A $3 billion deficit and expected losses of $6 billion more have led the Postmaster General to suggest cutting mail delivery from six to five days.
The post office blames FedEx and email, along with the decline of advertising mailers that has occurred with the economic downturn, for its troubles. Various studies have estimated that cutting a day of service, probably Tuesday or Saturday, could save between $1.9 and $3.5 billion annually.
We pay most of our bills online, most of our packages come via UPS or DHL, so the only mail we usually get is magazines and ad fliers. Would you care if the mail came only five days a week?
Postal Service Considers Cutting Delivery Day [MSNBC]
(Photo: Consumerist)
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I wouldn’t care. I’d like the offices to still be open on Saturday, though. That helps with package pickups and shipping, etc.
@Ash78: Sounds like that won’t change. Every article I’ve read so far states that they are considering cutting delivery only. I haven’t seen anything that says that are closing completely for a day like they do on Sunday. It sounds like post offices will still be open for PO boxes, shipping, buying stamps, etc.
@Ash78: The proposed day off is ‘Tuesday’, which is odd to me. I’d think Monday would make more sense.
@chiieddy:
I think the idea is to prevent not having mail delivered for two days in a row. Wednesday or Thursday would make the most sense to me.
@Ash78: They also said they’d look at cutting delivery on Tuesdays, typically their slowest day, not Saturdays.
It also seemed in some articles like they might be talking about this being a part-year thing — like they might do six-day delivery during the holidays and other busy seasons, and cut back for 5-day during slow seasons.
I’m hoping to run into my friend who’s a postmistress soon so I can ask her about it.
@Ash78: My local post office advertises hours of 8-Noon on saturdays. When you’ve got shit to do and show up at 8, they open the outside doors, but lock the ‘inner’ doors that you have to go through to get to the counter and stand behind them talking, drinking their coffe, and eating until 8:10. Banging on the doors and pointing to your watch just makes them eat/drink slower. Worst part is that there are 4 of them there talking, but when they do finally open the door, only one ends up at the counter. The other 3 just disappear into the back for something else (circle jerk perhaps?). I think better management of current postal workers would go a longer way in clearing up their budget issues than not delivering me my netflix movies one day a week.
@E A G L E S EAGLES EAGLES EAGLES WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO…: Your cell phone does’nt take video. Turn them in.
@Ash78: I agree.. Saturday is really the only day that people with full time jobs can get to the post office. Anyway, seems like that’s not an issue..
I guess the most logical day to cut would be the day with the least mail; it would have the least effect. On the other hand, businesses might not want to wait an extra day to get a check or some such if it turns out to be Tuesday.
BTW – I almost always pick USPS priority if it’s a shipping option online. They’re faster cross-country than UPS/FedEx ground, and b/c they deliver on Sat.
I have to say I pay everything online..and get me bills online. The only thing I normally send is Christmas and Birthday cards..and that is most of the mail I receive. I would not care if the switched to 5 day work week.
I care.
If they cut Saturday, I’ll never be able to get to the PO Box that I have to pay them for because the post office in my zip code can’t seem to not steal/break/rifle my mail.
@kateblack: I think they’re just talking about delivery here, not office hours.
@kateblack: You can actually pay for your box online. Its much easier than dealing with real people. Check out: [poboxes.usps.com]
@chadbailey: You can’t pick up PO Box mail online. I only pay for the box once a year or so. You can pay for them for years in advance in person, so that’s no hardship.
@kateblack: In ALL the post offices I’ve ever been to, the POboxes are accessible 24/7.
@Oranges w/ Cheese: I’ve seen some that aren’t accessible when the post office is closed. Mostly in Philadelphia. And those branches were also closed on Saturdays, so it must have been quite inconvenient for some people.
@oneandone: There’s a Post Office in the student center at the college I went to, and I had a PO box there. Not only did they have downright horrible hours, but late at night they’d lock the whole building down, with the PO boxes inside. Sure, it’s open all day long, but night owls like me that just finished going to classes, studying, and what not and want to check their mail are out of luck. Don’t even get me started on how they loved to shove as much mail as possible into that little bitty box (just leave me a note so I can go to the desk to get my mail…) and ignore forwarding requests for the summer so that I had a compressed little cube of mail waiting for me when I got back.
@Oranges w/ Cheese: I had a PO Box in Tacoma, WA in a Post Office that locked up before I got back into town from work each day. I almost never got my mail and eventually cancelled my box. The city I live in now is a tiny town with a tiny Post Office, but it’s open 24/7/365 for PO Box access.
@Oranges w/ Cheese: Well NONE of the PO Boxes here in Los Angeles are available 24/7 anymore.
@kateblack: they actually want to keep Saturday. If they cut they would cut Tuesday as that is the lowest mail volume day. Plus saturday delivery helps maintain a competitive edge with other delivery services (who charge extra for saturday delivery.)
@Tmoney02: That would make a lot of sense – I hadn’t thought of that.
Makes me wonder why Tuesday is the slowest day.
@oneandone: perhaps there is some weird correlation to how many airplane seats are actually ‘in the air’
[rickseaney.com]
This vastly devalues services such a Netflix and the like.
@Darrone: Seriously. I’d have a four day turn around instead of three. At that point, it almost makes more sense to go to Blockbuster (almost b/c they have NO selection anymore). But maybe Blockbuster is in cahoots with USPS?!
@Darrone: No kidding. Netflix already has their Saturdays off, so we don’t get the max out of the shipping-week.
@Darrone: Especially if they stop Tuesdays, that’s new release delivery day which will really fuck with netflix since fools like myself who can’t wait on the new releases will go to a B&M store to pick them up on tuesday.
@Darrone: i feel even better about my brand new roku netflix player right now….
@Darrone: That’s exactly what I was thinking “Great, now I can’t get Netflix on Saturday!”
@Darrone: …and hopefully hastens their move to completely digital distribution.
Would the price for Netflix go down since they’re ability to deliver movies will be reduced by this?
@Kensuke Nakamura: I think Netflix is considering adding Saturday fulfillment, which would offset the proposed USPS closing. Seems like too much of a coincidence to me.
@squidboots: They probably have had advanced notice of this idea from the USPS. Netflix and USPS have a very, very close relationship.
@Dusty Wilson: Their former Chief Operating Officer was William J. Henderson, the former Postmaster General. So yeah, they have (had?) a close relationship
@Kensuke Nakamura: That’s my only big thing with going to no Saturday delivery, I wouldn’t get any movies on Saturday.
I assumed that USPS was doing well thanks to the popularity of online retailers like Amazon. Nowadays I always look first to amazon on all media and technology purchases.
@Kensuke Nakamura: But I think amazon mostly uses UPS unless you are ordering from a Marketplace vendor.
@Shadowman615: The last four orders I placed used Fed-ex, UPS and USPS. None were marketplace orders. I just think they use different carriers depending on which distribution center the items come from.
@mrgenius:
It appears to me that they only use USPS on small items that they don’t have to pack in a cardboard box and can fit in your mailbox.
Almost everything I’ve bought from Amazon came through UPS.
@mrgenius: It’s a funny thing with Amazon and the UPSP and their distribution centers. I’m about 35 miles from an Amazon distribution center in Springfield, MA (books and DVDs mostly). Whenever they ship from there by UPS ground, I get it almost always next day.
But when they ship by USPS, I get no usable tracking info, and the package shows up anywhere from five to ten days from the time it goes into the system. The last one was lost, then showed up looking like a truck had run over it and had to be replaced and reshipped. The replacement came by UPS virtually overnight from KY.
@mrgenius: @Kensuke Nakamura: I think they send books and such media through USPS to get the lower “media” rate. They seem to use mostly UPS for other things when delivering to me. It might be because I’m an Amazon Prime subscriber and they might have cut a nice deal with UPS for that service.
@Kensuke Nakamura:
My stuff is usually sent USPS. Only once have I had it sent UPS.
Yeah, the “evil private sector” is to blame, not the fact that everything the government touches costs ten time as much and turns to crap and corruption instantly. It’s just taken the Post Office longer than the prize turds like Amtrak and Social Security.
@Bahnburner:
The United States Postal Service is operated by an autonomous public corporation that replaced the Post Office Department in 1971.
[en.wikipedia.org]
Moron.
@PsychicPsycho3: Ouch.
@Bahnburner:
Actually, I believe that the Post Office was consistently one of the few quasi-government agencies that made money.
I don’t doubt that the reasons that were given are why the post office is having troubles. The writing has been on the wall for awhile that the post office is becoming slowly obsolete. If an 85 year-old woman can send an email, her grandson probably only knows USPS as ‘the place where I get my Netflix’.
Just because advancements in the private sector have filled a void, doesn’t necessarily mean that the post office is calling them ‘evil’, but way to troll on a consumer advocacy site, you’re getting good at it.
@Secret Agent Man: I think USPS is being kept alive by a combination of Netflix, bulk advertisements, bills, bill collectors, and holiday cards.
@Bahnburner: +1
@Bahnburner: Amtrak was doomed from the start, seeing as it was made up of all the passenger lines that the private railroads were losing money on.
@Bahnburner: Now, now, look at private health insurance companies, they cost way more than government stuff!
@Bahnburner: So why can the USPS actually get my mail / packages to me before 7-8 PM at night (when UPS usually delivers) and usually delivers about a day faster and with better reliability than UPS, for less cost. I will admit performance of the USPS is about on a par with FEDEX, but UPS freaking blows.
@nataku83: In my area (rural Kansas), UPS does great. FedEx seems to take a bit longer. DHL is simply unreliable. USPS does great for the things that USPS is known to be great for.
@Bahnburner: How is the private sector doing with delivering say Xmas or birthday cards. I mail mine at 42 CENTS each. Try the CHEAPEST FEDEX or UPS rate on those, and also the post office will get there faster. Despite occassional horror stories, the USPS actually gets mail delivered very effeciently.
To those of you complaining about netflix; it wont be long til more movies are able to be watched online
@thrid001: Actually, there is a law that other carriers are not allowed to place anything into your mailboxes unless it is considered “urgent.” One qualifier for a letter being label urgent is that the cost of postage must be (I believe) 3x higher than the USPS’s rate. If this law is repealed, we’ll see how much UPS and FedEx charge for delivering letters.
@Travis Estell: I think the conditions to that would be that the other carriers have to agree to deliver at a flat rate to every single place that USPS delivers to, including such places as “middle of the tundra, Alaska”. It’s not just what they deliver, but where.
@Travis Estell: If this happened, USPS might end up being replaced wholesale by UPS/FedEx/DHL. If those companies could be trusted (I think they can as long as they don’t merge and therefore have competition), I would be okay with it. But the non-USPS carriers aren’t covered (as far as I know) by the laws that protect USPS-handled mail.
@Bahnburner:
That is just idiotic. None of the private corporations are required to provide universal delivery of all letters to anywhere in the country 6 days a week for the price of a stamp. None could do it. Sure some would like to cherry pick the big cities, but the USPS has to deliver to every trailer in flyover country as well as the highly dense areas. There is no profit making company like the USPS because there is no company like them. Say it to yourself- “Universal Delivery.”
@Bahnburner: A tale of two cities:
Seattle City Light vs. Portland General Electric (ENRON).
Enron was certainly a well-run private corporation, was it?
Jack Nicholson will be sorry the hear The Postman only Rings Once nowadays.
@yajjo: At least UPS and FedEx try three times
But they can’t leave it in your mailbox.. oh well.
Its already like that in Canada so its not a big deal, they keep the offices open on saturdays so you can send and pick up packages.
If they cut Tuesday, what are businesses supposed to do that depend on USPS to send and receive mail? I don’t think our clients would like to have to send mail to us via UPS or FedEx to make sure we receive it on a Tuesday.
@Wild Monkey: Best guess is they would ship and receive on one of the five days available.
@Wild Monkey: I also wouldn’t be surprised if they maintain a skeleton crew of delivery/sorters for express mail and priority mail if you pay few extra bucks.
@Wild Monkey: We get mail every day of the business week and it would certainly suck to have them stop delivering on Tuesday. Our office doesn’t get mail delivery on Saturdays (they hold it till Monday) so we already technically have 5 day delivery. If they do cut a delivery day, I would wish that they wouldn’t observe some of the more obscure government holidays.
@samurailynn: Agreed! The public offices and banks already close for enough holidays throughout the year. I’d prefer that they not observe as many holidays in exchange for cutting off a whole day each week.
@Wild Monkey: My job depends 100% on mail volume. my department specifically is 99.8% international courier, so DHL going under hurt us a bit. USPS though… 80% of the office needs deliveries from them every day. I hope they don’t fire people over the reduced volumes.
@Ratty: DHL went under? I get deliveries through them once in awhile and their site is still up. I do know that Airborne Express merged with DHL five or so years ago (or their brands merged into DHL then, anyway).
@Wild Monkey: An issue I see with Tuesday is: what about all the Monday holidays? Then you’ve got a business closed Saturday (mail held at PO), and the PO closed Sunday through Tuesday while the plant continues to process mail… on Wednesday the carrier is dragging out up to five days’ worth of business mail and maybe racking up a 11 or 12-hour workday.
I agree this probably matters not a lick from a personal perspective. Just one more day a week not to receive 24 pounds worth of credit card solicitations.
But from a business perspective, this is quite nefarious, especially for anyone who deals with documents needing original signatures. If the post office does this, it will be less able to compete with things like FexEx Saturday Delivery and courier services, etc.,.
One of the most attractive things about the post office is that, while perhaps plodding, it is consistent. Disrupting this consistency is not a great idea.
@stevejust: Exactly. They’d be less able to compete with UPS/DHL/FedEx/etc. and then lose money, cut back a day, be less able to compete, lose money…you see where this is going.
I know a lot of people don’t like USPS but (knock on wood) I find them inexpensive, fast, reliable, and they’ve yet to lose a package or important document of mine. I’d kind of like to keep a business like that around.
@stevejust: Maybe USPS should charge a premium for Saturday delivery then just like every other delivery company.
I’d support cancelling Tuesday mail service. That’s always the most disappointing delivery day for me…nothing but flyers.
(Yes, I know they’d just deliver them on another day, but I’d appreciate the symbolic gesture.)
5 days isn’t too much of a big deal for me. They should, however, consider cutting the salary for their glorified paperboys. According to payscale.com, the average mail carrier with 5-9 years of experience makes $23.00/hour. All they do is sort, bundle, pickup and deliver. Is that really worth $23.00/hour?
@SabreDC:
Answer: yes.
@SabreDC:
I’ll agree and say that is probably overpaid. Plus, I think that they have separate people to sort the mail, so the carriers only have to pickup and deliver.
@SabreDC: Do you really consider $23.00 an hour to be a lot? It’s not.
@goodcow: I consider it to be a lot for a paperboy.
@goodcow:
Yes, I consider $46k a year plus overtime and weekend pay with the sweet Governement retirement pension package a pretty good deal.
[www.usps.com]
@wgrune: Well we can’t all mop the floor at Outback! Postal Workers deserve the pay they make – at least the guys out on the street do. They come rain or shine, often at risk of animal attack, or ghetto assassination. The people behind the counter giving me a hard time about how many stamps I need…… not so much.
@DevoAlmighty: and think of the risk of papercuts…
if it was my job, i’d want hazard pay for some of the things people send through the mail
@DevoAlmighty: They offer that pay to the delivery crew in my tiny rural town as well, but they don’t have to put up with any “ghetto assassination” problems. And they typically end up skipping mail delivery on days that are too snowy, even if the roads are safe enough to drive on. I’d support reducing their pay just a bit. I think $15/hr is more reasonable considering the other perks they get.
@Dusty Wilson: perks? what perks? Alot of people have the wrong impression of the usps. Reality is its getting harder and harder. Most workers are not 40 hr work week. most clerks are part time which means you are only guaranteed less than 40 hrs(could be 2hrs a week) You have to be basically “on call” during operating hrs. So even if you get a second job the usps comes first. Everytime they add a new step(chore, report, etc) they cut your hrs again. The carriers are not “paperboys” they have to hand sort mail then carry the mail. And can you imagine if they close on Sat or Tuesdays and there is a holiday? It means there is 5 days worth of mail to deliver in only 1 day with no extra help and you are not allowed overtime. Can anyone else get anything phisically to another country like Europe for $0.94? They deserve $25 an hr! nowadays you need at least $25 an hr if you support a family of 4 or 5.
@GiraldoAlastor: In my town, they are treated with great respect. And rent is hardly $200-300/mth for a nice house (and most other costs are similarly low), so the cost of living doesn’t warrant big pay. I understand they work hard, but so does everyone else. I’m probably the only person in this town that doesn’t have a hard physical labor job. This is a farming community.
@wgrune: Damn, quit being so stingy. $46,000 on your own is a HUGE salary, but what if they’re the sole earner for a family? Even with no kids thats really REALLY pushing it in a large area of this country. And if they had a kid, they’d most likely be in poverty.
@wgrune: Good thing the Post Office isn’t tax funded, then.
@Oranges w/ Cheese: Um, what? My mom supported two kids for a number of years on what would be about $45k/year now, on her own. She owned a home and a car. We took vacations. For, say, a single mom and two kids, the poverty line is under $20k in most of the US. And there are a lot of people who fit that description.
I have some absolutely huge student loans and a Master’s degree in a supposedly in-demand profession and *I* don’t make $23/hour. I don’t know that I’d call it hugely high considering the effort involved, but it’s hardly underpaid, especially for work that doesn’t require a degree. And anybody who feels like they’re in poverty at that pay rate really needs to go see what real poverty looks like.
@Repique: Why would you get huge loans to get a degree to get a job in a supposedly in-demand profession that pays less than $23/hr? Sounds like the reason it’s so in-demand is because most people checked the cost/return ratio and decided the degree wasn’t worth it.
And $23/hr where I live in Boston is just enough to get by. Any lower and you ARE in poverty here. Sounds like you live somewhere cheap.
@Repique:
In parts of the northeast we are told that a family of four needs at least $60K in income to be considered above poverty level. Remember that cost of living varies widely around the country.
@SabreDC: if they make that much then why are they all so pissed off all the time?
@kairi2:
Reminds me of the time I went in to complain because a letter was delivered FIVE weeks late, causing me to miss a VERY important appointment.
After basically calling me a liar and stating that I had no proof that I did not receive the said letter weeks ago, the guy at the counter said to me, “We have to handle millions of pieces of mail everyday. You’re lucky to get anything delivered to you at all.”
@kairi2: because most of what they handle has been LICKED by a complete stranger? [envelope flaps]
that’d make me cranky
@kairi2: I think a large majority of them are not pissed off. There are just a few bad apples that give them a bad rep.
@SabreDC:
A mail carrier w/ 5-9 years of experience is hardly a “paperboy”…. and 23/hour isn’t that much money.
@SabreDC:
$23/hr is reasonable – you may not have to have a degree to deliver mail, but it is an important job. If they paid $8/hr then the employees would treat it like an $8/hr job – ie not really work and not care about getting fired because they could always go get another $8/hr job. Delivering the mail may not require a high degree of technical skill, but it is important, and the people who do it need to treat it as being important or a service that we rely on would not get performed reliably. On the otherhand, by paying $23/hr the employees feel like if they screw up and get fired it may be hard to get another job that pays the same money – so they actually try to do things right…and the postal service is one of the few parts of the government that the public actually trust. Keep in mind also that postal jobs often go to retired soldiers who were paid next to nothing to risk their lives for us. Also, before taking issue with our government possibly over paying honest people who put in a hard days work, I would take major issue with out govt. paying billions to all the lazy welfare people!
@SabreDC:
Yes, $23 an hour is a lot for a job that probably just requires a HS Diploma and some connections to get the job. I know that they have to be out rain or shine, but so do a lot of other people including retail employees who don’t get paid nearly that much.
@anyanka323: Don’t forget that really hard civil service exam that they have to take that tests their ability to point out which part is the city and which is the state in “Los Angeles, CA”.
@anyanka323: But why begrudge people making a decent salary? I’d rather see retail people get paid a more decent wage, than demand that other people be brought down.
Glorified paperboys!? How ignorant you are. It truly amazes me how quick people are to pass judgement and pass along opinions on things they have no experience with. Whats your job and how much do you get paid? Lets complain about mail carriers who freeze in the winter because of terrible heaters and sweat in the summer from lack of air conditioning. Trudging through snow and rain slipping on ice despite people not shoveling a path for their carrier. Oh lets not forget the personal touch the usps offers you such as little requests that you make like where you want packages left or dog treats for your animals. Not to mention the work they do before they even get to the road. Oh and lets also be quick to forget the rising cost of living and if a company should pay well it better be the government. Id like to know your job and pay and lets see if your worth that amount?
in response to sabredc, get your information straight i have been a carrier with the post office for six years, i use my own vehicle and get payed 18.24 an hour and .53 a mile, if you think the job is so easy, come on down and apply, then you can sort out 700 peoples mail, remember which of those houses have forwards, deal with all the people calling everyday looking for an unemployment check, reading all the bullshit complaints of what we get payed, among all the other garbage we deal with deal with on a day to day basis, and see if your tone dont change.
I do agree we get payed a good amount of money, but we earn every penny of it!!@SabreDC: @SabreDC:
So we are glorified paperboys. I would like to see SabreDC do our jobs. It is alot more than sorting, bundling, pickup and delivering the mail. I do belive we are worth the $23 per hour although I am not at that level yet as I am only 4 years fulltime…Our craft would suffer with 5 day delivery (Subs would quit) and just chase more people away from the PO.
There are lots of people who depend on universal delivery for pills, dvd’s, packages, express mail…You get my drift….Cutting some of the pork at the top of the ladder is my solution…
It would only affect me for Netflix. Other than that, the only thing I get is fliers for businesses that I don’t patronize (sorry, I don’t need new vinyl siding).
I already don’t get mail on snowy days, sure, take off another day, how about only delivering one day a week.
Friggin lazy SOB’s.
About the only thing I get via mail now is netflix, bills, a couple of magazines, and a couple hundred pounds of junk mail a year. I still ship things to clients via priority mail because it’s the cheapest, but that’s only because of government subsidies.
@menty666: Actually it’s subsidized by all that junk mail you receive. Not by the government. The fact there isn’t as much junk mail being sent out is the reason for the financial troubles.
@montecon: And Netflix, bills, bill collectors, and holiday cards.
How much of the savings will be salary as opposed to less fuel, wear and tear, etc?
This will affect my business, especially if they choose Tuesday to stop delivering as the weekends are busy buying times.
I think they would have to close Saturday. If you mail something out on a Monday, especially overnight, you would expect to get there the next day.
I vote for offing Saturday….
@celticgina: I think overnight/express mail already gets delivered on days that they’d otherwise be closed.
I think it’s a great idea to cut out a day. It will force people that are still using mail and don’t need to be to switch to digital delivery. However, I think cutting Saturday is a much better idea than cutting Tuesday. While I understand that Tuesday is a slower mail day, the break in the week will make things awkward. It just breaks up the week in an odd fashion. Further, it seems wholly illogical that the post office is losing so much money. And by the math above, cutting one day will only save them $2b, so they’ll still lose $3b next year. Perhaps it’s time to up the price of stamps and package delivery. In this day and age, I don’t think it’s appropriate or necessary for the govt. to heavily subsidize mail delivery. It should at least break even.
@Pylon83:
Package delivery just went up on 1/18
First class mailing prices are going up this summer in some new annual increase scheme based on inflation. Of course in a deflationary economy I doubt the prices will retreat any.
I still use paper mail for all of my bills because it gives me a paper trail when the companies try pulling something, or when you find there’s a mysterious charge on your credit card bill and you want to find out how long it’s been there. Most of the folks that bill me have cut off dates on their record archives so it’s not like I can just pull up last year’s bill if needed.
@menty666:
Obviously if the post office is running at a loss, the rate increases haven’t been large enough. Further, you can print off your electronic bill and payment records. The cost of printing a page or two is far less than the cost of postage, even on the most inefficient printer. Or hell, print the pages to .PDF’s and keep them electronically.
@Pylon83: Saturday delivery helps maintain a competitive edge with other delivery services (who charge extra for Saturday delivery.)
@Pylon83: I think the only real “subsidies” they get are tax exemption and exclusive right to use the mailboxes. Both of these add up to pretty big subsidies, but from that you’ve also got to subtract stuff like being required to deliver everywhere (not cheap), having to ask government permission before adjusting prices, etc. If the post office gave up all of its benefits, it would also stop delivering Uncle Sam’s mail for free and the taxpayers would have to pay for it directly rather than indirectly (through higher postage).
Canada works off of a 5 day mail week, monday to friday… really what is the big deal?
@Jamaces: Canada also sells milk in plastic bags.
@DevoAlmighty: (OT) You can get milk in the US in non-refrigerated TetraPak cartons. They keep for many months. I buy those suckers in bulk. They taste great (it’s just normal milk) and are awesome for cooking. No need to worry about wasting milk if you don’t use it all (like me).
@Jamaces: The big deal is that our tax money has been going to the US government to pay for 6-day delivery for, um, forever. Are they going to reduce my taxes if they’re going to reduce my service? It’s like the grocery shrink ray, but this time I’m forced to pay or I go to prison.
Personally, I say shut down the waste of money called the USPS. Sell it to a private company. Open up delivery to mailboxes through UPS and FedEx. This is not a service that the government needs to exclusively provide anymore.
@TheFlamingoKing: The USPS is a private entity. Tax dollars do not fund it.
And i wouldn;t exactly brag about Canada Post. It’s terrible.
@TheFlamingoKing: Yeah, the Postal Service gets all its revenues from postage fees. Taxes do not support the Postal Service.
From the website: “Do not receive tax dollars for operations. We are a self-supporting agency, using the revenue from the sale of postage and products to pay expenses. “
[www.usps.com]
@Jamaces: Everytime we talk about something in the US, someone chimes in with “In Canada we…” ….IMHO….I for one,do not care if people in Canada get mail, if it’s delivered 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 or 0 days of the week, or if it’s delivered by a postal carrier or by pigeon.
@ChibaCityCowboy: That’s only when someone in the US moans about how things are when in fact you often have better lives than most people in the world. We’re just trying to bring some perspective and showing you that you don’t have it so bad. That’s what we Canadians do.
FedEx and UPS is still in business only delivering Monday to Friday, I don’t see what’s the problem. One time USPS tried to deliver a package to my work on Saturday and left a note, doesn’t make much sense to me.
Letters to residential area is another story. I like getting my mail at home on Saturdays. Maybe they can only deliver letters and not do packages.
@tinmanx: Losing money isn’t the objective.
Not everyone is a 20-something single person who works at home and lives in easy walking distance to a mailbox. Lots of people who can’t get out — sick, old, have small children, work ungodly hours somewhere without mail service (factories) and can’t get to a mailbox — need to get their bills in the mail on time. For them, it’s already difficult to do this without mail service on Sundays. Taking another day could cause real problems with some of those evil bill collectors we talk about on this board.
@BytheSea:
I agree, I have a PO Box and have to get there before 5PM if I want my packages. Sometimes that means leaving in the middle of the day, and losing a half hours pay just to get my package. If I had home delivery, I wouldn’t care.
@MrBryan:
You choose to have a PO box rather than having home delivery. Be it a direct choice (you can get home delivery at your address) or an indirect one (you chose to live in a place where home delivery isn’t available), either way it’s your choice. The rest of the taxpayers should not have to eat the cost of ensuring you can conveniently get your mail.
@Pylon83:
haha, sorry the house I bought doesn’t fit your cookie cutter plan of mail delivery. I guess I’ll sell it in this crappy market, and find one the mail man drives past.
@MrBryan:
That wasn’t my point. My point was you made a choice. No one can fault you for that choice. Perhaps you want to live in the country away from all the noise and people. I totally understand that. However, you have to understand and accept the “price” of living out there. The rest of the taxpayers shouldn’t have to subsidize your choice any further.
@Pylon83: USPS isn’t paid for by taxes. It’s entirely fee for service.
@Pylon83: Did you ever think that maybe some people have PO boxes because when their mail is delivered to their home address it gets stolen?
Although inconvenient to have a PO box (because of the wonderful hours they have 9-5 M-F while most people are working) it is a lot safer when it comes to protecting your identity et al.
@Adrienne Willis:
There are 1000 solutions to that problem that don’t involve extra money being spent on an extra day of delivery or extended post office hours. A locking mailbox is the most obvious one.
@Pylon83: That doesn’t work if you receive an envelope or package that doesn’t fit in the slot on that locking mailbox.
@MrBryan: Can’t they give you a key for the big package boxes? That’s what they do at the PO here. They have dedicated boxes specifically to pickup packages, even after hours, even at 3am.
@BytheSea:
Pardon my bluntness, but those are some pretty lame excuses. I find it hard to believe that it would be that difficult to adjust your personal affairs a tiny bit to see that your bills get into the mail on time. So you drop them in the mail one day earlier, or learn to pay them online. This is an example of over-reliance on the (arguably) current convenience of the system, and of complete unwillingness to adapt. Do you really support an extra $5 billion tax payer dollars being spent so that a few unorganized folks don’t have to change their routine a tiny bit? That $5 billion could be spent on other things, or *Gasp* result in lower, albeit slightly, taxes for everyone.
only thing I’d miss is a netflix delivery. If you send a movie back on thursday no replacement til monday. Also entflix was reportedly going to start saturday processing thanks to the huge spurt in new suscribers.
The post office blames FedEx and email
FedEx, UPS, and email have been around for a long time now. They’ve had plenty of time to adjust. Just watch, they’ll be blaming email for the next 20 years.
It’s like Ford still blaming the Edsel for their problems.
DHL is DOA.
This reminds me of that seinfeld where kramer wanted to stop the mail, and he got kidnapped to an interrogation room until he changed his mind… good times..
I don’t see no problem with. Mail delivery is always spotty here on the SOL.
I receive almost all of my correspondence digitally- bills, letters from friends, responses to job applications, etc. I don’t even order catalogs these days. If I subscribe to a magazine I don’t care which day of the week it arrives. Most of my mail has been circulation flyers from local grocery stores. The rest are advertisements from local retailers and health providers, credit card offers and coupons. As a result, over the past year I’ve gotten into the habit of checking my mail only 2 or 3 times a month. I’d estimate that 90% of it (or more) goes directly into the trash. I wouldn’t miss weekend delivery of most mail, although I would miss Saturday delivery of *packages*- that’s a service worth keeping.
I could be snarky and point out that the lazy bastards only work a couple of days a week as it is.I could point out that the counter help make Dick Cheney look like a school crossing guard with their arrogance.I could point out that they have had decades to get their lazy asses in gear and adapt to being AN option instead of the ONLY option for message delivery,but they have acted like the monopoly that they were/are and just raised rates while degrading service.
I could point that out,but I won’t.
This is bullsh1t. My mail carrier already “decided” that no one on my block gets mail on Thursdays, and complaining to the post office does nothing (they say that we are all lying, because he is a great guy). If they cut the regular work week down to 5 days I am positive that I would only get mail 4 days a week at that point, which would really make my Netflix subscription not worth it.
@LeonardoCorvus: I use both Netflix and Gamefly, but I really don’t think losing one single day of delivery will make Netflix not worth the money. Maybe you have a special situation where you watch and mail back eight DVDs on your super-mega-couchpotato plan, but most normal people don’t.
It’s probably a good idea, I would just really miss my netflix.
I concur with the postings re: paying online, etc.
However, for those of us who work all week long, the Saturday slot is the only time to get to the PO to send packages/take care o’ bidness.
YESSsss…I actually DO use the USPS for packages because I don’t want to get boned by UPS and FedEx shipping fees. No problems yet (as opposed to the usual UPS/FedEx “we-really-did-ring-your-bell-and-you-weren’t-there-although-you-were” routine).
@hankrearden:
But they aren’t talking about closing the offices on Tuesday or Saturday, just the actual mail deliver on those days.
The USPS is on the right track by eliminating Saturday deliveries. Then, they should start a process of ending direct home deliveries altogether by establishing neighborhood PO boxes to consolidate multiple deliveries into a single stop. Picture a multi-box recepticle station placed at the end of every neighborhood block where the carrier could deliver the entire block’s mail in a single stop. It would make mail delivery very efficient labor-wise. The expense of the boxes would be more than offset by the savings gains realized by the need for far fewer carriers than the USPS has on staff today.
@RobinCreon: And it would be much more efficient for the mail theves to steal bills and checks for an entire block!
Phoenix used to have tons of those cluster mailboxes until in recent years when people started realizing just how much of their mail was being stolen out of them.
@RobinCreon: Those lean business practices are great. Increase efficiency, and we’ll hardly need to employ anyone. Oh, wait…
@RobinCreon: They already do this in new developments in many cities on my side of the state. It’s more efficient for the delivery guy, but it’s not more efficient for the customers. It’s a trade-off one way or the other. It’s not all that bad (I’ve lived in such an area before), but it is something that takes a month or two to get used to.
This was reported pretty much DOA last night:
[www.washingtonpost.com]
How are they blaming email? The web is what’s reinvigorated the order-by-mail industry, isn’t it?
I still don’t understand why Wednesday’s not a candidate. I’d much rather see my mail week like
0110111
than
0101111
in both business and personal life.
I adding my 2cents about only missing Netflix. If logicalnoise’s comment about Netflix processing discs on Saturdays becomes true then I could live with 5 days of delivery. If it’s false, then I am going to miss my Netflix delivery. And I would hope that Netflix would reduce their prices a little bit to compensate for it.
Netflix should take some of the enormous profits it earned last year and buy the post office to ensure I get my movies on time.
@GMFish: Agree, the post office should be ran by Netflix.
We should leave it as is since this is one of the largest socialized employers the US has. At least we get something tangible from our tax dollars. If we were concerned about losing money and not keeping people employed we should shut it down completely.
In theory, no, I have no problem with it. Truthfully, though, I live in a rural area and it usually takes my netflix one extra day to get to me. So, it’s just a touch more inconvenient, but hey, we’re saving money, right?
As far as I know (being married to a letter carrier and having read about it), they’re only talking about cutting a delivery day, not office hours.
I realize the article keep mentioning Tuesday as a “light” day, but after a Monday holiday, it’s already got a heavy load. On top of that, carriers have the option of “curtailing” (pushing it to the next day) bulk mail if there’s too much on a given day; because Mondays are heavy after having Sunday off, Tuesday frequently has a lot of mail curtailed from the previous day. Whereas with many businesses closed on Saturdays anyways, that makes the most sense for a day they would cut out.
Some businesses really rely on 6 days of service. So wouldn’t this actually push more people towards private carriers?
I dont care if they go to a 5 day delivery schedule but I’d like to see them to keep the post offices open on Saturday for package pickups. They are only open from 9a to noon on saturdays to begin with.
But I really dont believe all the talk about them losing money each year. With all the yearly price increases over the past 5 years and the technology advances to process the mail more efficiently its hard to see how such a widely used company is losing billions each year.
Yes, that’s it. Solve your competition problems with Fedex by becoming even more crappy.
If they drop their monopoly on first class mail I wouldn’t have any problem with them dropping a few days of delivery.
But they like to pretend they’re a business, and businesses in the US usually do business on Saturday.
I am all for this provided they actually deliver on bullshit holidays such as Columbus Day where people actually work.
@Plates: Excellent point. I think it’s a fair trade. It’s like how our neighborhood is screwed out of so many recycling days throughout the year since our recycling (and one garbage) pickup occurs on Monday morning.
I guess I’d get used to it. I get used to everything else. No, no one writes me anymore anyway.
Five days. As for Netflix: [www.nytimes.com]
I say do it. I don’t check my post office box on Saturday anyway. They could also save a lot of money if they wouldn’t pay the cashier $20 an hour…
Why not have Catalogue Day? One day a week, get a BIG truck and deliver all the junk mail. Every other day, they would deliver important mail.
I vote for Catalogue Day to be on recycling day. They could put your mail in your recycling bin.
Whenever I get the choice, I always pay the extra dollar some online retailers charge for USPS rather than UPS. It’s much faster than ground UPS or FedEx, I don’t have to sign for it, and Saturday delivery was a nice perk. I suppose if they cut out Saturday, that still leaves two out of three.