US Postal Service Discontinuing Saturday Mail Delivery 582
Hugh Pickens writes "The Postal Service has been losing billions of dollars each year as Americans increasingly rely on online communications that drive down mail volumes. Now, Reuters reports that the Postal Service plans to drop Saturday delivery of first-class mail by August, saving $2 billion per year. 'The Postal Service is advancing an important new approach to delivery that reflects the strong growth of our package business and responds to the financial realities resulting from America's changing mailing habits,' says Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe. But the Postal Service is already facing some pushback for moving forward with delivery schedule changes. 'Today's announcement by Postmaster General Donahoe to eliminate six-day delivery is yet another death knell for the quality service provided by the U.S. Postal Service,' says Jeanette Dwyer, president of the National Rural Letter Carriers' Association. 'To erode this service will undermine the Postal Service's core mission and is completely unacceptable.' Package deliveries will continue under the new plan and were a bright spot in a bleak 2012 fiscal year, with package revenue rising 8.7 percent during the year. Donahoe says the changes would allow the Postal Service to continue benefiting from rising package deliveries as Americans order more products from sites such as eBay Inc and Amazon.com Inc."
Man, oh man! (Score:5, Insightful)
If only there were some article of the Constitution that could be used as an argument to convince conservatives that the Post Office is a vital national service and that it is okay to pay for it in much the same way as it is okay to pay for a navy.
I guess one can only wish.
Re:Man, oh man! (Score:5, Insightful)
If only there were some article of the Constitution that could be used as an argument to convince conservatives that the Post Office is a vital national service and that it is okay to pay for it in much the same way as it is okay to pay for a navy.
I guess one can only wish.
Why is Saturday mail delivery a vital national service? Will people die if they don't receive their Victoria's Secret catalog on Saturday?
Re:Man, oh man! (Score:5, Insightful)
No, but they could die (or at least suffer harm) if the mail was something like insulin or heart medication.
Merrly being snarky does not make a convincing argument.
Being dumb doesn't make a convincing argument either. You don't count on the mail for time / mission critical things. It wasn't designed for it and cannot support it.
If you have prescription medications that are filled by mail order you're supposed to have a buffer supply. Shit happens. Even Saturday delivery doesn't change that.
Re:Man, oh man! (Score:5, Informative)
No, but they could die (or at least suffer harm) if the mail was something like insulin or heart medication.
Merrly being snarky does not make a convincing argument.
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/06/16869665-wait-a-minute-mr-postman-new-mail-delivery-schedule-raises-eyebrows?lite [nbcnews.com]
The Postmaster General has already confirmed that mail-order medicine will continue to be delivered on Saturday.
Re:Man, oh man! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Man, oh man! (Score:5, Informative)
Preparing to get a Wooosh! but Article 1, Section 8, Clause 7. The enumerated powers of the Federal Government include establishing Post Offices. Same section establishes paying for a Navy. The privatization of the postal service was either a delegation or abrogation of the responsibilties of Congress, depending if you take your politics straight or with soda. I'm in the abrogation camp, myself.
Re:Man, oh man! (Score:5, Insightful)
What? Really? All I can say is finally! Waaaaaaaaaayyy less junk mail will get to me and everyone else now (99% of mail I get is junk -- goes right from my mail box straight into the recycling) Sure, there's probably some poor people who depend on this extra day of mail (I know we kinda did as I was growing up), but too bad...
How will this affect the quantity of junk mail?
It's not like the post office is going to throw away all of the mail on Saturdays instead of delivering it. Instead they will hold it and deliver it on Monday. So you'll still get the same amount of mail.
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They should offer that as a service.
Charge $5/month to act as a spam filter. Plus they save on delivery by round filing junk mail for you at its origination point.
Re:Man, oh man! (Score:5, Insightful)
Charge $5/month to act as a spam filter. Plus they save on delivery by round filing junk mail for you at its origination point.
It will cost more because they'll have to manage the opt-in or opt-out selections for each recipient, and have many someones at each sorting center to actually sort the mail into "spam" and "not spam".
And this would create yet another spam filter that is not under the control of the recipient, meaning someone else gets to decide for you if you really did want that catalog or not.
Under email, it was bad enough that my local ISP did this, but they had a way of turning it off. Now they've outsourced all the spam filtering to google and I have to go read the spam email (at least the from and subject) to see if any real email got misclassified (and google is having an unacceptably high false positive rate, IMHO). What good is a spam filter if you have to go read all the spam anyway?
Imagine trying to find out where that $100 gift certificate that was sent to you via USPS and they filtered into the "round file" for you went to.
Re:Man, oh man! (Score:5, Informative)
Trouble is, largely due to the govt unions...the actual downsizing in PEOPLE will likely not happen to the extent it should.
No.
The trouble is, we have a large contingency of elected people who have been intentionally trying to subvert the proper functioning of government for 30 years, and this is just one more way they are trying to do it. No company funds 75 years worth of retirement payments ahead, and for conservative fucktards in congress to pass legislation to force the post office to do so is nothing more than an intentional attempt to destroy USPS' ability to function.
At the same time, congress has refused to allow USPS to offer services that could generate more income because some of the truly fucking idiotic congress people are on this ideological bullshit meme of "privatization." Privatization always costs more money, because you add an additional layer of cost into the mix... called profit. Here's the rub: UPS and FedEx do not want to take over USPS' mail routes. It would be far too costly for them, and many times those services use USPS resources to move their packages anyway.
So the "trouble" is: really stupid fucking idiots who don't understand basic business, and hate that our government does ANYTHING for the people of this country.... and the stupid fucking idiots that empower those stupid fucking idiots.
Re:Man, oh man! (Score:5, Insightful)
Without junk mail you'd have to pay the mailman a lot more per envelope. Probably well over $1. Unlike Spam, junk mail PAYS the mailman to walk around to ALL the houses. Right now advertising is probably the only thing making per home delivery profitable.
UPS and FEDEX certainly don't deliver to EVERY house, EVERY day.... And not for $.45
Re:Man, oh man! (Score:5, Interesting)
That's what I don't understand. Was raising the price for junk mail not viable? Part of the problem is that the 1st class mail is being used to subsidize bulk mail and as a result as 1st class mail gets sent less and less the subsidy has become insufficient to cover the cost. I'm somewhat unclear as to why they're not raising the rates on bulk mail.
Anyways, it's a relatively moot point as USPS tends to do a better job in terms of cost control than UPS and FedEx anyways. USPS is just required to do something that aren't profitable. And surprise, surprise, it's the same greedy rural folks that expect their lives to be subsidized who aren't willing to pay the real rate of delivering to them.
Re:Man, oh man! (Score:5, Informative)
Ooops, you got that backwards. Bulk Mail prices subsidize first class delivery. But other than that, yes I agree that the prices on bulk mail should go up.
Re:Man, oh man! (Score:5, Insightful)
You can make this happen right now! I realize this will amaze you, but it's actually simple to implement. You can do it this week, it doesn't even cost anything.
Are you ready for this amazing technique? It's used by the wealthy and powerful, but I'm exposing their hidden tricks. Again, at no charge to you!
Don't check your mailbox on Saturday or Sunday.
Mind blowing isn't it!
Re:Man, oh man! (Score:5, Informative)
What? Really? All I can say is finally! Waaaaaaaaaayyy less junk mail will get to me and everyone else now (99% of mail I get is junk -- goes right from my mail box straight into the recycling) Sure, there's probably some poor people who depend on this extra day of mail (I know we kinda did as I was growing up), but too bad...
What the......?
This only means that a larger chunk of mail (AND junk mail) will arrive on Monday now.
Need some coffee?
Re:Man, oh man! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Man, oh man! (Score:5, Informative)
Those who don't believe you should Google "The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006"*, and anybody who doesn't know about it has no business offering an opinion on the current woes of the Postal Service.
I will quibble that they actually aren't losing money. The 2006 act is taking it from them to fund pensions for employees not yet born.
*Which really should have been known as "The Republican Plot to Murder the Postal Service in Slow Motion" of 2006.
one less day of junk mail (Score:3, Insightful)
most of my mail is paper catalogs i throw in the trash without looking at. bills get paid by computer or smartphone.
i guess the old people will be complaining
Re:one less day of junk mail (Score:5, Funny)
Re:one less day of junk mail (Score:5, Funny)
My father remembers that in the outhouse back on the farm, the black-and-white pages in the Sears Roebuck catalog always went first!
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My mailman hates me. First off, they were trying to deliver my previous tenants mail into the box before I purchased the place, so he was mad when he met me that I hadn't picked up the mail in like 6 months (when it was really like a week).
My mailbox is gets 100% full within a week from all of the junk mail that comes in. It's pretty bad.
I only have a handful of bills that still come in through paper-mail, and most of that is from places that offer e-billing but not to cancel the paper-billing.
SOOO MUCH
Re:one less day of junk mail (Score:5, Informative)
I did http://www.optoutprescreen.com/ [optoutprescreen.com] and it stopped the majority of the most annoying junk mail. The kind that might let someone start a credit card in my name if they intercept it....
More options are here: http://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0262-stopping-unsolicited-mail-phone-calls-and-email [ftc.gov]
I have yet to try dmachoice, has anyone tried it?
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Run by our good friends at Equifax [slashdot.org].
Whatcouldpossiblygowrong?
Re:one less day of junk mail (Score:4, Insightful)
That's probably because you were being kind of a dick. If you don't want the mail, then you opt out. Most of them have opt outs online, for credit card offers, I've found that using the return mail envelops to send them my junk mail works brilliantly in getting me off their lists. Do that a few times and they get the picture that you didn't want to be contacted. I don't generally do that unless they've really offended me, like that outfit that was too lazy to even verify that my name was spelled correctly on the envelop.
But, most of the time, something like https://www.catalogchoice.org/ [catalogchoice.org] will get you off the lists. They don't want to waste money sending to people who are less likely to buy their whatever as a result of getting the publication than if they sent nothing.
Right. I like to spend random hours opting out of things I never heard of in the first place. Sounds like a great plan to give my email / phone to people that I neither like nor trust.
Any more clever thoughts?
Re:one less day of junk mail (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:one less day of junk mail (Score:4, Insightful)
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Kramer: I got three Pottery Barn catalogs in one day. That makes eight this month.
Jerry: Why don't you just throw 'em out?
Kramer: Oh, no. I've been saving them up here in your apartment. And now, it's payback time. Pottery Barn is in for a world of hurt.
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Depending on how it works, you might still get the junk mail, as it mentions only that they're stopping delivery of first class. Junk mail is sent Heck, at most it'll just be delivered on Monday.
Re:one less day of junk mail (Score:5, Informative)
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But then again, most Americans are so short sighted, they won't consider this to be a problem.
Re:one less day of junk mail (Score:5, Informative)
Well, some of us actually read the whole summary, and thus see that Saturday package deliveries aren't being cut out. So it's not going to affect getting packages at all.
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UPS and FedEx accept the package, they ship it around, and then have USPS deliver locally.
In this area, we still have UPS and FedEx trucks driving around. The way I learned about the UPS-USPS link was when I went online to UPS to track a package, and they were actually crowing about this new delivery option. Yes, they were proud to say that "we can't handle the package all the way to your door anymore, so we'll hand it to USPS for delivery!"
My first thought was, if I wanted USPS to deliver it, why wouldn't I just send it USPS to start with? All UPS is doing with this is flying USPS packages fo
That's actually not bad... (Score:2)
It saves money (first-off) and more importantly, makes a weekend feel more like a true weekend.
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More than an hour? Talk about white people problems.
Cut a mail slot in your door and install a flap. Then all your mail will be in your home, just like the rest of your stuff.
It doesn't help... (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't help that Congress is basically stealing $5 billion a year from the post office. They're making the USPS fully fund retirement plans over a very short time, and that money is going into government bonds, which ends up in the general fund. If it wasn't for the budget shenanigans that Congress pulled, the Post Office would be doing fine.
Re:It doesn't help... (Score:5, Insightful)
Add to this that, without them having to spend the last few years in massive debt trying to figure out how to fund these pension plans, they might have been able to spend the time and money reinventing themselves as a common carrier capable of surviving in the internet age.
I'm pretty sure that half of Congress - ironically the half that prefers a strict interpretation of the Constitution - wants the Constitutionally-mandated postal service to go bankrupt and go away because it interferes with the profits of several other private businesses. (The vote on the bill in the House in 2006 was done by voice, so there's no official record of who voted for it.)
Re:It doesn't help... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It doesn't help... (Score:5, Interesting)
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So, since they've been required to actually pay what they promised their employees, unlike a lot of other pensions these days, they now can't make money. Huh. That doesn't strike me as the model of success we should be pushing for.
Its more like that they've been required to actually pay as much money as everyone who ever works for them might get if they stayed until 65 and then lived a very long time. That's not right either, but its far closer to the actual truth.
Not entirely true (Score:5, Insightful)
The post office was forced into this because their unfunded pension fund was a time bomb waiting to happen. They are only paying this increase till 2016 and have had it reduced when it was pressing. As of 2009 it was estimated their unfunded liabilities were over fifty billion dollars.
No, where Congress gets a failing grade is similar to how base closings are done. Just like the military knows which bases are not needed the Post Office can tell you which sorting centers, distribution hubs, and which Post Offices, are not needed. When they go to close them then suddenly every Congressman becomes an expert and you end up with stories about how the PO wanted to close nearly 3000 offices and only got a little over a hundred.
The PO operates under burdensome contracts combined with quickly shrinking sources of income. The number of pieces of mail handled has steadily declined but when the PO tries to downsize Congress interferes or their contracts block them. Trying to hire part time workers is another area they have difficulty with.
So, no their problems don't stem from just having to pay for liabilities they should be paying for; if anything ask Congress why that rule ain't applied to the US as a whole; its from a myriad of items of which two largest are Congress and the unions.
Re:Not entirely true (Score:5, Interesting)
Kindly point to ANY government agency, or private one, that has to keep enough funds in an account to pay for 70 YEARS worth of benefits if all employees retired tomorrow. (no, you do not get to count interest.)..
Re:Not entirely true (Score:5, Insightful)
You fell for the numbers game. That 'unfunded liability' included projected pensions into the future for employees not even born at the time of the calculation (using the excuse that they were projected to need to hire those people in the next 50 years).
That's like claiming you are $10,000 in debt right now because you have not yet fully funded your eventual funeral and any children you might have before that.
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So there's a heap of irresponsible babies that haven't yet lifted a finger to fund their funerals or their projected 2.4 children through college yet?
You don't find it even slightly disingenuous to claim a pension for a theoretical employee who is not yet born must be funded right now in order to be responsible? Surely the earliest it would be reasonable to expect that pension to be funded would be when the hiring decision is actually made.
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If so, then your actual position is that it is literally impossible for SS or the PO to be fiscally responsible without destroying the currency?
So the surplus is actually a deficit, up is down, black is white, back to front and you're all up tight?
At this point, it might be necessary to raise the retirement age, but it may also be necessary to make sure older workers don't get the heave ho at 65.
Remember, 'they' include your mom and dad and 'they' had about as much control over the government as you do. One
They can't bail on them like corporate America? (Score:3, Interesting)
Corporate America used to offer pensions to their employees but as greedy, how-can-we-cash-out-today management thinking took over they stopped funding their pensions adequately, basically doing what USPS was doing, "borrowing" from the future.
As management drains more and more from the company, they eventually file bankruptcy which gives them the green light to unload their pensions "under financial duress" to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, who then takes on the pension obligations.
It sounds lik
Re:It doesn't help... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, you're misunderstanding the purpose of that move by Congress: it wasn't about gaining $5 billion a year, it was about gutting the USPS. There are many people in Congress (mostly Tea Party types) that want the USPS to be a relic of the past, some because that would benefit FedEx and UPS and other companies, and some because their philosophy is that the federal government can't possibly do anything useful so the USPS must be by definition useless.
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Personally, I will miss Saturday deliveries, if I'm waiting on a package; otherwise, meh.. But aren't you progressive types supposed to be all about moving forward and whatnot? Like so many other posters here pointed out, more and more people pay their bills electronically, and the only people who will complain are the geriatric crowd. Now who's being conservative?
Re:It doesn't help... (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, more to the point, they want to believe that the U.S. government can't do anything useful, so they must kill any contrary example.
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I can name one off the top of my head: Darrell Issa, chair of the Oversight Committee. He definitely wants to gut the USPS.
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Here's more than 10:
Baker, Richard [R-LA6]
Barrett, James “J. Gresham” [R-SC3]
Biggert, Judy [R-IL13]
Capito, Shelley [R-WV2]
Castle, Michael [R-DE0]
Crowley, Joseph [D-NY7]
Davis, Artur [D-AL7]
Feeney, Tom [R-FL24]
Ford, Harold [D-TN9]
Harris, Katherine [R-FL13]
Hart, Melissa [R-PA4]
Hensarling, Jeb [R-TX5]
Hinojosa, Rubén [D-TX15]
Hooley, Darlene [D-OR5]
Israel, Steve [D-NY2]
Jones, Walter [R-NC3]
Kanjorski, Paul [D-PA11]
Kelly, Sue [R-NY19]
King, Peter “Pete” [R-NY3]
LaTourette, Steven [R-OH14]
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Its the combination that burns me.
Once someone pointed out to me (here I think) that fully funding retirement funds is....what every other organization (outside of the gov) is made to do, it makes sense to force them to fully fund, and I would even say...they should ALL be doing it.
It is also kind of bullshit that what triggered these changes was a Postal Service budget surplus.
However.... that the money would get funneled into the general fund like that? Thats just corrupt to allow congress to pull tricks
Re:It doesn't help... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It doesn't help... (Score:4, Insightful)
The really amazing part is that in spite of Congress doing it's very best to crush the postal service, they're able to get by by stopping Saturday delivery.
USPS renegged last 2-3 pension payments (Score:3)
Similar with Saturday mail. They got tired of waiting for Congress to approve their two year old restructuring plan, so they are acting unilaterally.
Re:It doesn't help... (Score:5, Informative)
The usps was set up by the govt, it didnt go asking for funds. Jackass.
Eliminating Unnecessary (Score:2)
Bout Time (Score:5, Insightful)
Now if only Amazon would start letting us choose USPS over UPS for package delivery. As an apartment dweller, this would make my life much easier.
How about graduated scale or deregulation ? (Score:3)
Re:How about graduated scale or deregulation ? (Score:5, Interesting)
It does if the cost of the unusual (sending to Nome) is lowered because the cost of sending the usual (sending locally) is slightly increased.
And yet they don't. Both UPS and FedEx use USPS for local delivery often because they're better at it. UPS and FedEx are a coin toss if they can find my house (2 miles from nearest town, 1 mile from highway, not exactly a mountain man), USPS gets it right every time. Unless it needs to be sent next day or so, USPS is far more reliable and cost effective.
UPS and FedEx also don't deliver everywhere USPS does.
Re:How about graduated scale or deregulation ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, the people who have tried anyway had a rate half that of the USPS. Of course the government shut them down, because monopolies are efficient and virtuous.
Actually in that article the "American Letter Mail Company" did exactly what UPS, FedEx or any other private company would do if allowed to compete - pick large cities and only serve that market. USPS has the mandate of serving any address in the country for the same cost, regardless of whether it is the middle of Alaska or downtown Manhattan.
It is easy to undercut USPS if you only serve New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia.
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I'm pretty sure that graduated scales for first-class mail would make postage rates so complicated as to destroy the remaining business.
People like predictable. Hell, the USPS flat-rate priority boxes are expensive but predictable, and many people I know prefer them over variable-rate boxes.
Re:How about graduated scale or deregulation ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Cost to send a letter via UPS: $30
Cost to send a letter via USPS: $0.46
One of them's certainly more efficient, but it isn't UPS.
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Re:How about graduated scale or deregulation ? (Score:5, Insightful)
You can send a lot of stuff electronically if you have electronics. And an Internet connection.
The Post Office is not "in business" any more than the US Navy is "in business". It's a Constitutionally authorized function of the Government.
This isn't going to fix things. (Score:2)
Re:This isn't going to fix things. (Score:5, Insightful)
There's really not much they can do about it. The main reason the USPS is down $16 billion is because Congress is intentionally trying to bankrupt them.
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They'll probably stop delivering on the other days of the week also. That would save another $10billion...
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As seen on zerohedge, cut another 7 days service per week and they're outta the red!
Yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
We could eliminate the DOJ's yearly anti-terrorism funding and not only save Saturday delivery, but put the USPS back in good shape fiscally.
Somehow I don't think expanding the TSA, buying millions of rounds of hollow-point ammo and giving them automatic assault rifles to fight boogeymen is helping anything.
Post office should charge for delivery (Score:2)
$5/month if you want it delivered or collect it yourself at the post office.
Perfect job for robots (Score:2, Interesting)
Robotic mail and package delivery is possible, now that driverless vehicles are being legalized. I can find no downside.
Robots have no interest in reading your mail.
Robots have no need for the contents of your package.
Robots have no need of unions or pensions.
Robots would never be tempted to dump mail in their attic in order to take the day off.
Robots could easily be programmed with alternative delivery instructions in the event that you need your item dropped elsewhere when you're on vacation.
All postal wi
Inconvenient (Score:2)
So, I get this note in the mailbox that I have a package that is too big for the mailbox, I have to pick it up at the PO. But, I leave for work before the PO opens, return after it closes, and it's 50 miles away so I can't sneak down there during lunch. Result: If the PO is closed on Saturday too, I have a real problem, having to take off work for yet another thing, getting a package from the PO. If it is open on Saturday, then there will most assuredly be a 2 hour line, out the door and into the snow,
Re:Inconvenient (Score:5, Informative)
Makes sense. (Score:5, Interesting)
Here in Canada, we only receive mail on weekdays. It works just fine because the majority of letters in our mailbox are not extremely time-sensitive - the occasional municipal bill, magazines, and periodic greeting cards from around the world. They could reduce letter delivery to M/W/F without really causing any issues. Daily parcel delivery makes sense because they're larger dollar transactions and whenever a parcel is on the way, someone is waiting for it. I cringe every time someone suggests getting rid of the post office and relying on FedEx and UPS instead, because they tend to be far more expensive in Canada. As an example, UPS will charge a brokerage fee for surface packages coming from the USA that easily hits $25. Sending a 2 lb package to the USA by UPS Express (even 3-day) costs about $60. Canada Post runs about 25% of that.
Back to the USA, there are already some interesting private/public delivery programs that promise to keep service costs low, too. As an example, Smartpost is an economical FedEx service that uses the USPS to deliver the last mile. Expect more of this stuff in the future.
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re: M/W/F - exactly. I check my USPS mail less than once a week unless I'm expecting something. Why? Because there's nothing in there anyway.
All my billing is online, my paycheck is deposited automatically, and the only thing that appears in my mailbox is garbage anyway.
I only look around the holidays and birthdays or if a package is on the way, otherwise I just let it pile up in there like the GMail spam folder.
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Cheating doesn't help (Score:3)
I bought a plant on ebay. The seller shipped it to me as "media mail" to save money, something that's supposed to be used only for textbooks. I guess it could become a textbook one day so that's alright?
Later, also on ebay, I tried to sell a used game. When I typed in the upc, it told me the shipping information used by other sellers of that item, on average. The average listed weight was 6 oz. The actual weight when I measured it on my scale read 9 oz, not even close. It made a dollar difference in shipping.
Little things like this add up.
Why Not Every Other Day? (Score:2)
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Bummer (Score:5, Insightful)
Netflix (Score:4, Interesting)
Will Netflix lower the cost of DVD/Blu-ray rentals since I can't view as many movies per month now?
it is every Canadian's duty to save the USPS (Score:3)
This is the only logical way for a Canadian consumer to buy American. Any other way only leads to extortion in "brokerage fees".
5-day service is not bad (Score:3)
In Canada, we've always had 5-day a week mail delivery service. What doesn't get delivered on a Saturday will be distributed on a Monday instead. Yes, individual postal workers won't get to work as many hours during the week, but you'll all still get your mail. IMHO, Americans will get used to this, and it won't harm the quality of service of mail delivery in any real measurable way.
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Being the old fart that I am, I remember when Canada had Saturday delivery too. It wasn't missed when it went away decades ago.
Re:But how much money will they lose to FedEX? (Score:5, Informative)
Err - that's the plan. Only first class mail is being stopped on Saturdays. If you want something delivered on a Saturday, you can still send it priority or express, and it will still be delivered on a Saturday. That's the second and eighth lines of the summary above.
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All political BS aside, without saturday delivery wont a lot of people just go over to FedEX or UPS?
Well, yes, if you need Saturday delivery then you'll have to use a different carrier.
It's worth noting that very few shippers will deliver on Sunday, and the world hasn't come to an end. I would think that if getting things delivered on a particular non-business day was that important, somebody would have started offering Sunday delivery to keep ahead of the competition.
Couldn't they charge extra for weekend delivery to make it economical?
The same people who scream when they lose their Saturday delivery would throw an even bigger fit if you raised the postal rates enough to
Re: (Score:2)
The reason saturday delivery of letters is going to save money is because everyone pays the same for a letter. This means that some delivery guy may have to drive 20 miles and be paid an hour of work to deliver one letter to one person. This is why the rural people are so pissed off. They are going to have to pay scaled delivery charges if they want something on saturday.
Pretty much we cou
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All political BS aside, without saturday delivery wont a lot of people just go over to FedEX or UPS?
I don't know about where you live but UPS doesn't deliver on Saturdays over here. I think FedEx will if you pay extra.
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Couldn't they charge extra for weekend delivery to make it economical?
Since the postage is paid by the sender, how will the sender know that what he sends will be delivered on the weekend and thus require more money? And what is to stop the post office from simply holding on to all mail until Saturday so they can charge more for delivering it? Cut back on postal workers during the week, rake in the money on Saturday.
If you mean "pay more in advance for weekend delivery", then you'll simply create the same issue that exists in the overnight and two-day delivery system. That
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Re:Who could have guessed? (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine that: unions, affirmative action and compliance with well-intentioned government programs do make you anti-competitive after all.
The USPS is the most efficient system for moving things from one place to the other on the planet. Seriously. Its private competitors cost far more to move the same amount of stuff in a similar amount of time, and its international counterparts don't come close to dealing with the kinds of requirements the USPS has to deal with. Their systems and procedures are designed so that practically anybody can get hired, follow the manual, and do the job correctly, and are also capable of working under a wide variety of conditions ranging from tiny towns in the middle of Alaska to lower Manhattan.
It's not that they aren't competitive. It's that the demand for their entire industry has dropped, and their bosses are actively trying to screw them up.
Re:Who could have guessed? (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow! If they're that good, then it makes me wonder why they have to have a government-granted monopoly on letters.
The monopoly position is one of the reasons it works. If you were to cherry pick the easy to deliver stuff by starting a service without universal coverage, you might be able to do it cheaper, but if you want universal delivery, not so much.
Are there any G20 countries without a monopoly postal system?
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Submit your billing on Tuesday.
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They offer free tracking if you buy your postage online. Heck, they actually pay you for the tracking since postage rates online are cheaper than if you walk into a post office.
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Congress should consider allowing private companies to step in and do it for them.
Well, the private shippers might consider it, if they weren't already contracting with the USPS to do their deliveries in rural areas, you uninformed retardate.
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Shortages are the price of a good mail system?