USPS Ending Overnight First-Class Letter Service 713
New submitter cstacy writes "The United States Postal Service will be closing half of its processing centers this spring. Currently, 42% of first-class mail is delivered the following day for nearby residential and business customers. But that overnight mail will be a thing of the past, with delivery guaranteed only for 2-3 days. About 51% will be delivered in two days. Periodicals may take up to nine days. (Additional delays beyond this may come into play when Congress also authorizes USPS to close operations for some days each week.)"
Re:Netflix (Score:4, Insightful)
Doubtful. Chances are pretty good Netflix and Gamefly will turn to UPS and Fedex
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204012004577072323400561792.html
Let the free market succeed where the USPS only exists by monopoly.
Good plan (Score:5, Insightful)
They're going to encourage people to use their services by dramatically reducing the service quality they offer.
It's a SERVICE (Score:4, Insightful)
The sad thing is to hear people bitch about the raising cost of a First Class letter - sent *ANYWHERE* for how much? 50 cents or so? Oh yeah, that's WAY out of line...
People, the US Mail is a *service* to the public, there's no way it can every pay for itself and still move mail at the current rates. We fund this *service* with tax money, *not* postage.
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
What people are still reading paper books ?
Silly man, of course people still send non electronic messages.
Good old fashoined paper letters are PRIVATE.
e-mail is not private, and good luck getting your contacts to use pgp or s-mime.
e-mail is best effort, paper mail on the other hand is guaranteed delivery (and for registered mail it leaves a paper trail).
e-mail is so impersonal, hand written letters on the other hand are much more personal.
Congresspeople don't give a fuck about e-mail petitions, they hear on the other hand the power of hand written letters.
Etc....
TV didn't kill the radio, Internet didn't kill the radio; why do you think that email will kill paper letters ?
Of course if all you write is in sms-style then yes using paper is a waste of resources.
Re:The End of USPS (Score:5, Insightful)
The USPS would be doing ok financially if they didn't have to fund medical coverage for employees who aren't even born yet. They have to fund 75 years of retiree health care benefits, $59 billion, in 10 years after the passage of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006. Who else has to do anything even close to that?
The USPS is *not* a traditional business (Score:5, Insightful)
I really wish Congress, and the Post Master General for that matter, would stop pretending that the USPS is just another business and should be operated as such. It's not! Mail has been a public service almost since this country was founded and the idea goes back even further in time in some other countries.
Given what the USPS does, it cannot operate like a normal business and it shouldn't have to. Considering how much money they are losing each year, it's clear they need to change something, and I wouldn't mind paying a bit more for first class postage, but this idea that the USPS needs to break even needs to stop soon before Congress completely ruins the postal service.
Packages aside, you simply can't send everything through email. I still get plenty of real non-junk mail all the time, from bank notices to insurance EOBs. This is far more secure than email could ever hope to be. Yes, it would be nice if everybody encrypted their email (especially banks), but until that happens, regular mail is a lot more secure. We actually have laws against this sort of thing and most people even take them seriously. There is little, if anything, to prevent electronic eavesdropping.
I certainly don't want to see the end of the traditional post office in my lifetime, but at the rate Congress is going, who knows. And while I would expect the Post Master General to be fighting the good fight *for* the USPS, every time I hear him talk it seems like he's gung ho to implement whatever idea Congress throws his way.
The USPS is a public service, not a business...
Re:It's a SERVICE (Score:5, Insightful)
The sadder thing is that the USPS's peak delivery year was 2006. Maybe there's been a very substantial downturn since then, but the internet was hardly new.
What is new is a 2006 law requiring the USPS to bank their employees' retirement money 75 years in advance. Since then they've been paying the treasury $5,000,000,000 per year, to cover the retirement of people who haven't even been born yet.
Some people think the Congress did this to kill the USPS.
Re:Netflix (Score:5, Insightful)
UPS/Fedex? Ridiculous!
The USPS is incredibly cheap compared to the commercial alternatives. The USPS goes to EVERY mailbox each day (6 days a week). Nearly everyone gets mail every day and even if there is none to deliver there might be some to pick up. This is particularly important outside of big cities. There are MILLIONS of people living outside UPS/Fedex delivery zones.
What are you going to do for the farmers and ranchers who live 50 miles away from the nearest FedEx drop box? Remeber they don't get internet out there either. So you are going to let them swing? Really? Nothing for the people growing your food? It is not wise to SHIT on the people who feed you.
Government operations like the post office is just one of the many "costs of doing business" in a large society. Change the funding model so that the postal service can raise its rates and fire those that need firing and you'll see that it can work.
"People are still...." (Score:5, Insightful)
People are still sending around non-electronic messages?
This is a really tired expression. We didn't stop using the axe when the chainsaw came along, and we didn't stop using the broom when the vacuum came along, and we didn't stop using land line phones when cell phones came along. Most long lived legacy technologies and services survive for a good reason. They don't survive in great numbers mind you, and are used in very specialized situations, but they survive nonetheless. It should come as no more of a surprise to you that some people send letters any more than it should surprise you that some guys still cut wood with a metal blade attached to a wooden handle.
Re:The USPS is *not* a traditional business (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The USPS is *not* a traditional business (Score:5, Insightful)
Looks like you forgot about the "public service" bit.
Re:Netflix (Score:5, Insightful)
The USPS exists by monopoly to preserve service to poor areas.
We decided that mail service was such an important part of our national infrastructure that we mandated it even in the poor areas.
The monopoly was a QPQ that allowed the USPS to serve unprofitable areas with the support of income from high profit areas.
Otherwise a commercial mail service would hog the high spots to itself and leave rural areas out in the cold.
Re:It's a SERVICE (Score:5, Insightful)
The USPS sucks at delivering packages? And doesn't provide adequate tracking? What country do you live in?
* UPS does not typically deliver on the weekend unless the sender pays extra. USPS does.
* I can go to the USPS website to track my packages.
* Anecdotally, UPS packages seem to take longer to deliver than USPS. They don't seem to be able to accurately predict delivery time either. With USPS, a priority package arrives in 3 days, and often 2.
* If I am required to sign for a USPS package and I'm not home, I just have to drive to post office within 1/4 mile of my house. If I miss a UPS delivery, I have to drive 5 miles to the next town to their shipping terminal.
I'll take the USPS any day over UPS. The reason USPS is hurting is that UPS is allowed to cherry-pick the profitable package business while avoiding the daily mail responsibility. Seems like in order for the competition to be fair, anyone competing should have to play by the same rules.
Re:Netflix (Score:1, Insightful)
Nice fairy tale.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Letter_Mail_Company
Seems more like an expression of continued government dependency and credibility.
Re:It's a SERVICE (Score:3, Insightful)
Only if you let corrupt politicians take it from you. There's nothing wrong with Social Security. At all.
The "crisis" bullshit is propaganda to get you to accept cuts now so they can continue to use the 'trust fund' surpluses to fund tax cuts for the rich and the military-industrial-congressional-survellance-contractor complex.
Re:The End of USPS (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not without the recipient knowing and without comitting a crime.
Other than that, your nerdy little ass is right.
Re:Netflix (Score:5, Insightful)
Force the "free market" to completely fund the pensions of workers that haven't even been born yet and then we'll talk about how the USPS has "failed".
Re:What? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Netflix (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
However, tampering with letters would be a pretty ugly process to scale up(machines would be unlikely to be able to do it delicately enough, and 20,000 human tamperers are going to talk...) Tampering with packets requires actual geek skills; but once you have the capability, doing it to 100 million people differs from doing it to 100 only in how large a check you need to cut your vendor...
Re:Netflix (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, you want running water way out there? I dont want to pay for it even though you help pay for my schools, my roads, my police, and my firefighters.
Re:It's a SERVICE (Score:2, Insightful)
Only if you let corrupt politicians take it from you. There's nothing wrong with Social Security. At all.
The "crisis" bullshit is propaganda to get you to accept cuts now so they can continue to use the 'trust fund' surpluses to fund tax cuts for the rich and the military-industrial-congressional-survellance-contractor complex.
You're kidding, right?
The "lockbox" was a hoax; Social Security has no funds banked ahead of time. All of its "surplus" is already immediately spent on other things.
We are almost at the point where it becomes revenue negative, and then it starts falling apart for real, as benefits have to be reduced to equal income.
I have known for 20 years that it would not exist for me, and I've just been waiting to see if any politician will be honest enough to tell me so. I was ready then, and I am ready now, for someone to honestly tell me that I have to pay to cover the people before me, but I won't ever get my benefit. I know I was already robbed by the previous generation. I just want someone to fess up and apologize for it.
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Good old fashoined paper letters are PRIVATE. e-mail is not private, and good luck getting your contacts to use pgp or s-mime.
43% of identity theft occurs from physical paperwork. 11% from online. Personally, I don't trust any security mechanism that can be defeated by someone walking by, opening your unlocked mailbox, and holding the envelope to the sun. E-mail can be quite private, but you're correct that most people don't require that level of privacy and subsequently don't bother. Let's see you convince your contacts to use PGP on snail mail...
e-mail is best effort, paper mail on the other hand is guaranteed delivery (and for registered mail it leaves a paper trail).
USPS loses about 3-5% of mail, per an unofficial source. They collect but do not publish these statistics themselves. E-mail seems more reliable that that, albeit there are tons of factors that go into it. At least you're much more likely to get a "message undeliverable" reply with e-mail.
e-mail is so impersonal, hand written letters on the other hand are much more personal. Congresspeople don't give a fuck about e-mail petitions, they hear on the other hand the power of hand written letters.
It's a social convention, there's no real difference between the two, beyond the cost of the stamp and slower transit. As for congressmen, I find your assertion that they take either seriously to be quite amusing.
Re:Netflix (Score:4, Insightful)
Shoving unix boxes and monitors was my particular favorite act of revenge in the early '90s when I worked at UPS.
Kicking the cat may feel good but it's not revenge, it's frustration.
Hall of Fame nomination (Score:5, Insightful)
Can we vote for Slashdot Hall of Fame entries? If there is a "tl;dr" category or an "Overt Asperger Perseveration/Rumination", I would like to nominate the parent.
Thank you.
Re:Netflix (Score:3, Insightful)
They won't use UPS if they ever want to see their discs again.
That is absolute bullshit. Mods please mark that post as troll and this one as well if need be. In my adult life (25 to 30 years) I have only had a couple problems with UPS which were always resolved by the shipping party.
I have never experienced a serious USPS problems either for that matter. The current USPS financial problem is a purely political problem that could be resolved with a bill that would change USPS money management back policy to roughly their 1990s rules and regulations.
COMMUNIST (Score:5, Insightful)
So, while firex726 is hauled away for daring to think in a free country (try typing that with a straight face) I, as a communist living in a communist country (IE everywhere NOT America) can confirm this.
There are plenty of essential services that our society depends on but that don't always make economic sense. A starbucks is a easy. it should only continue to exist where it makes economic sense. It is not going to have enough business to sustain itself in a one horse town. (Horses don't drink coffee for the agriculturally challenged) But since nobody actually NEEDS a coffee shop (no, you really don't no matter how much you need caffeine to function) this is alright. You can live your entire life quiet happily without a starbucks or a McD near you.
But try the same thing without say, water and sewage services. Electricity or gas. Or even more basic, a road system. Roads to most people just seem to be there but they are costly to put down and maintain and often of no direct economic value. It is a rare farm that can afford to pay for a road a system to deliver its produce to all its customers. Without the road it cannot deliver but it would be a very costly bit of lettuce if the farm itself had to pay for it. Me? The customer pay for it? I don't NEED that farm road or even the countless kilometers (remember, communist) of highway. I live in a small area and pay for goods to be delivered to me. They can pay the transport costs from that.
This is why private roads are rare AND deliver ON private roads is NOT a sure thing. If you own a farm and don't keep your private road in a satisfactory state of repair you might be highly surprised to learn that deliveries are to the edge of your land, not the door. I am not going to risk MY truck on YOUR pot filled hole. To some people, getting the mail is a bit a more then firing up Gmail.
Essential services are a part of the infrastructure that an entire society is build upon. This is nothing new. It doesn't even have to be costly. Once the USPS was a big source of income for the US government. But decades of mis management in order to reduce government by republicans have made a profitable service that everyone needs a byword for money loosing inefficiency. And the result? We have been steadily going back on the quality of a service once known for its reliability.
But who still sends mail? Bill collectors? In a country in debt, that is the only remaining growth industry. The idea that you can send a letter and have it delivered anywhere in the country the next day is so ingrained that we don't think of it anymore. Electricity and water are the same and when they are turned off for a short time we suddenly notice how depended we are on it (quick for how many flushes of your shit do you have water stored). But they are only cut for short times or during unplanned outages where everyone is working as fast as possible to get it back up. NOBODY could seriously suggest that electricity will only be delivered part time (except in the glorious free market of California, high tech area of the world, think about that if you can).
Once the mail service has been gutted (and it is already way to late) turning it back on is impossible. The infrastructure is gone and no matter how much it is needed, the finances just won't be there to restart it. Oh, the people will adjust but it will be one more slide into 2nd world status for the US. Roads broken up, bridges falling apart, electricity unreliable as in 2nd world nations. Pretty soon, this will be used as an excuse for entire companies to relocate to areas with better infrastructure. Oh wait, the companies already did move since lack of social services and high living costs put the pressure of paying for it on individual wages and made the US worker far to expensive. Here is a hint, if the only way for a worker to come to your factory is by car, then his salary must be able to pay for said car. A cyclist can afford to demand a lower wage. Simple economics no republican will ever understand. Same with health
Eh, that is the ULTIMATE example of socialism (Score:4, Insightful)
You are aware that volunteer fire services are a perfect example of socialism? They may not pay a wage but the equipment is payed for by the people FOR the people. And it is fairly typical that everyone in the area gives the volunteers leeway to do their service. Or do you think non-volunteers can suddenly drop their job and rush out to put out a fire? No? Can't think of any employment contract that has this in it. Yet volunteer fire fighters do it all the time and are NOT fired (get it , fired, fire-fighter, that pun is smoking hot!, Get it, smoking hot? Fire? I am on FIRE today! What do you mean, good?)
So what is your argument? Things that the whole society needs even if an individual might never need it, need to supported by the whole off society?
Re:Netflix (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Netflix (Score:1, Insightful)
Ins't anecdotal evidence fun! By contrast I live far away from my family and we send each other packages via USPS all the time. Our experience has been helpful courteous counter employees, timely intact deliver of packages and letters to our door steps, and all at a lower cost than the alternatives.
Re:Convergence probably is the ticket (Score:4, Insightful)
I have received a single piece of mail in the past 13 years which was addressed to me other than a bill.
That's incredible, though I doubt it's true. What about a new credit/debit card? The first bank statement, before you ask for electronic statements? The annual statement for an account you can't be bothered to enable electronic banking for? A letter from the local government? Junk mail? An annual newsletter from a society, university or political pressure group you belong to?
And no personal mail? No birthday cards from a relative, postcards from your parents or friends who are on holiday? No thank-you letters from anyone, or wedding (or funeral) invitations?
Re:Netflix (Score:4, Insightful)
How do they know when they will deliver it to your home?
answer they don't.
fact is residential deliveries are extremely variable in their timing depending on how large the area is and how many packages are in it.
businesses get reliable delivery times because the routes generally have so many packages going to each place every day.
Re:Eh, that is the ULTIMATE example of socialism (Score:5, Insightful)
And as long as the volunteer does a reasonable job of balancing their volunteering and their work commitments, you're probably right that most small companies don't have much problem with it. The problem arises when the volunteer always prioritizes each fire call over their work duties. There are many fire calls which are non-emergency calls. Nobody is in imminent peril. If you drop your extremely urgent work to put up traffic cones because there's a tree down on some back road, you're doing a terrible job of balancing this.
We had a press operator who was like that. Any time his fire radio squawked he was out the door. Because he was a press operator this meant several things: 1) the people downstream from him in the work cycle ended up with nothing to do - the paper cutter can't cut unprinted paper, the binders / gluers / folders can't fold uncut paper, the packagers can't box up and ship unfinished product. 2) when he started the print back up again, the press often was not shut down very well, it wasn't properly cleaned, sometimes paper or ink was still in the press, etc. 3) even when 1 and 2 were not factors, interrupting a print run and starting it up again causes a lot of wasted materials; it takes a while on presses of that era to get the colors right, you might spend as long as an hour getting the ink evenly distributed, registration aligned properly, and the right amount of ink being put down (this was affected by many factors such as the kind of paper, but also, including temperature, humidity, and the viscosity of the particular can of ink you opened, so you couldn't just use yesterday's settings, or even always settings from a few hours ago). A lot of material gets thrown out while you're walking those settings in, never mind the time it takes.
They had to set limits with the guy, only calls of a certain severity, only after a certain number of calls, etc. It wasn't that they wanted someone whose house was on fire to have to wait 10 more minutes while his possessions were destroyed, it was just that this press operator did a terrible job of balancing work / volunteer obligations. He fought them over the limits (eg, claiming he was being singled out) and eventually forced a corporate policy such that those other volunteers in the company who were doing a good job of balancing their commitments now lost that control over which fire calls they could respond to. And whereas the company used to quietly forgive the time on their timecard (basically paying them to be at a fire call), now that they had an official policy, that policy was very strict about pay practices during a call (for liability reasons, if they're paying you and you get injured, that may end up being worker's comp).
Re:Netflix (Score:5, Insightful)
The Wal-Mart model (Score:3, Insightful)
A private service comes in and competes only for the simple jobs- they refuse service to anywhere tricky. As all their deliveries are simple, they can massively undercut the national service on these jobs, depriving the service of it's main revenue stream.
You just described the Wal-Mart business model. They don't really compete with flower shops, pharmacies, craft stores, toy stores, etc. They don't offer the same depth of choice or quality or service. But they siphon off enough of their customers--the ones buying the common, cheap, bulk basics, and requiring little service--to turn them unprofitable.
Re:The End of USPS (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Netflix (Score:4, Insightful)
Not all the case in the US of something that will beceome a necessity as society gets larger and more spread out -- its something that's always been necessary, in part because of how large and spread out society was, and was recognized as such by the founders. For quite some time the political Right has advanced the idea that "government should be run like a business", and one of their big "successes" there has been the semi-privatization of the USPS into an entity that is, rather than operated like a public service, operated like a self-supporting business. The objective has always been to kill the USPS, and, even though it took a long time, they've finally reached the point where they've almost been successful.
(Perhaps ironically, the USPS's main opponents are the same people that talk about limiting government to performing its constitutional roles -- and operating a postal service and postal roads is one of those constitutional roles.)
Re:Netflix (Score:2, Insightful)