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.)"
Netflix (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Netflix (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Netflix (Score:5, Informative)
Or see them intact, for that matter.
Whenever I get some UPS package (not my choice, I am always forced into this option), I wonder in what creative new ways will the parcel be damaged. Broken items, punctures in various places of the package, even folded parcels (3D parcels, that is, where one dimension isn't particularly prominent, either), leaks of chemicals into the parcel, these are all various joys of a UPS-delivered parcel.
The fact that they treat you like an idiot by never telling you when they'll deliver it at your home (and doing this repeatedly) just adds insult to injury.
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: UPS and package damage (Score:5, Informative)
I have to agree, although I've long since switched to FedEx for most of my package shipping needs.
UPS uses union labor and FedEx doesn't (at least, last I checked -- because I realize there have been some fights to unionize there in the last few years).
I'm not necessarily a believer in the idea that union labor is always worse in some way, but I think that tends to be the case when you're talking about relatively unskilled labor. Basically, you've got a scenario where the people doing basic, manual labor (loading and unloading of boxes at sorting facilities, etc.) are protected against punishment for wrongdoing in the workplace by layers of bureaucracy. (EG. Shop foreman can't just fire some guy on the spot if he witnesses him flying into a rage and stomping his boot through a customer's "FRAGILE: HANDLE WITH CARE!" box on the shop floor. He has to go through some union-mandated disciplinary procedure that probably means, at the very least, the employee just receives some kind of verbal warning for the first offense.)
Plus, I'm not impressed with UPS based on personal stories told to me by former UPS employees themselves. For example, one of my buddies used to work at a UPS facility where he said boxes were regularly stacked up into 6 foot high walls, regardless of any warnings printed on them. When a truck would come in, someone would yell "Tear 'em down!" and they'd knock over the walls, letting boxes fall all over the concrete floor, for people to sort through and load up.
FedEx isn't perfect.... I once had them absolutely destroy a music synthesizer I was shipping to Canada, and then fight me for weeks about paying the insurance claim on it. But overall, I think they have a better track record of getting boxes to destinations on time and in one piece. Additionally, they have a better arrangement for receivers of packages if they're not available to sign for the delivery. Unlike UPS, it's easy to go to a FedEx facility in person, in the evening, and sign for and pick up your delivery.
Re:Netflix (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Netflix (Score:4, Interesting)
totally depends on the region, some hubs are great, some hubs play forklift hokey with your packages, take a guess and flip a coin
Re:Netflix (Score:5, Informative)
Not just that, but pissed off sorters pushing packages off conveyor belts 30' in the air because they're pissed off that 60,000 packages per hour are being crammed through hubs designed for 30,000 packages per hour and they're getting yelled at for shutting down the belt every 7-10 seconds to keep up. Shoving unix boxes and monitors was my particular favorite act of revenge in the early '90s when I worked at UPS.
Then, you have loaders who literally kick holes in expensive packages because the flow is coming down the belt far too fast for even two experienced loaders to keep up, while supervisors are cussing them out for not keeping up. Another tactic was to time it, and load only one box every six seconds, which is the performance level that loaders are required to achieve to keep their jobs, per union contract; they can't be forced to work faster - which would cause the already-overloaded rollers to back up onto the belt, past the pickoff sorters, and occasionally even up to the sorters where the trailers are being unloaded.
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.
Re:Netflix (Score:5, Interesting)
When we developed packaging for shipping, one of our qualification tests was to stand at the top of a 15' tall no-switchback stairwell and throw the package overhead down the stairs (was required to hit the midway landing and then bounce the rest of the way down.) 4x with no internal damage was a pass.
That worked pretty well for domestic shipping, trans-oceanic also required 16 hours in a paint mixer to be sure that the boards wouldn't vibrate out of their sockets by the time they got to Europe/Australia.
Re:Netflix (Score:4, Informative)
I've had friends work for UPS in Santa Cruz. When your packages come in they slide down several chutes. One of the chutes has a big ragged exposed bolt hanging down in the middle of it that gouges open packages just barely big enough to go in, but not big enough to go through. A worker will typically climb up the chute, grab your box, and just FORCE it downwards. Then the boxes end up in a big pile and they load them into the back of the truck, then throw the next set of boxes over a wall they've built there.
If you care about your packages, don't use UPS. Fuckers just destroyed a package coming to me with a $225 rivet shaver, busted it straight out of the side of the envelope, then delivered me an empty envelope in a plastic bag tied to my gate chain in a windstorm.
FUCK UPS: FUCK UPS.
Fedex isn't any better (Score:5, Interesting)
I worked at a Fedex sorting facility for 2 days through a temp service. I can assure you the same type of manhandling occurred there as well. Guys were heaving boxes out of the trucks sometimes up to 5ft through the air before they hit the belt and tumbled over several times.
Ironically enough, 35% of what we unloaded that day were PCs and monitors from the vendor I had worked for that past summer. We wondered why we kept getting customer complaints of unseated video cards, HDDs, etc. I went back the next summer and told them about what happened at Fedex, and was told there was nothing they could expect to change except extra securing for the innards of the PCs...
Re:Netflix (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Netflix (Score:5, Funny)
OK, then they won't use UPS if they want their discs to be intact.
EVERY. SINGLE. THING. that gets sent to me UPS appears to have been intentionally kicked, punched, or slashed. This goes for parcels as well as envelopes.
I got three new 1U servers sent to me via UPS last year. One of the cartons had a TIRE TRACK across the top of it.
Re:Netflix (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Netflix (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Netflix (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Netflix (Score:5, Interesting)
Clearly, you've never suffered the horrors of FedEx Ground. I've caught them RED HANDED skipping delivery attempts, and gotten them to admit (off camera, unfortunately) that drivers who skip stops are known to be an "occasional" problem. A few years ago, I was home for the day getting my roof replaced. FedEx Ground claimed that there was "nobody home" and said they "left a note". At that point, there were no fewer than 7 people roaming around, including at least 1 or 2 in the front yard (possibly including myself). The NEXT day, I left a webcam pointed at the driveway & recording. 6pm arrived, no package, no note... and they claimed there was. When I confronted the FedEx manager, he first got irate, then broke down and grudgingly admitted that there "might" be a problem with the driver and said he'd "talk" to him.
The impression I've gotten from various sites is that due to the way FedEx Ground (a.k.a. "RPS") works is that the packages end up at a depot, and drivers (who own their own trucks and are basically free agents) grab the ones they want to try and deliver. Apparently, there's an official process for making unwilling drivers attempt to deliver other packages, but they don't push it unless somebody escalates. In the meantime, they'll automatically log a package left at the depot as a failed delivery attempt.
The worst delivery record of all (in terms of packages that FedEx Ground either doesn't try to deliver) are packages that require a signature. FedEx Ground drivers get paid by the successful delivery, so when there are LOTS of packages waiting to be delivered, they intentionally bypass as many that require signature releases as they can, especially if you live in a gated community and they aren't certain you'll be home. It wouldn't be so bad if their depots were at least open until 9 and on weekends for pickup, but they're not. Getting them to pull a package from a truck so you can pick it up (within a fairly restricted range of hours) almost takes an act of god. UPS, in comparison, will let you camp out at their facility the day of a missed delivery and grab the package off the truck when the driver gets back to the depot.
UPS might not be perfect, but they're infinitely better than FedEx Ground.
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.
Re:Netflix (Score:5, Interesting)
Not to get too off topics, but that's something I never quite got.
As society gets larger and more spread out there are certain services such as the USPS/Fire dept that will become a nesesity reagrdless of their bottom line.
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:Netflix (Score:5, Funny)
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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
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:5, Informative)
Here the volunteer fire department still gets the fire hall, trucks and rest of the equipment payed by the tax payers. I think the firefighters also get a small amount of money when working as well.
Re:Netflix (Score:5, Informative)
Of course the above are examples of where socialism works as advertised, but I'm sure someone will object because their dogma tells them to reject the concept having their wealth redistributed, even if they are receiving more material benefits from it than they could possibly afford by themselves.
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: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, Interesting)
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/09/28/330524/postal-non-crisis-post-office-save-itself/ [thinkprogress.org]
So basically, we shouldn't have to deal with this. But the Republicans want to kill the post office.
Re: (Score:3)
I disagree. My suspicion is that most people would rather put up with the slightly slower service and the customers who feel that this will impact their experience will add another disc to their plan. Chances are it's a minority of Netflix customers who watch more than one or two discs per week. The one-per-week customers will not have a real impact to their experience.
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:Netflix (Score:5, Informative)
We decided that mail service was such an important part of our national infrastructure that we mandated it even in the poor areas.
Also worth noting here is that the people who negotiated the Constitution thought a public mail service was so important that it's one of the 18 powers specifically granted to Congress. (Article 1, section 8)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Looking at the material it seems the American Letter Mail company never provided universal mail. You have an exception which proves the rule (in the original s
Re:Netflix (Score:4, Interesting)
Let the free market succeed where the USPS only exists by monopoly.
No, USPS is no monopoly. If you think you can deliver letters across the country for less than half a dollar, you're free to do so. And unlike the USPS, you're not required to do so.
And therein lies the problem - USPS, which is a private company, doesn't get to fight against other companies because laws and regulations hinder them. Which is fair enough, but then We The People need to foot the bill for this extra service we demand of them.
My advice: Nationalize the postal service[*].
The government owned and run postal services of many other countries do pretty well at low cost.
Where they have privatized them, the expenses have skyrocketed and service has taken a dive.
[*]: As well as any other essential services now run as private companies. The US Mint and the USPS are good starters, but there are dozens.
Re:Netflix (Score:5, Informative)
Let the free market succeed where the USPS only exists by monopoly.
No, USPS is no monopoly. If you think you can deliver letters across the country for less than half a dollar, you're free to do so.
Actually, USPS is a monopoly. It is a federal crime to deliver a letter. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Express_Statutes [wikipedia.org]
Re:Netflix (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, USPS is a monopoly. It is a federal crime to deliver a letter. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Express_Statutes [wikipedia.org]
Yeah, to an official US mail box. At least be honest in your assessment. UPS and FedEx could deliver letters all day long, just not to your "official" mail box...and they do.
Re:Netflix (Score:5, Informative)
No, USPS is no monopoly. If you think you can deliver letters across the country for less than half a dollar, you're free to do so.
No... you're not free to do so. That proposition would be a federal crime. Under 18 USC S 1696 [cornell.edu]. Also, the "unlawful letters" would then be subject to seizure by US postal workers, and US marshals.
Re:Netflix (Score:4, Informative)
I'm pretty sure your numbers are off - way off. Yes, many businesses use FedEx or UPS rather than the USPS, most likely because (a) they've negotiated shipping rates with carriers and (b) parcel tracking is much better than w/USPS, but I'm willing to bet money that most people ship most of their packages via USPS, especially as it's much less expensive to do so. As for volume, according to this http://www.nalc.org/postal/perform/productivity.html [nalc.org] and at least one other reference on Answers.com - of course, some of this volume is letters not packages.
Re:Netflix (Score:5, Interesting)
Again, it's deceptive because the nationalised postal services have a mandate to provide universal service, while private companies do not. That is, they need to be able to deliver first class mail to the most remote rural Danish island, the same as they do to downtown Copenhagen. This means that you pay more (with your national service) for simple deliveries to subsidise the more difficult ones.
Privatising (or even liberalising) postal services can lead to several bad consequences. The most obvious would be this situation: the national service is still mandated by law to provide universal service. They still charge more on simple urban deliveries to balance the books. 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. Therefore, either "non-simple" jobs become massively more expensive, or taxpayers need to step in to subsidise, or the service goes bust and you lose universal service.
The situation in the UK is even more daft. The Royal Mail is still a monopoly, but they're now required by law to sell their "last mile" delivery capabilities on to competitors- and do so practically at cost. The above paragraph is still true, with the added irony that the RM is still delivering the letters- but for no profit! And they still have to provide universal service to the Outer Hebrides, also at massive loss. Competitors such as UK Mail or TNT cherry pick the profitable routes- and don't even need to worry about having any infrastructure past the sorting office. And obviously it's the taxpayer who picks up the bill.
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:Netflix (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Netflix (Score:4, Interesting)
Let the free market succeed where the USPS only exists by monopoly.
Yep, without a low cost alternative to UPS, FedEx and DHL, prices will all of a sudden drop through the floor.
That was sarcasm in case you didn't get it. The invisible hand is only ever preparing to pull down your pants and give you a wedgie.
The USPS needs to get rid of it's bad, underutilised services and focus on it's core, money making units. Australia Post has managed to compete well with private couriers and are keeping up to date with technology as well as offering new services. Here lies the success of Aus Post, they diversified and now only 50% of their revenue comes from postal services, of the last 5 times I went into a post shop only 1 time was to post something. Why bother posting a cheque to the power company when I can pay it at the post shop (grandma still hasn't figured out how to pay online, but she can give the money to the clerk at the post shop), hell, what we used to call the post office is now the post shop because it's become more of a shop then an office.
If I want to send something across Australia in 24 hours with guaranteed delivery, I'll pay a courier to make sure it gets there on time. I have to do this with some documents and even data as 6 GB takes a long time to transmit but can be contained on 2 DVD's. But if I dont care how long it takes to get there and just want the cheapest option, I'll take Aus Post. I have to ask why the USPS didn't restructure like this years ago.
Re:Netflix (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Netflix (Score:4)
It is that. You can't make a profit on the rural routes.
But to look at something where there actually is competition, consider parcel delivery. I routinely choose USPS for that unless I REALLY need it to go overnight. USPS is cheaper and just as reliable. Plus, I have had packages damaged by UPS, FedEx, and USPS, but only USPS actually paid the insurance rather than weaseling out of it.
with apologies to Andrew S. Tannenbaum... (Score:3)
never underestimate the bandwith of a postal delivery truck full of optical discs hurtling down side streets. :)
Good plan (Score:5, Insightful)
They're going to encourage people to use their services by dramatically reducing the service quality they offer.
Re: (Score:3)
Or, phrased differently, they're going to cut their distribution costs in half (from 500 processing centers to 250) while providing virtually the same service in 58% of cases and only slightly diminished service for the other 42%. Considering I wasn't even aware of the fact that letters I mailed to someone local to my area would arrive next-day, I have to wonder how much others will miss it. I just figured they all took 2-3 days, and would've never noticed a different if this hadn't been posted here.
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:It's a SERVICE (Score:5, Funny)
If are tax dollars aren't being used to kill someone or throw them in jail then it's just inefficiency and overreaching government!
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:It's a SERVICE (Score:4, Informative)
Considering the condition Social Security is in, it seems to wise to plan ahead like that. Social security as we know it will be gone, or severely neutered by the time I reach retirement age. There's nothing wrong with making long term plans; you can't put everything on the national credit card forever.
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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.
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Only if you let corrupt politicians take it from you. There's nothing wrong with Social Security. At all.
We're about 80 years too late for that. Social Security had the seeds of the current problems in it from the beginning. Plus there have been innumerable projections of Social Security. They all show the same thing. It doesn't work in the long term, unless benefits are cut or Social Security taxes increased.
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.
This is why I advocate ending Social Security. It's been one of the chief bribes for the "military-industrial-congressional-survellance-contractor complex". My view is that if you want to end the corrupti
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Why not make congress or hte military or amtrak or any other government agency do this then?
Re:It's a SERVICE (Score:5, Informative)
You do realize that the postal service is mandated that it needs to be able to support itself? And that it's been doing so just fine for quite some time? And that none of our taxes have gone to it in any significant amount in recent history? Just because Congress governs it doesn't mean that we provide for its funding.
The USPS has not directly received taxpayer-dollars since the early 1980s with the minor exception of subsidies for costs associated with the disabled and overseas voters. Revenue in the 2000s has been dropping sharply due to declining mail volume, prompting the postal service to look to other sources of revenue while cutting costs to reduce its budget deficit.
From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
USPS isn't unprofitable, it's just dirty politics. (Score:5, Informative)
USPS isn't on the verge of collapse due to any shortfall in business, it's recent changes in politics that have thrown a set of concrete slippers on a historically great swimmer.
H.R. 1351 would allow the Postal Service to apply billions of dollars in pension overpayments to the congressional mandate that requires the USPS to pre-fund the healthcare benefits of future retirees. No other government agency or private company bears this burden, which forces the Postal Service to fund a 75-year liability in 10 years — at a cost of more than $5 billion annually. Without the mandate, the USPS would have shown a surplus of $611 million over the past four fiscal years.
from http://postalemployeenetwork.com/news/2011/09/h-r-1351-gains-momentum-on-capitol-hill/ [postalempl...etwork.com]
There's a lot more to the Post Office than just delivering junk-mail. The Post Office has been the glue that allowed the US to exist almost right from the start. The difference between a 1st class nation and a 3rd world country is the Post Office. Can you imagine if your bills didn't arrive in a timely fashion or you weren't able to put a check in the mail. Sure there's a lot of movement towards electronic payments for everything, but there are still plenty of areas without broadband and getting on the modern web with a modem is painful. Odds are if you're older, the Post Office also delivers your medications safely and quickly regardless of where you live. Rain or shine, you can always count on the Post Office to deliver, Fed-up and OoPS, half the time when the package is in town, on the truck and out for delivery, it still won't show up for another day or two as they skip stops.
If I was a politician, I'd really think twice about screwing with retirees prescriptions or the people handling the ballots.
Re: (Score:3)
Actually, no, it's not. At least not for the last 30 years or so.
The only taxpayer money that goes to the USPS is ~ $100mm a year to cover things mostly for the disabled and overseas voters (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Service). They are only expected to break even.
And therein lies the problem. The basic fact of the matter is that e-mail has eroded their bread-and-butter; people needing to communicate with another person. Bills/invoices are also going this way. While not everyone uses
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:It's a SERVICE (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It's a SERVICE (Score:5, Informative)
The USPS is totally self funded and profitable. The problem is Congress gave them a near-impossible pension funding mandate so that they could borrow against those pension funds. It's more like the government is leeching off of USPS. Not the other way around
Best solution... (Score:5, Interesting)
Get Congress to allow 3 day a week delivery on residential routes (and maybe commercial routes), Mon-Wed-Fri for half, Tue-Thu-Sat for the other half. Still offer daily delivery to post office boxes. Anyone who thinks they really need daily delivery can rent a PO Box and pick it up daily.
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:The USPS is *not* a traditional business (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The USPS is *not* a traditional business (Score:5, Insightful)
Looks like you forgot about the "public service" bit.
Re: (Score:3)
If it is a public service, it designed to be fair irrespective of service location.
They could have undone the pension requirement (Score:5, Interesting)
This just sounds like someone wants to kill the USPS and loot it.
Get rid of the pre-loading of pensions for 75 years as required by Congress, and they'd be a LOT closer to solvent - and no need to have slower packages.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
They'd not only be solvent, they'd be *profitable*. The pre-loading costs them five BILLION dollars a year. Basically the government is propping up FERS by looting the USPS. One wonders who they'll go after next once the USPS craters.
Re: (Score:3)
My mailbox is filled with bulk mail! (Score:4, Interesting)
I would like to ask that the post office only deliver once a week. And that should be the day before garbage/recycling day. 60% of the mail I get goes straight into recycling. The next 30% goes into the shredder and into yard waste bin.
We get so little mail which is direct and important correspondence any more that we only check our mail once or twice a week. Every few months the mailman puts a slip in our box saying we have to go the post office to pick things up because our box is full.
We had 9lbs of mail last time we picked it up. We kept two letters out of everything (2oz).
The problem is not with their service, rather, they have discounted their service so much for things that people don't care about that it has degraded and made the delivery of important items a secondary item. Those who say "they make all their profit on bulk mail". I argue, if they didn't have to stop at EVERY BOX and transport TONS of material every day, they should be able to deliver the first class mail much faster and require half the staff.
And talking about staffing, when they closed a mail processing center in the midwest recently, I saw that nobody lost their jobs. Instead, the unions said the employees took new jobs and were "forced" to deliver mail door to door.
I have no sympathy.
Don't know what you'll miss... (Score:5, Interesting)
Overnight delivery? We're used to four to seven days, even in town.
Saturday delivery? We lost that in the seventies.
Mail pickup at your rural mailbox? I'm assuming we don't have that either.
Most amazing to us though was that people used USPS to send important things, and assumed that they'd arrive, and on time. No way do you do that with Canada Post.
Raise the price on junk mail, too. (Score:5, Interesting)
95% of what the USPS delivers to my mailbox goes directly into the recycling bin. This is no great loss.
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: (Score:3)
TV didn't kill the radio, Internet didn't kill the radio; why do you think that email will kill paper letters ?
Because two out of three ain't bad.
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.
Convergence probably is the ticket (Score:5, Interesting)
For the past 9 years, my kids have had media center PCs in their rooms... no TV signal as it isn't important. From collecting seasons of TV shows, they have an assortment of roughly 1500 cartoons on their PCs which they can watch by clicking a few buttons. My daughter has a 22" TV as a screen which was handed down by mamma when she bullied me to give her a bigger TV in the bedroom. My son has a 24" BenQ screen with some Logitech speakers. Their computers are their TVs, video game consoles and web browsers etc... I can safely say that with the exception of maybe on show a night before bed... lasting about 20 minutes, they never really watched TV... well except when visiting houses with technonoobs.
On the top floor, I have a laser/led projector that gives me a 110" screen and a sound system able to do the room it is in justice. It's connected to a media center PC where we often play games we buy from Steam or movies we buy from iTunes and I often find myself web browsing from the couch there.
On the bottom floor we have a 46" Sony LCD with the cable box which my wife watches reality TV on.
All of us have iPhones, we have two iPads and I have a Windows 8 Tablet (Samsung Series 7 Slate) which I use as a PC for Windows, Mac and Linux development as well as watching films, playing games and pretty much everything else. These are our books. I am entirely unable to throw away a paper book on principal. So, I have a full room in my house with the walls covered with books and books stacked in boxes and a chair... I call it the library. I find it doubtful my children will buy paper books later in life. They're inconvenient, wasteful, and they suck up space.
I have received a single piece of mail in the past 13 years which was addressed to me other than a bill. I haven't received a bill in the mail in about 6 years as they come through email. The one piece of mail I received was actually a paper based Nigerian 419 scam presenting itself as a letter from a law firm.
We get out mail on any of the screens in the house. We get our movies entirely electronically. We get our games and music also electronically. If we want to watch broadcast TV, we do it through a streaming web site. If we want to listen to the radio, we do it through a streaming site. Of course, we have a sling box setup just in case someone calls and says "You have to turn on channel 9!" But, it's collecting dust.
I just opened a new bank account inside the U.S. (I'm an American abroad) and I was in utter shock how ridiculously paper based the U.S. still is. I had to open a "Checking account"... I mean really? A checking account. That would imply the use of paper checks... WTF!!! are you still in the dark ages? They insisted I provide a paper form of payment other than cash to open the account and insisted it was sent through the mail. I was mortified. I don't even know how to do that. In the end, they agreed to let my dad send them a bank check or money order for $1 to get it open. They also required a color photocopy of my passport picture page and social security card. It wasn't good enough to e-mail them. They had to have genuine photocopies. So, I scanned them, sent them to my dad and he mailed them to the bank.
I didn't have a social security card anymore and although I provided them with my number, they needed proof it was mine... so I asked the american embassy for a letter saying so... it was printed out and signed. After all... somehow a piece of linen stationary from 1975 which was printed in blue ink by a cheap press and then put into an IBM electric type writer is obviously more proof that the number is mine than me saying so.. DUH!!!!
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: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:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not without the recipient knowing and without comitting a crime.
Other than that, your nerdy little ass is right.
Re: (Score:3)
That's assuming the recipient actually gets the mangled letter afterwards. Mail still gets lost in today's day and age, and without a tampered envelope, a charge of mail tampering is nothing more than a crackpot's rantings.
Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
They probably have some fancy-fangled-ass-shit to pop open and reseal an envelope without showing signs of tampering, too.
The word you are looking for is "equipment" ;)
Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
Was wondering what the proper name for it was
Re:What? (Score:4, Funny)
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:What? (Score:5, Funny)
Unless you use a fairly paranoid design(eg. an envelope chemically treated so that it will freak out in some obvious way if the adhesive is tampered with, or a residue-free volatile fluid is used to render the paper temporarily transparent) opening a letter isn't rocket surgery. If the feds are on your back, you probably have a problem. If somebody sends you cash, that particular envelope may just 'get shredded in a mechanical malfunction' and never arrive.
That's why, after sealing the envelope, I drip hot wax over the seam and make an imprint using my signet ring.
Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
"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:"People are still...." (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
True. I (manually) pay almost all my bills electronically via my bank (which apparently routes through CheckFree) except the water and sewer bills. They come every other month and can only be paid electronically through Bank Of America for a $3 fee and they don't offer any payment guarantee/protection (like my bank does), so fuck 'em, they get a paper check. I still get paper statements because (a) I don't get any discount for getting an electr
Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
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?
Re: (Score:3)
At the rate they're going, in 75 years there will only be a handful of people left at the USPS. When they split that $59 billion between themselves, they're going to be rich!
(Hey, this is Slashdot. I was told there would be no math.)
Re:The End of USPS (Score:5, Insightful)
Half right (Score:4, Informative)
That said, another restriction Congress has put on USPS is the requirement not to raise rates faster than inflation (based on CPI or something like that). Fuel costs go up 30% this year? Well, suck it up, because you're not raising rates more than 1.67%!
Conservatives like to point at the apparent failure of the USPS as an indicator that the government is simply wasteful in everything it does (instead we should privatize things so our corporate friends can take the profitable areas and leave everyone else to rot!), but that is a ludicrous assertion given that USPS is under restrictions such as the above which no private business would have to work under. Add to that the requirement that they serve every American, no matter where, with the same rates (a good and proper one, IMO) and it's amazing they're even close to profitable.
Re:The End of USPS (Score:5, Informative)
Just jack the price of delivery up to its real value... I did a quick lookup at FedEx for sending a package across town... The lowest cost was $7. Add to that that UPS and FedEx essentially "cherry pick" only the profitable areas... Even locally they don't always deliver to suburbs and make you pick up the package.
The Post is undervalued. That used to be offset with "junk mail". Each of those items subsidized the wages of the mailman that only brought 0-3 pieces of actual mail per day. To turn the figures around, for a person to deliver to your house, you probably need 5-10 pieces of mail each day... Or $2.50-$5.00. That comes close to FedEx quote for $7 I mentioned earlier. Also, there is no way that $.44 now equals $.25 from 20 years ago.
Mail needs to cost more, I'd say the need to jump to $1 minimum. They also need to trim residential service days to Mon-Wed-Fri. I know I don't get ANY mail at least one day per week, and at least one other is only junk. I could easily get all my bills in one day per week, except that makes receiving things timely a problem. I think Businesses get enough mail to justify 4 day service, maybe take Wed off.
I don't think for most individuals upping the price to $1 will hurt anybody.. You're paying $4 for an average greeting card now! Packages are a separate business that allows a higher price point already.
Re:The End of USPS (Score:4, Informative)
The real problem is that not all deliveries cost the same. If you're a company in downtown Houston, Texas, and you want to mail something to the suburbs in Houston, Texas, the cost will be pretty small. If you want to deliver something to Anchorage, Alaska, the actual costs will be much larger.
The point of universal postal service is that it allows businesses to treat all customers as equal. Imagine a situation where the cost to buy something from Amazon was dependent on your distance from an Amazon distribution centre; Amazon's business would quickly fall apart as they would be undercut by a hundred local competitors. Same for banks, mailing out bank statements. Or the cost of mailing your Congressman. Maybe that's a good thing, but the government's usual position is that it is not.
USPS subsidise their tricky long distance deliveries by charging more for their simple local deliveries. If you were to allow private companies to compete on an even keel (but without legally mandating them to provide a universal service), they would simply undercut USPS on the profitable local deliveries, while leaving the taxpayer to carry the can for the expensive deliveries. It's one of those situations where you can't just change it a little bit without massive unintended consequences- if you're going to change it, you're going to need to do a complete overhaul and rethink.
Re:The End of USPS (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population%20density%20of%20UK%2C%20Japan%2C%20US [wolframalpha.com]
Re: (Score:3)
Oh, I disagree with that. I don't want the post office to go away. I just want it to reflect reality. That means fewer post offices doing less stuff (and specifically, a post office that no longer tries to be a FedEx or a UPS. They can't accomplish that with their mandated unprofitable duties).
Let the private shippers do packages, and just deliver my letters a few times a week, thanks.