 cents per transaction - because that's what a stamp costs, and an envelope, and my time to fill it all out and then worry if the check gets lost. Many services signed up for e-bills; this means that no paper is involved, and no humans either.
Paperless != preauthorized (Score:3)
This is the kind of company I'll feel just peachy about letting have unfettered access to my bank account? Right.
I use paperless all the time but the companies I pay do not have unfettered access to my accounts. I get a bill by email and I go to my online bank account and time a payment for a couple of days before the due date. No money comes out of my account without my initiating it. Paperless does not mean pre-authorized payments.
PS I also find it funny that you don't quote dates. For some people two weeks between getting a letter and the due date is "ridiculously short". For many that would be plenty of time. To m
Re:Every other day delivery is much better..... (Score:4, Insightful)
Have you considered just putting that credit card in a drawer and never using it? They might take the hint after a while.
Re:Every other day delivery is much better..... (Score:5, Insightful)
75 years is false. Conflating two separate things (Score:4, Informative)
USPS is required start investing money to be used to pay pensions for current employees. The main reason for that is that 25 years from now their revenue might be half of what it is today. So this year, they need to start investing to pay the pensions of people who are delivering mail this year. That's one mandate.
Here's the other. Suppose they have a current employee who is 20 years old. That employee will be colllecting a pension 60 years from now based on the work he does today. USPS is required to ESTIMATE, NOT PAY, how much they expect to owe todays's workers, for today's work, that they won't actually pay for up to 75 years. That's just common sense. If I make a promise today saying "when you're retired I'll pay your bills", I should estimate how much that promise is likely to cost me.
Re:ps more details (Score:5, Informative)
The correct figure is 50 years (according to section 8909a of the PAEA), not 75. The PAEA does not specify 75 years anywhere at all. See here [washingtonexaminer.com] and here [washingtonexaminer.com]. Given that a postal worker can start working in their late teens and retire in their 40s, a 50-year requirement is perfectly reasonable. Unfortunately, as the first link says, once you've gotten enough people, even "journalists", to repeat an unsubstantiated claim, there's no killing it (not even here at Slashdot, where people like to believe they check their facts). In this case, the false claim was apparently first made by the NALC and the NRLCA, two postal carrier unions. Neither of them has ever substantiated the claim. The NRLCA merely says it's "widely cited" (of course, that was the plan). The NALC simply refuses to respond to requests.
The rumor that the PAEA was a Republican plot is also false. This was before the 2008 recession, and total mail volume peaked around 2006 (although first class volume peaked in 2001 and was already dropping), so at the time everyone involved (Republicans, Democrats, postal management, and postal unions, with the possible exception of the APWU) thought the prefunding was affordable. It passed with bipartisan support. For the NALC's opinion of it at the time, see this [nalc.org]. Note the almost total praise. The only criticism was a now completely forgotten provision that requires injured postal employees to wait three days before qualifying for Continuation of Pay. The NALC has never actually claimed that it was a Republican plot, though it now serves their purposes for people to believe that. They don't have to, there are enough left-leaning bloggers to do the job for them (along with spreading the false 75 year figure).
Re:Every other day delivery is much better..... (Score:5, Interesting)
No, its not unfair. What is unfair is the fact that many other public sector workers are likely to get fucked out of their pensions. Detroit isnt the first city to declare bankruptcy because of their growing pension problem. The list is growing, and within 10 years it will be hundreds of cities (its already dozens.)
Wake the fuck up. Public sector unions never should have been able to negotiate pension deals that werent based on the immediate funding of them. The public sector workers of Detroit, in concert with the local officials, were trying to steal from future (often too young to vote, or not even born yet) tax payers when they negotiated their packages 20+ years ago.
Now onto your partisan bullshit. You are claiming that Detroit is a conservative city? Really? There is no city in the world that has more influential unions. Detroit is a union city, ruined by union policies.
Re:Every other day delivery is much better..... (Score:5, Informative)
You have been lied to. Detroits pension funds are valued at $5 billion right now. The unfunded estimate is another $3.4 billion that the city currently owes. Thats only 60% funded no matter how you slice it.
Those that claim that Detroit had a 100% funded pension system in place were doing creative accounting, such as adding in future payments from the city as if they were real, and ignoring the method previous payments had to be made.
Not only will the city not be making the future payments that would make the funds solvent, this city specifically is notorious for not making them. In 1991 the public unions had to go to court to force the city to pay money into the funds. Fast forward past a long string of other pension funding issues, in 2005 the city had to borrow $1.4 billion to catch up on payments to the funds. The city was then on the hook for that $1.4 billion plus interest on top of the continuing problem of not being able to make payments.
Guess when those "100% funded" calculations are from? Right after the city borrowed that $1.4 billion to precisely meet its unfunded obligations. Thats creative accounting, and the people that told you that it was 100% funded were cherry picking the start year also. The city still owed that $1.4 billion which it didnt have, so now instead of the funds not getting that $1.4 billion.. the pension funds wont get $3.4 billion. Amazing how stuff works in reality.
Re:Every other day delivery is much better..... (Score:5, Informative)
By 2005 the city had accumulated $1.4 billion in missed pension fund payments. They didn't have that $1.4 billion so had to borrow it through the issuance of bonds (aka promise of payment.) That is nothing like having $1.4 billion in assets and then borrowing against it. The city literally did not have the $1.4 billion. That was also before the recession so you dont get to cite it as the reason for Detroits problems. Full stop.
Secondly, there arent hundreds of trillions of dollars swirling around wallstreet. There arent even hundreds of trillions of dollars swirling around the entire planet.
Thirdly, you are an idiot if you think that I would support that Quantitative Easing shit.
You see someone that argues that Detroits problems is the overly strong union influence, and just assume that someone against a strong influence of labor on governments would naturally be for this quantitative easing shit, right?
Yeah.. sorry pal.. you are repeatedly wrong. Wrong about Detroit's problems, wrong about Detroits Pensions, wrong about the amount of money on wallstreet, and wrong about what I support and do not support.
When will you admit that strong, well backed arguments begin with research rather than declarations. You don't pick a cause and then find a problem.. you pick a problem and then find the cause.
I have absolutely nothing against private unions, and my only beef with public unions is that legislators are allowed to negotiate with the money of far-off-in-the-future tax payers. It should be illegal, as in taxation without representation start-a-revolution-illegal. All public pensions should be funded immediately with no promises at all about future benefits, because such promises can only be kept by unrepresented future people.
I have a big beef with the FED. The FED should be abolished as unconstitutional. oh, and BTW, the FED is not "the feds" -- the FED is not a government entity... hell, its not even owned by the FED like the USPS is. You should have at least known that before going off about quantitative easing.
Re: (Score:3)
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We have been doing this for new homes in San Antonio for the past 5-10 years. My house was built in 1993 and it's like this.
And it's been happening in rural America forever.
My mailbox is a quarter of a mile away from my house. I have no problem taking a walk to get it. As it is, I don't go every day, because all my bills are paid online. Every single bill. So the only time I need to go to the mailbox is when I know I'll be receiving something. All the junk mail gets tossed. Any large packages go through UPS or FedEx.
In the winter I'll sometimes slap on some skis and trek to the mailbox, if I haven't gotten the chance to get
Re:Already happening (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not a problem in apartments, where it is safe and easy to get down to the mailboxes. However where I live the distance between residences is about 0.5 mile, and if they create a mailbox cluster it would be about 3 miles away. Do you want to drive for 12 minutes to just get useless ads? If they go ahead with this method, I would be tempted to cancel mail service. Those who I deal with have email, and I can pay them electronically.
Re:Already happening (Score:5, Insightful)
Well in my newish (~10yr) house we also have cluster mailboxes that are a block away, and it's not exactly a hardship for me it's just a nuisance to be a slave to junk mail I take from the mailbox, run through a shredder (because some of these people have personal information they shouldn't even have), and then deposit in recycling, unopened and unread. But, tempted though I might be to cancel mail service, you normally have to give mailing addresses for a few critical life elements: job applications, credit cards, bank accounts, taxes, and children school forms.
Whether any of those places actually USE mail afterwards is another point, but you have to get through that barrier. Mail has always been the "default" communication, guaranteed to make it to the recipient.
Normal here... (Score:3, Interesting)
In my case, it's a bit of a pain since my front gate is 2km from my house, but our mail-lady more than makes up for that by collecting as well as delivering mail. All I have to do is put my (stamped) mail to be delivered in the mailbox, and put any sort of flag on the outside. Not that I nee
Re:I don't know about the 'cluster' mailboxes. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I don't know about the 'cluster' mailboxes. (Score:5, Insightful)
When did this happen? During the time when the Republicans last had control of all three branches of elected government? No. What happened was an astonishing turn-around from budgets with surpluses that could have been used to pay down the debt, to huge budget deficits. Most of it was funded on tax cuts without performing corresponding cuts to services to balance the budget. While this may have been justified on the hypothesis that "starving the beast" might work, the reality has been that the richest have paid much less in taxes and the bill for the difference has been passed on to the next generation, by which time the people who should have been paying into the system for the last couple of decades will have retired. It was very bad financial and demographic management. At least one important Republican of the day actually said "deficits don't matter". It was an idiotic move.
So, you'll have to excuse me if I'm a little skeptical of Republican's dedication to balancing budgets, because the history of the last 2 decades shows no sign of that when they had the opportunity to enact them. On top of that, they also managed to lead the country into the worst financial crisis in decades, then handed the keys to the next guy and tried to pin it all on him as if he created the problem, while obstructing every attempt to fix it.
Re:I don't know about the 'cluster' mailboxes. (Score:5, Insightful)
First, both parties are on the fiduciary needle. They just want to spend all that money on slightly different things. Why is it that we never hear of Democrat plans to reform and cut social program waste, and never hear of Republican plans to reform and cut military waste?
Second, Clinton had a Republican Congress practically the whole way because of his completely botched attempt to pass national health care that scared voters into a Republican Revolution in 1994. He had to work with them in order to get a budget passed, and they weren't going to accept anything that wasn't balanced or in surplus. Thus, the government shutdown (well, and Gingrich being an egotistical ass).
Third, it's real easy to talk about the surplus that Clinton left behind, and forget that immediately after he left office, the whole Dot Com bubble imploded. Oh, and he was the one who signed the repeal of Glass-Steagall which set the table for the Bear Stearns / AIG collapse. Bush had a small version of what he left for Obama to deal with right out of the gate, and then a massive stock market dive that we like to call 9/11/2001. Oh, and he had a Republican majority in Congress who forgot why they were sent there, so they started spending like teenagers that found a suitcase full of money. Bush is not without blame though - the two wars that he put on the federal American Express absolutely didn't help things, and everyone seems to forget that TARP was his walk off shot - for some reason Obama gets tagged with that one.
There's plenty of blame to go around - none of these politicians can get the stink off of them, but that doesn't mean they won't try. The whole world shines shit and tries to pass it off as gold.
Re:I don't know about the 'cluster' mailboxes. (Score:4)
Because we are essentially leasing desert training grounds from Egypt--training grounds that saved American lives in both Iraq wars, and probably in 'actions' that we've never heard of. And having those unexploded munitions lying in their desert, instead of ours, means that it's not our children (or other citizens) who get blown up by them.
And besides, 30 million Americans is less than 10% of the population. The price difference means that it costs the same to deliver to those 30 million Americans with door service, as it does 47 million Americans with curbside service. Why should my tax dollars support special treatment for 10% of Americans?
Re:I don't know about the 'cluster' mailboxes. (Score:4, Informative)
First it's 30 million households, not 30 million people, 30 million households is between 90 and 120 million people or roughly a third of the US. Second, I think the carriers representative is stupid because millions of people in the upper midwest already go to their curbside mailbox to pick up their mail during the winter, everyone around me is 300+' from the road and none of my 80+ year old neighbors has a problem with it.
Re:Already happening (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not a problem in apartments, where it is safe and easy to get down to the mailboxes. However where I live the distance between residences is about 0.5 mile, and if they create a mailbox cluster it would be about 3 miles away. Do you want to drive for 12 minutes to just get useless ads? If they go ahead with this method, I would be tempted to cancel mail service. Those who I deal with have email, and I can pay them electronically.
You are part of the reason home delivery is so expensive. If you don't want to drive miles to a mailbox cluster, the USPS doesn't want to drive those miles to deliver a bulk mail envelope that only earned them 25 cents.
Re:Already happening (Score:5, Insightful)
Overall it's more efficient for one guy to go from house to house (especially in a vehicle designed specifically to make the efficient) in a ring topology than for a bunch of people to each drive to a central point in a star topology. The mailbox clusters can work well with areas designed around them from the beginning (so you naturally pass the cluster on your way in/out of the neighborhood).
Why don't we just let the price of stamps rise to where it makes sense, instead?
Re: (Score:3)
That makes absolutely no sense. The efficiency gained for the post office by having one person hit 10 homes in a single stop is far greater than that of loss of efficiency for you hitting one mail box each day on your way home from work/school/store.
Because Congress' goal is to privatize the USPS (Score:5, Interesting)
Why don't we just let the price of stamps rise to where it makes sense, instead?
Because that would allow the USPS to continue operating smoothly, and is thus illegal.
The goal of both parties of Congress is to sell off the lucrative USPS to private interests. In order to do that Congress and its owners must trick the public into believing their valuable USPS is a failing, worthless business.
The USPS cannot - by law - raise the price of stamps by anything more than the "rate of inflation" the government announces. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) is a politically-motivated number, since higher rates of inflation reflect badly on politicians and cost the government money in payments keyed to CPI. So the USPS is legally prohibited from raising prices to reflect its costs, and even the amount it is allowed to increase is artificially low.
The USPS is prevented from doing what every other business is allowed to do - change its prices to reflect changes in its costs - and then the results of this Congressional restriction are used in Congress as an example of how the USPS is inept and inefficient and must be privatized!
This legal constraint on the revenue side is matched by a legal requirement for the USPS to wildly increase its expenses. The same law restricting increases in USPS revenue requires the USPS pre-fund 75 years worth of retiree health benefits - while private businesses are being allowed to completely renege on even existing pension agreements.
(There's also a little backstory here about Congress mandating these huge front-loaded payments. The USPS had been overpaying into its pension fund and was actually going to be able to reduce the amount it needed to pay, but because of unified federal budgeting, USPS payments into its pension fund counted as revenue to the entire government. Congress required these huge payments from the USPS to make sure Congress didn't have to reduce its own spending. But that's a detail, like robbing a person already being murdered for their bodily organs.)
The goal of this simultaneous restriction on revenue and increase in costs is to force the USPS into bankruptcy and paint the USPS as an expensive failure so the public will accept having another valuable public resource sold off at fire sale prices to private interests.
Said a shorter way, what "makes sense" from the standpoint of the public makes no sense at all from the viewpoint of those who feed off the public.
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If you don't want to drive miles to a mailbox cluster, the USPS doesn't want to drive those miles to deliver a bulk mail envelope that only earned them 25 cents.
This is so obviously untrue. Math to the rescue. USPS requires one customer per mile. Let's say there are two, and the road (dead end) is 10 miles long. There are 20 customers. A carrier has to travel 20 miles to make all deliveries if he starts at the mile 0 (and let's posit that the USPS office is there too.)
Now, if the carrier doesn't delive
Re:Already happening (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't want to drive miles to a mailbox cluster, the USPS doesn't want to drive those miles to deliver a bulk mail envelope that only earned them 25 cents.
This is so obviously untrue. Math to the rescue. USPS requires one customer per mile. Let's say there are two, and the road (dead end) is 10 miles long. There are 20 customers. A carrier has to travel 20 miles to make all deliveries if he starts at the mile 0 (and let's posit that the USPS office is there too.)
I don't recall the USPS say they were wanted to increase efficiency for their customers, they said they want to cut costs. If the USPS can deliver mail to 20 customers with a single stop, then they save money.
Now, if the carrier doesn't deliver then every resident has to drive to the USPS office. Let's even disregard the waiting time and focus only on miles driven. The fist customer drives one mile (0.5 mile * 2.) The second customer drives 2 miles (1 mile * 2). The third customer drives 3 miles. An obvious arithmetic progression here (every next resident has to drive extra to his neighbor and back.)
Rumor says that the sum of an arithmetic progression is often found as n*(a1+an)/2. Since the a1 is 1 and an is 20, we suddenly learn that all residents have to drive 20*(1+20)/2 = 210 miles per day!!! Compare to 20 miles that the carrier has to drive. If we force residents to drive to their mailbox cluster (under those conditions, that are typical in rural areas) then it would generate a lot more pollution and wear of vehicles.
You're assuming random placement of mailbox clusters - in general they'd be placed along main highways where customers would likely already be driving to run errands, so there may be 0 extra miles. There would have to be a much more intensive study to see what the environmental cost is.
Of course there is one simple solution to that - let's outlaw rural homes and make everyone live in 100-storey skyscrapers; Gil the Arm visited one of such buildings, as I recall. Arcologies are very efficient this way. And who needs all that nature anyway?
Or you could charge extra for rural delivery to make up for the higher costs. If you want to live in a rural area, that's fine, but why should others subsidize your lifestyle? Some people *have* to live in rural areas (farmers, for example), so they can charge the city folk more to make up for their unsubsidized cost of living.
Humans are born and bred to live in caves of steel and eat yeast products. They don't need all that dusty and dirty nature.
Were humans bred to live in sprawling 2000 square foot houses on 2 acre lots that are so far away from town that the only way to run errands is to drive a 3000 lb car (or 6000 lb SUV)?
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Actually...you're on to something... Make the stamp prices variable by the cost to deliver to them. Office buildings, Apartments and Mailbox clusters cost 49 cents.....single Road side delivery in a dense suburb, 70 cents....single Road Side delivery in rural areas, $1.25. Similarly you can add a bump to the stamp fees based on where the pick up is...At the post office $0 additional, at a blue box, 10 cents....at a home...20 cents.
Then institute a standard that says when costs of carrying to an area are too
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The USPS has to go to each address each day, to see if there's any mail to be picked up.
Mail carriers only do that at clusters, where there are large collection mailboxes dedicated to outgoing mail.
But if you are talking about an individual curbside mailbox, carriers do not collect mail from them. They should, but they don't bother, regardless of how obvious the flag is. As they approach the address they look through their pile, and if there is nothing for you today they just drive on. They do not stop
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I've been mailing things for the last 7 years from my mailbox...seems to work well for me to just put the flag up.
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Sounds like an issue with your local carrier or post office...My carrier picks up the mail even if I have nothing.
Re:Already happening (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Already happening (Score:5, Interesting)
The USPS has to go to each address each day, to see if there's any mail to be picked up. Customers could conceivably go to a cluster only once every one or two weeks.Until you account for this asymmetry, your accounting is defective.
That you are jealous of those who have earned a better life than you, is neither a good argument nor an indication of good character.
Different is not better. I live in a city in a nice apartment, a 2 minute walk to the train that takes me to work (2 or 3 days/week I make the 30 minute bike ride to work), a thousand acre park nearby where I can do my morning runs and attend concerts and other events throughout the year, a grocery store 3 blocks away, over a dozen bars and restaurants within a 15 minute walk from home, a real butcher and baker within a 10 minute walk. I have a car, but only use it on weekends and since I only fill up the tank once a month or less, I don't care if gas is $3/gallon or $6/gallon.
Trust me, I don't dream of a sprawling rural lifestyle where I need to drive 30 minutes to town to buy food when surprise guests stop by for dinner. Some people *do* want that lifestyle, but I don't see why I should subsidize them.
Re:Already happening (Score:4, Insightful)
Different is not better. I live in a city in a nice apartment, a 2 minute walk to the train that takes me to work (2 or 3 days/week I make the 30 minute bike ride to work), a thousand acre park nearby where I can do my morning runs and attend concerts and other events throughout the year, a grocery store 3 blocks away, over a dozen bars and restaurants within a 15 minute walk from home, a real butcher and baker within a 10 minute walk. I have a car, but only use it on weekends and since I only fill up the tank once a month or less, I don't care if gas is $3/gallon or $6/gallon.
And a lot of us don't dream of living in an ant colony. Different people have different needs and want. Amazing how that works, isn't it?
Sure, I don't care if you want to live in a rural house 50 miles from the nearest town, just stop asking me to pay extra to have your mail delivered or provide your rural broadband.
Re:Already happening (Score:4, Interesting)
So you wouldn't mind paying back the FCC universal service fund subsides that help deliver your phone and internet service?
I'd pay them because it would be fair. However, in this particular case AT&T is no longer providing my Internet connection because they scrapped DSL equipment and focused on U-Verse or whatever it is that works only in cities. Now I have a pretty good dish that reaches the nearest tower of Clear.net. I can get up to 5 Mbps down / 1 Mbps up this way, for half the price. I have the land line, but I rarely need it, and I can give it up. (My AT&T microcell at home works over Internet.)
Even city dwellers manage to operate ham radios - VHF/UHF obviously has a lot of activity (and antennas are small and easy to disguise), but even HF is possible if you're creative
The apartment building was full of fluorescent lights, and more were in the street. I had noise at S9+ and couldn't get any signal at all. Perhaps a repeater at 2m would be an option, but there is no challenge in that. Push the button and talk; there isn't much else you can do.
I know people that set up a buddipole outside in a clear area with good results...
I have a Buddistick, and it is pretty good for such a compact antenna. But as every other high impedance antenna, it is narrowband, and it still won't work if there are hundreds of fluorescent lights all over you (in corridors, and at neighbors.) Now I have a proper, full height HF9V, half a mile away from the nearest neighbor, and the difference is astonishing.
take it to the beach for even better results.
It would look funny if you go to a beach at midnight to work some DX at 40m or 80m :-) Besides, that Buddi* won't be very good at those bands (it doesn't support them, IIRC.) Working a 24h or 48h contest from a beach ... well, Field Day, perhaps, but not much else :-) You are talking about an incidental QSO now and then, to test the equipment. That you can always do. But if you are aiming for a bit more, like an award perhaps, you need to try harder. My FT-950 costs too much to operate it at the beach, where dust, salt and heat are plentiful.
If I want to use a machine shop or 3D printer, rather than spending money building my own small shop, I can join a hackerspace and have access to far better equipment than I could afford on my own
That is not the answer. You are telling me why I shouldn't be needing what I need. That's an entirely different discussion. Today you can have a 3D printer kit for a $999 [seemecnc.com]. A friend is already assembling that kit. It's not dirt cheap, but hobbies don't have to be cheap, especially if you don't drink and don't smoke (those "hobbies" are far more expensive.) You live only once; spend your money while you can - the last suit has no pockets. Besides, techies like myself are well paid, and I can afford gizmos like that.
Some of my friends rebuild cars - some are in love with old cars, other are building racing cars; yet another friend is a motorbike aficionado. You can't tell them to keep their projects in the club. There are other issues with machines, though. They require careful alignment before you can use them. That alignment takes time, and if you are the owner you know what was done and what was not done, so you don't have to recalibrate everything [youtube.com] each time you walk up to the mill. There is value in owning your tools.
Re:Already happening (Score:5, Informative)
If they go ahead with this method, I would be tempted to cancel mail service. Those who I deal with have email, and I can pay them electronically.
You wish. And I wish.
Try it and see what cruel things the government does to you. The IRS people... The motor vehicle department... the lawyers ... jury duty. Automated speeding tickets. Rare random demand letters from the government about X, Y or Z (i.e. registered mail).
Then again, maybe if enough people did it even with the occasional headaches, the government would be forced to adapt.
My mail is almost exclusively advertising crap, I pay everything online.
Re:Already happening (Score:5, Insightful)
However where I live the distance between residences is about 0.5 mile, and if they create a mailbox cluster it would be about 3 miles away.
You mean like these...
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/Canadian_rural_mailboxes.jpg [wikimedia.org]
Canada's had them for decades. Although those are from the 70s... new ones look more like this:
http://www.rcmpveteransvancouver.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/IMG_0206_edited-1.jpg [rcmpvetera...couver.com]
I'm having a really hard time working up the level of apparent outrage you have over this.
Re: (Score:3)
However where I live the distance between residences is about 0.5 mile, and if they create a mailbox cluster it would be about 3 miles away. Do you want to drive for 12 minutes to just get useless ads? If they go ahead with this method, I would be tempted to cancel mail service.
For a lot of years now I've used private mailboxes instead of USPS and it is great. It costs about the same as a mailbox at the post office but you get extra services like they automatically throw out obvious junk mail, they'll text you when you get a package (and sign for it and the put it in a locker which you can access 24/7 instead of having it left unattended on your doorstep). One place I've used will even open your mail, scan it and email a copy to you on a per-envelope basis. Plus, you get the
Re: (Score:3)
So, why do you think you need to actually empty your mailbox if it's three miles away?
The response above perfectly answers that question:
Try it and see what cruel things the government does to you. The IRS people... The motor vehicle department... the lawyers ... jury duty. Automated speeding tickets. Rare random demand letters from the government about X, Y or Z (i.e. registered mail).
You do not want to lose the letter from DMV with request for payment of your car plates fees, or with a sticker once you do pay. Inattention to jury summons may be even less pleasant [legalzoom.com].
Re:Already happening (Score:5, Insightful)
We lived in an apartment complex--a gated apartment complex as if that meant the USPS letter carrier, UPS courier, FedEx courier, Cops, Firemen, Pizza Delivery guys (every pizza place within two miles), florists, etc., etc. didn't have the code. Well, anyway, the kids in the complex would take the delivered mail after each delivery and toss in the trash, take it home, put it in other boxes, etc., etc. A central delivery point doesn't work too well for us.
You should ask your apartment manager for a locked delivery point. I've never lived in an apartment without locked mailboxes (the USPS has a master key that opens the entire cabinet at once so they can quickly drop off the mail in each box).
Re:Already happening (Score:4, Informative)
You don't seem to understand how the USPS works. The USPS is NOT part of the government, it's a government-owned corporation. That means it has to run its finances exactly the way every other company does: it brings in revenue from customers, and then spends that revenue on expenses (operating expenses including salaries, capital expenses, and employee pensions). If they hire more people, then they have to raise their prices to pay them, which means more people switch to shipping stuff by UPS/FedEx, or they just don't send any mail at all. The USPS gets a lot of its revenue from junk mail, unfortunately. If they jack up the price of sending junk mail, then the junk mailers will send much less of it, which equals much less revenue from the USPS to pay all these new employees, which means they go bankrupt.
The USPS is, in fact, quite reluctant to hire ANY new employees at this time, because it costs so much, since they have to pre-fund every employee's pension fund for the next 75 years, thanks to the stupid law Congress passed in 2006 (with both Dems and Reps, so save your partisan bullshit). This is why the USPS has been moving to shut down Post Offices and instead encourage more franchise operations, called CPUs (contract postal units); the franchise operations act as postal clerks and handle normal mail duties like any PO location, but they're separate companies and not USPS employees so the USPS doesn't have to deal with any pensions for them.
Re:Already happening (Score:4, Interesting)
It's already "nationalized", it's just run as a private corporation rather than a Federal agency. It's actually much better that way; most Federal agencies are horribly mismangaged and wasteful; the USPS is actually extremely efficient and well-run. If it weren't for Congress meddling with it, at the behest of lobbyists, they wouldn't have this problem, and they'd be profitable. Also, the USPS has been independent since 1971; that's long before UPS and FedEx were the heavyweights they are now.
Turning it into a Federal agency wouldn't change Congressional meddling. Congress can just as easily meddle with a Federal agency as with a government-owned corporation, and actually moreso. As a separate entity, it's easy to see how the USPS is doing and it has more isolation from stupid politics; Congress has to actually pass laws and such to affect the USPS's operations and behavior. A Federal agency, OTOH, is completely up to the whims of the guy in the White House (as well as the budget-makers in Congress), and things there can change radically every time someone new is elected or Congress decides to do something stupid like cut their budget. The way it is now, Congress has no real say over the USPS's budget or how they handle their money, except for legal mandates like this stupid pension-funding law. Congress can't just yank their funding for no reason, the way they can with every other Federal agency; the USPS is entirely self-funded, and uses no taxpayer money to operate. Change that to a Federal agency, and its revenues would go into the Treasury, and its operating costs would come out of the Treasury, being entirely comingled. It'd be very easy for Congress to simply defund the USPS (regardless of how much money they're making in revenue), cripple it, then point to that and say "look! It doesn't work! We need to eliminate it!" and then pass a new law to eliminate the USPS altogether, or sell it off to a private corporation.
Maybe you should try actually educating yourself about the USPS and the issues involved, and also about how the US government works (which obviously you don't know much about, since you're not American, obvious by your spelling of "nationalise"), before spouting a bunch of nonsense.
The only way to fix the issues facing the USPS is to fix the US government itself, and the corruption which has completely taken it over. The problems with the USPS are just minor symptoms of much, much larger problems with the US federal government, all caused by extreme corruption, turning into an entirely undemocratic, mercantilist/corporatist (some might say fascist) government. The way I see it, it's entirely hopeless at this point, and the only thing to do is wait for it to collapse under its own weight, just like the Roman Empire did.
Re: (Score:3)
No, that law doesn't apply to every US company, so with that one exception, it does run its finances like any other company: it doesn't comingle its funds with the US Treasury, it's entirely self-sufficient, just like most normal companies (except big banks, oil companies, and ag companies).
Re:Already happening (Score:5, Informative)
How sad.
They could instead, go to MULTIPLE door-to-door deliveries per day.
Until the 1950's the USPS *did* do multiple residential deliveries per day. In the 80's, I worked at a business that had 2 deliveries/day and sometimes we could send a letter across town the same day - send it out in the morning pickup and the other business would receive it in the afternoon. (didn't always work out that way, so we still had to courier documents that had to be there the same day)
http://about.usps.com/publications/pub100/pub100_018.htm [usps.com]
Carriers walked as many as 22 miles a day, carrying up to 50 pounds of mail at a time. They were instructed to deliver letters frequently and promptly — generally twice a day to homes and up to four times a day to businesses. The second residential delivery was discontinued on April 17, 1950, in most cities. Multiple deliveries to businesses were phased out over the next few decades as changing transportation patterns made most mail available for first-trip delivery. The weight limit of a carrier’s load was reduced to 35 pounds by the mid-1950s and remains the same today.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Which operate over the PUBLIC airwaves, which by rights should also be under the appropriate level of management as national infrastructure - serving the purpose of a great nation, subject to the consent of it's people as a whole.
What's true for the post should have been true for the Telegraph - as it was in much of Europe after Napoleon.
That is, until the pirates and grafters took over completely, and brainwashed you lot into believing that if it didn't turn profit, then it had no value.
Re:Already happening (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Already happening (Score:5, Informative)
It's worse than that.
In July 2006, Republicans passed legislation that required the USPS to come up with $5.5 billion to pay for retirement benefits for people who hadn't retired yet within 6 years. 6 years later, conveniently right before the 2012 election, the USPS was able to cough up the money but ended up with a $0.5 billion shortfall in its budget without drastically reducing service. So, during the sequester fight, these same clowns made the USPS pre-fund the retirements of people expected to retire 75 years from now. In other words, Republicans have demanded that the USPS fund the retirements of workers who are 5 years from being born.
As far as I can tell, the Republicans in question believe that the USPS is not something that should exist. It may be because of campaign funding from FedEx, UPS, etc. Or it may be because they believe that anything that the federal government does domestically is overreach - this seems odd though, since creating a postal service was one of the specific things Congress was charged with doing in the Constitution.
Re:Already happening (Score:5, Informative)
Back in the day when the government pretended to actually govern, the way it worked was that you would vote for some things you didn't like so that you could get a coalition to pass some things you did like. And so yes, the dems agreed to vote for stupid riders like this so that they could get support for their own little pet projects, in this case, keeping the country from shutting down.
Of course, recently one party has pointedly announced that it doesn't actually need any bills to pass at all, so it has no incentive to compromise whatsoever. Deliberately sabotaging the smooth working of the government absolutely is a partisan issue and the republican leadership proudly admits it.
Re: (Score:3)
You can always tell when a partisan winger is on the losing side of an argument: they start complaining about partisanship. Republicans did create this requirement in the first place, and repealing it would require passing a bill through the House, which is controlled by....Republicans.
Democrats could have changed this between 2009 and 2010, but that doesn't change the above two facts.
Re: (Score:3)
The grandparent was talking about the USPS, which has been ruined by requiring pension allocations 75 years in advance, and yes, this was entirely a Republican venture. Nothing you are talking about even resembles the magnitude of pre-funding the USPS has to do.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No one has a similar budget crisis because no one but the USPS is forced to fully fund health care and retirements 75 years in advance. No public entity. No private entity.
To pretend otherwise is misleading at best.
Err, no. What'
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The USPS wouldn't actually be in the red if it weren't for the stupid rules congress imposed on them a few years back where they are the only federal entity that has to have 100% retirement funds paid for (my understanding is the industry standards are 10-15% funded) In fact they were doing fairly well until the change.
You understand correctly. From USPS Healthcare Expenses [time.com] (and other sources):
Since 2006, the Post Office has been legally required (by Congress) to pre-fund health benefits for future retirees (for the next 75 years) at a cost of around $5.5 billion a year.
Re: (Score:3)
Actually, the USPS already takes photos of every piece of mail and saves it. They might not know what's inside, but they can tell the NSA who you've been communicating with.
Re:Already happening (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, the volume of letters has dropped significantly. Nobody denies that. All the while junk mail has been proliferating.
If they really want to balance the Post Office's books, all they have to do is stop subsidizing junk mail. They complain that "they need the cash flow" from junk mail but they admit that they cannot handle the load under their current budget. When they argue this way, they are neglecting to account for the fact that if they stop delivering subsidized junk mail, their costs will go way down, too. And those cost savings will be larger in proportion to the volume, because it's subsidized mail.
Get them back in the business of doing what they are supposed to do: deliver letters from place to place, for a fee. No matter how big the Internet gets, there will always be a need for physical papers to be sent.
Re:Already happening (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, what's being proposed here is going to affect city carriers only, as they are the ones that have to deliver large parts of their routes on foot. And I bet they will have similar setup for hardship boxes like us Rural guys have for disabled residents. In all fairness, I'm surprised the post office didn't do this a long time ago. It always seemed extremely inefficient to keep these walking routes going. I mean, just the amount of health benefits that have to be paid out due to all the injuries must be staggering. I knew a guy who had to get hip replacement and he was only in his early 40s. This is actually I think a much better plan than ending Saturday delivery (plus it might actually have a chance to go through as it's only affecting one of the postal unions instead of at least three).
Common in Canada (Score:4, Informative)
My mailbox is something like 400m away.
Re:Common in Canada (Score:4, Informative)
Not really all that common in Canada actually. It's the trend in new subdivisions built in the last 15 years, but most people still get their stuff to the door.
Frequency vs. Distance (Score:5, Interesting)
I think most Americans would rather give up Saturday delivery than have to walk farther to get their mail. I would be happy with just MWF delivery, but I would not want to have to walk to the end of our block to a cluster box.
Re: Frequency vs. Distance (Score:3, Insightful)
You are the pinnacle of a lazy ass! I'd much rather walk a few yards but be able to get a package any day than MWF delivery. day vs. 5 min. walk.
Re: (Score:3)
Uh. This isn't about "not leaving your package". This is about them leaving it at your door versus leaving it at some weird "community bundle" down the street. Personally, I'd rather they just leave it on my doorstep and ring the bell, like they already do.
Wait. What insanity is this? You order a thing which costs some amount and you're okay with it being delivered to your property and just left laying around?
Not me. I'm much happier that when I check my box within my community box I find a key that unlocks a larger compartment where I - and nobody else - can get my parcel. When I do, I slide the key back into the delivery slot so the compartment can be used for the next person's parcel.
Incidentally, side benefit to this is that I can still pick up my
Re: (Score:3)
I hope that if they push through a neighborhood - centralized solution they have enough sense to do that as well.
Re: (Score:3)
Getting and sending mail becomes less convenient. I'm a big USPS fan (clearly... [washington.edu]), and the draws are convenience and personal contact, not speed.
Getting mail twice a week would suffice for me, but getting rid of the mailperson -- the one who hand delivers a letter door-to-door anywhere in the States, for under a dollar! -- robs the USPS of its charm.
How about .. (Score:5, Insightful)
How about un-funding the massive health fund payments that they were forced to make?
Re:How about .. (Score:5, Insightful)
Err, it's not the "detroit model." It's the "we're going to impose unreasonable costs on you in an attempt to make you look bad and justify shutting you down" model. Forcing the USPS to maintain a fund for worker retirement up to 75 years from now is completely and totally unreasonable and serves only one purpose.
Re: (Score:3)
No, the Constitution specifically AUTHORIZES Congress to create a postal service it doesn't say they are REQUIRED to do so. They are perfectly within their constitutional power to not create one, or to scale it back as much as they want to.
The Congress shall have Power To ...
To establish Post Offices and post Roads;
vs. other places where Congress is specifically required to do something like:
Each House shall keep a Journal of its Proceedings, and from time to time publish the same
Re: (Score:3)
It's the Republicans again; they pushed this on USPS in their quest to "prove" that everything the government does is worse than the private sector.
The Post Office is not buckling.... (Score:4, Insightful)
under massive financial losses. It is buckling under the massive stupidity of Congress.
This would also mean that you have to go to the Post Office every time you have a letter/package to sign for, as they are probably not going to come to your front door for that anymore, either. Even though I live less than a half mile from a Post Office, due to the insanity of current cost cutting, I have to drive 8 miles away to get to the Post Office that serves my house.
Re: (Score:3)
It is buckling under the massive stupidity of Congress.
Indeed -- aren't they prevented from raising prices more?
Also, aren't they subcontracted by UPS/FedEx on "unprofitable" routes because USPS has to serve every location at roughly the same price?
It is this ridiculous idea that you can run something like a public utility service and business at the same time, i.e. keep prices low, guarantee universal service and be self-sustaining or profitable. Something's gotta give.
Re: (Score:3)
The nearest Post Office here is in about 15 minutes of driving. However parking there is pretty bad, the office is tiny, and the lines are huge. If you come at rush hour you cannot easily leave because of traffic issues. You need to allocate at least 30 minutes if you only want to buy one stamp at the counter. I cannot imagine myself ever going there; the few times I had to do that to retrieve a package were a sad waste of time.
What USPS needs to do is this. They scan the front of all incoming first clas
Great for parcels (Score:5, Interesting)
I've lived in places with the mailbox-cluster idea in Canada. Personally, I love it. It's especially great for parcels that would otherwise be left on a doorstep or taken back to a depot.
What happens here is that the mailbox-clusters have a a small number of large mailboxes. If you have a parcel, it goes in one of the large mailboxes. Then the key to that mailbox is put in your personal mailbox. You open it, take your parcel, and lock the key inside. Awesome.
What is happening to you guys? (Score:5, Insightful)
Non-American here.
What is happening to the largest economy in the world? You guys have the largest military, largest economy, dominant currency and you need to cut back on the mail service? I am even more flabbergasted at this than the lack of universal healthcare and the furor surrounding Obamacare.
Mail delivery for me is as basic as clean water and electricity; a basic staple of civilization that is part of every modern society.
Please don't take this as a veiled anti-American rant because it is not. I honestly wonder if I am witnessing the decline of a once might country. The other possibility is that the political stalemate in govt. is responsible for these basic things not getting fixed. If so this is almost scary: institutions in a superpower are crumbling because the politicians cannot work together.
Any American that cares to enlightens this foreigner?
Re:What is happening to you guys? (Score:5, Insightful)
They're doing just fine. What the congress did is to make them fully fund the defined benefit retirement plan for all workers over a very, very short period of time (I'm actually not up on the details, but that's the broad version). The result is that they've got billions of dollars a year in costs which magically appeared over night, and the congress - who sets the postal rates - will not increase the rates to cover the shortfall. The USPS isn't funded by the government, but is a stand-alone, semi-private organization with governmental oversight.
Understand that Postal Workers in the US have a very good union, and kick ass benefits for a position which doesn't require a college degree. I worked in the government for a while and the postal service health and retirement plans were far better than the mainstream civil servant (which, btw, are pretty good). By squeezing the USPS, the Republican controlled House of Representatives is intentionally setting the service up for failure so that they can point to how the federal government is incompetent at what they do.
Considering the Constitutional Nature.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Really, the Post Office is the one thing we shouldn't care about losing money on since it's a necessary and constitutionally required function of government. When's the last time we complained about the military losing money?
What is a much bigger problem is the absurd amount of money losing ventures the government embarks on that it's not even supposed to be involved in.
Re:Considering the Constitutional Nature.... (Score:5, Informative)
Please point out where in the constitution that it requires mail delivery. Thought so....
Article I, Section 8.
Did you not peruse your copy before posting that?
Did you? Please show where it is REQUIRED. I see where it AUTHORIZED. Maybe it's just that Congress has been ignoring the idea of being limited to only what they are authorized to do for so long, people don't even understand the concept anymore.
The Congress shall have Power To...establish Post Offices and post Roads...
For reference, this is what REQUIRED looks like:
Each House shall keep a Journal of its Proceedings, and from time to time publish the same...
door to door delivery boosted USPS profits (Score:5, Interesting)
Before the Civil War, you had to go to the local post office to pick up your mail.
In 1863, Postmaster Montgomery Blair petitioned congress to "promote the public convenience" by providing free home delivery in cities, and argued - correctly, it turns out - that the resultant increase in postal usage would offset the delivery cost and yield a profit. Free rural delivery followed around the turn of the century.
Others at the time argued that whether home delivery yielded a profit was irrelevant, since government entities should be more concerned with civic duty than profit. It's a balance, for sure, but I wish the civic duty sentiment were more common today, or at least to acknowledge the trade-off.
Re:door to door delivery boosted USPS profits (Score:4, Insightful)
I wish the civic duty sentiment were more common today
That bears repeating. A very large fraction of society's ills can be laid ultimately at its door; too many asses thinking only what the world can do for them.
Why not give EVERY resident a PO Box (Score:3)
In some small towns, there is no mail delivery.
I would prefer that the USPS grant everyone a PO Box, with automatic translation of Street Address to assigned PO Box. This would reduce the amount of letter carriers needed for a given zip code immensely. With that savings, parcel lockers and extended front desk hours would be within reach.
Dear USPS, (Score:5, Interesting)
Dear USPS,
Please forward all photographs you've taken of my mail to my email address. This way, I can predetermine, for you, if I even want said articles of mail delivered to my address. I am sure precluding bulk mailings and advertisements from delivery to my address will save the USPS even more money.
On second thought, could you just open my mail for me before you photograph it? I can just read my mail in the photos and save you the trouble of delivering anything.
Thanks,
Bob the Recycling Dude
Done for years in Canada (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, it's crazy that nobody will walk to get their mail. Except millions of Canadians do it every day, and have been for years. They don't get winter in Canada, do they?
The main difference between the two postal systems is that Canada Post is strongly discouraged to lose money. So when they saw mail volumes declining, they started acting to reduce costs. Every new neighborhood gets a community mailbox, where every house has a locked box in that larger group of boxes (what's called a cluster box in the summary). The mail goes there. The end result is that far fewer staff are needed to deliver the mail, which makes it cheaper. You can drop off letters to be delivered, and small packages are also delivered there (or delivered to the door, depending on the service level). In my small city, there's one big post office and two smaller ones inside pharmacies scattered around the city for if you want to mail parcels or pick up items too big for the boxes.
Because it's a Crown Corporation, management has some autonomy to enact changes like that, as the government can't step in as easily as Congress can (and has, in the case of blocking the end of Saturday delivery). The real problem here is less the USPS and more that the USPS isn't allowed to change anything without reactionaries in Congress interfering.
One major problem. . . (Score:5, Informative)
Plus secure parcel delivery (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Around here our mailboxes are normally attached to the outside of the house. There's no bigger danger than having no mailbox at all.
What you're also ignoring is that when the post office started it was open 7 days a week and they didn't have the benefit of things like cars.
Re: (Score:3)
I've, um, never really had a problem with a pretty trustworthy guy sticking stuff in my door. Did you have some kind of bad experience or something?
Re: (Score:3)
I've, um, never really had a problem with a pretty trustworthy guy sticking stuff in my door. Did you have some kind of bad experience or something?
I used to have a dog that saw it as her duty to bring the mail from the door slot box to the kitchen floor near the 'fridge, she'd usually wait by the door and grab it as the mailman shoved it in (after barking a cheery hello to him). Aside from the slobber she did a good job and never chewed up the mail, though at times she got distracted by something else outside and the letters ended up behind the couch when she was barking out the window. She'd have been disappointed without her "job".
Re:End the monopoly. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:End the monopoly. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:End the monopoly. (Score:4, Informative)
Not to all addresses.
Private carriers can do a better job for less money, but only because they aren't legally required to deliver mail to everyone. If you let the USPS cancel all the rural routes, their costs would go way down, too.
Re: (Score:3)
Lysander Spooner already demonstrated that private mail carriers can do a better job for less money, back in the mid 1800s. It's even more true today.
-jcr
Were you aware that a large portion of the rural delivery routes are contracted out now? They aren't actual Postal employees, which has some interesting legal quirks about handing the mail off to a non-govt entity, but it is significantly cheaper since they don't have to pay benefits.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Okay.
'Hey, Grams! I know you're 92, but I think you should get your mail from a curbside mailbox in the winter.'
'What are you talking about? That's how I get it. We haven't had door delivery here since the '40s.'
'Okay.'
The VAST MAJORITY of postal customer don't have to-the-door delivery. It's just some select neighborhoods that do.