US Postal Service Warns Rural Mail Carriers: Don't Publicly Blame Delays on Amazon (msn.com) 119
15,279 people live in the rural Minnesota town of Bemidji. But now mail carriers there, "overwhelmed by Amazon packages, say they've been warned not to use the word 'Amazon,' including when customers ask why the mail is delayed," reports the Washington Post:
"We are not to mention the word 'Amazon' to anyone," said a mail carrier who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their job. "If asked, they're to be referred to as 'Delivery Partners' or 'Distributors,'" said a second carrier. "It's ridiculous." The directive, passed down Monday morning from U.S. Postal Service management, comes three weeks after mail carriers in the northern Minnesota town staged a symbolic strike outside the post office, protesting the heavy workloads and long hours caused by the sudden arrival of thousands of Amazon packages...
In addition to being banned from saying "Amazon," postal workers have also been told their jobs could be at risk if they speak publicly about post office issues. Staffers were told they could attend Tuesday's meeting only on their 30-minute lunch break if they changed out of uniform, mail carriers said. One mail carrier said he'd been warned there could be "consequences" for those who showed up.
Postal customers in Bemidji have been complaining about late and missing mail since the beginning of November, when the contract for delivering Amazon packages in town switched from UPS to the post office. Mail carriers told The Post last month that they were instructed to deliver packages before the mail, leaving residents waiting for tax rebates, credit card statements, medical documents and checks...
The post office has held a contract to deliver Amazon packages on Sundays since 2013. The agency, which has lost $6.5 billion in the past year, has said that it's crucial to increase package volume by cutting deals with Amazon and other retailers.
Tuesday the town's mayor held a listening session for the state's two senators with Bemidji residents, whose complaints included "missing medications and late bills resulting in fees." Senator Amy Klobuchar later told the Post that "We need a very clear commitment that we're not going to be prioritizing Amazon packages over regular mail," promising to explore improving postal staffing and pay for rural carriers. On Monday, the Minnesota senators introduced a bill called the Postal Delivery Accountability Act, which would require the post office to improve tracking and reporting of delayed and undelivered mail nationally.
In addition to being banned from saying "Amazon," postal workers have also been told their jobs could be at risk if they speak publicly about post office issues. Staffers were told they could attend Tuesday's meeting only on their 30-minute lunch break if they changed out of uniform, mail carriers said. One mail carrier said he'd been warned there could be "consequences" for those who showed up.
Postal customers in Bemidji have been complaining about late and missing mail since the beginning of November, when the contract for delivering Amazon packages in town switched from UPS to the post office. Mail carriers told The Post last month that they were instructed to deliver packages before the mail, leaving residents waiting for tax rebates, credit card statements, medical documents and checks...
The post office has held a contract to deliver Amazon packages on Sundays since 2013. The agency, which has lost $6.5 billion in the past year, has said that it's crucial to increase package volume by cutting deals with Amazon and other retailers.
Tuesday the town's mayor held a listening session for the state's two senators with Bemidji residents, whose complaints included "missing medications and late bills resulting in fees." Senator Amy Klobuchar later told the Post that "We need a very clear commitment that we're not going to be prioritizing Amazon packages over regular mail," promising to explore improving postal staffing and pay for rural carriers. On Monday, the Minnesota senators introduced a bill called the Postal Delivery Accountability Act, which would require the post office to improve tracking and reporting of delayed and undelivered mail nationally.
Assholes in charge (Score:2)
Also clearly incompetent, because "shoot the messenger" management is about as bad as it gets.
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Oh, and you think that has not been done a long time ago already? Are you somehow stupid or what?
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"Stupid is as stupid does".
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You are calling me out in _this_ pathetic a way, when I am calling out an authoritarian asshole? Are you sure you want to do that?
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Like any carrier, the USPS has extensive data on performance. They know how long it took for a mailpiece to go between scans. They know where the holdups are.
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If employees want to just say they think they are being overworked by their employer that is another issue and is a protected right.
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"I apologise for the delay in delivering your letter, it's being caused by an organisation whose name may sound like a large South American river". There, no mention of the A-word at all.
Or if you want to get more blunt, "The delays are caused by a large well-known online retailer but management has prohibited us from naming them".
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On the other hand, "shoot the management" would send a message.
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Yep. We clearly need a lot more of that. And no "golden parachute" nonsense. Make them pay in full for their mistakes and make sure they never get to "lead" anything again.
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make sure they never get to "lead" anything again.
I could imagine them replacing their golden parachutes with lead.
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Also sad that people are criticizing English that's grammatically correct: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they [wikipedia.org]. Better to be silent and thought a fool than speak and remove all doubt.
Re:Assholes in charge (Score:5, Insightful)
Once Amazon pays the USPS to deliver a package it become US Mail just like everything else. And USPS is not cutting Amazon a sweet heart deal, leaked USPS internal documents show that USPS made a $1.6B profit [geekwire.com] delivering Amazon packages. Given that USPS is losing about $7B/yr driving Amazon away would turn that into an $8.5B+ loss.
This is a problem with local staffing which needs to be fixed. The worst possible outcome would be a misinformed public outcry which results in USPS terminating the Amazon deal.
Where to cut? (Score:3)
If you want to narrow that $7B/yr loss, close a bunch of Post Offices. On the east coast there are way too many Post Offices, they are a hold over from a century ago. Why does my town of 7,500 people need four Post Offices? Of course people scream mightily when the Post Office next door closes.
Re:Where to cut? (Score:5, Insightful)
If the USPS were allowed to do what's profitable, mail carrier service would cease everywhere except cities and suburbs tomorrow. Sort of like how, you know, UPS and FedEx and DHL won't deliver to huge areas because it's not profitable
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UPS/FedEx/DHL are a bad example because they would be competing with a subsidized service, like the way rail freight has to compete with trucks on taxpayer-subsidized [archive.org] freeways.
And why must the USPS deliver mail to rural areas every weekday? Why not just once or twice a week?
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The only way private carriers would step in if U
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The rubes that are making USPS not-profitable are the ones that are voting to get rid of it. Isn't it ironic?
Amazon Mafia. (Score:2)
This is a problem with local staffing which needs to be fixed. The worst possible outcome would be a misinformed public outcry which results in USPS terminating the Amazon deal.
"We are not to mention the word 'Amazon' to anyone,"
$1.7B in profit AND they're being bound and gagged like that? I'd say the problem is a bit larger than 'staffing'.
And a public missing critical deliveries like medicines AND being subjected to late fee issues? That's not a 'misinformed' public. It's a victimized public.
Just because USPS has to bow to Amazon doesn't mean the rest of us do. Call it what it fucking is already.
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One would question the wisdom of sending medicine using ordinary mail. I don't live in a rural area and I also observe high variability in the delivery times of normal mail. More specifically it is with items crossing the continent. Some will go by plane, some by express truck, and some seem to get stuck for weeks making no progress. The delivery speed is almost random. Use Priority Mail for medicine which will bump the deliveries to the front of the line.
Special Treatment (Score:5, Insightful)
Special treatment for one customer leads to problems for other customers? Say it ain't so!
I get that special deals with Amazon bring in extra revenue... but with extra work comes a need for extra staff to handle the extra workload. This is a logistics problem that businesses have faced forever. How to balance the need for extra revenue with the costs of doing more business -without sacrificing quality.
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You can't expect the postal service to know anything about logistics! Please, be considerate!
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"This is a logistics problem that businesses have faced forever."
It's amazing that DeJoy was CEO of a logistics company for 30 years yet turns out to be completely ignorant about logistics. He should at least know how to make some money in shady ways!
Typical if you consider who is in charge (Score:5, Informative)
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Bah (Score:1)
I don't blame Amazon. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I don't blame Amazon. (Score:4, Informative)
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com] paints a rather different picture than you do -- for example, saying the Trump/DeJoy removals were 13% of an aging inventory of decreasingly used machines that only work on flat mail, rather than "most of the sorting machines the USPO had".
Volume (Score:3)
It is normal for the postal service to hire extra staff around Christmas to handle added volume. But they can't always do that (appears to be a problem in quite a few areas). Plus the postal service took over for UPS delivery of Amazon packages.
So, what is the solution? Hire more temporary staff, if you can, or see a lot of complaints.
A different solution is for Amazon to hire more delivery drivers and take that new volume away from USPS, but that puts the post office in a more precarious position.
They could just convince people to stop buying packages. (like that's going to happen!)
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It is normal for the postal service to hire extra staff around Christmas to handle added volume.
The problem is that workers aren't available in today's tight labor market.
We need more immigrants or more robots.
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Workers would be available if they were offered high enough wages.
How to afford that? Maybe stop the socialist flat-rate postal pricing for rural areas. Charge shippers what it actually costs to deliver in the boondocks.
I'm sure the generally conservative residents living there would applaud the move away from government-dictated centralized pricing policies.
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Imagine riling up conservatives against socialist flat-rate postage. Then when mail prices skyrocket in their location you redirect their rage into divisiveness.
Nah, it'd never work.
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What's wrong with socia... Oh I see what you did there!
As far as I can tell the evil socialism that conservatives complain about is when someone less deserving (I.e. Not them) is benefiting.
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Workers would be available if they were offered high enough wages.
That will just pull workers from another business and shift the shortage elsewhere. Then they raise wages, the workers go back, and you're back where you started but now paying more without an increase in postage to cover the costs.
The post office will lose a bidding war for wages because private businesses can raise prices a lot easier than the post office can.
Maybe stop the socialist flat-rate postal pricing for rural areas.
That makes economic sense but would ignite a political firestorm.
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"Maybe stop the socialist flat-rate postal pricing for rural areas. "
The USPS cannot change its postal rates at will.
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Of course it can't. That's the socialist part.
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Or if managers were nicer to their employees. I sometimes wonder if what really chaps management's hide about the current employment situation is that they might have to treat their employees like equals who simply have a different role
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It is normal for the postal service to hire extra staff around Christmas to handle added volume.
The problem is that workers aren't available in today's tight labor market.
We need more immigrants or more robots.
And some Postal workers DO NOT want to work on Sundays as is sometimes required at the Post Office. See a recent US Supreme Court ruling on that issue.
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"to hire extra staff around Christmas to handle added volume"
-1, offtopic
This isn't about handling the cyclic increase in volume for the holidays. This is about the inability to handle the regular trends in volume.
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The problem is not Amazon (Score:3)
The problem is old design assumptions.
Old, small post offices were built to handle letters
As letter volume shrinks and package volume increases, facilities are proving to be seriously inadequate
Packages pile up until overflowing, then the overflow goes into parked trucks or rented containers
The only solution is to retrofit or rebuild facilities to be optimized for packages
This can be really hard if there is no space available
Re:The problem is not Amazon (Score:5, Insightful)
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PACKAGE SHIPPING IS PART OF THEIR MANDATE.
USPS shipped farm animals for at least a century. Still ships chicks. mostly letters but I do not think it ever was limited to only letters. It's a constitutionally mandated service of government while the military is actually not. They must be funded properly but congress is corrupt and the GOP has been trying to screw it up like the traitors they are. Trump's appointment is still screwing the whole thing up while making as much money for himself as he can. Bide
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It's a constitutionally mandated service of government while the military is actually not.
Your statement is a bold-faced lie. The post office is not mandated by the US Constitution any more than the military is mandated by the Constitution. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 7 merely states that Congress has the power to establish post offices, not that there needs to be one; meanwhile Article I, Section 8, Clause 12 states that Congress has the power to raise armies.
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No, a bold faced lie is something else... yet you play picky about the wording of the constitution...
So the congress specifically is listed as establishing post offices but they are not supposed to exercise that power explicitly given to them? You think they didn't need post offices and they are optional? lol. They'd all have been hung as traitors to the crown (which they all are) if it wasn't for their postal system and newspaper syndication. Not that order is a big deal, but armies comes after postal...
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TIFIFY.
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Sounds like someone is in TheNile.
(ok, I'll show myself out)
two things (Score:3)
1. USPS could charge more.
2. The Government could give USPS even more of a break. The benefits pre-funding is a real issue.
https://www.reuters.com/world/... [reuters.com]
Re:two things (Score:5, Insightful)
1. USPS could charge more.
They should charge higher postage for junk mail.
I will vote for any politician who advocates this.
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This sounds good but how would we implement this? How is the law written as to what is "junk mail" that doesn't catch a bunch of false positives? Is this done post facto at the sorting facility and companies are billed back? Does a business mailing something have to declare it "junk" and what business would do that? Does the USPS declare certain companies "junk mailers" and charge them more? If my business gets flagged with that do I take the USPS to court?
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There is a specific class of Marketing Mail [usps.com]
It is usually sent in bulk to local addresses.
It is a different class than periodicals which have a higher rate and are delivered faster.
Businesses could still send junk mail, they'd just have to pay more to do so. If your "junk mail" is targeted in a way that you feel isn't "junk" because people really want it, then you should be able to afford the higher price. If you can't, maybe you should find a better way to do marketing.
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Businesses would also group together to send out their junk mail in one common envelope or booklet, and share the postage cost. This already happens quite a lot. There is also the option of direct delivery: throw them on the driveway along with the free local weekly newspaper.
I don't think the increased costs would be significant for the "bundlers" and the post office's workload would go down.
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Yeah but as I understand it those rates are in fact cheaper than First Class which incentivizes the marketers to use it. If that rate is suddenly more expensive than a first class envelop why wouldn't marketers just white envelope everything and send it first class?
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Are my questions not valid or can you just not actually answer them?
I would like something that would actually affect the amount of junk mail, not fantastical notions of an all knowing postage service who plays judge jury and executioner of what gets to my mailbox.
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If you can't answer those very, very, VERY basic questions I bring up then you just going for utopian fantasy legislation that will never ever materialize.
The difference with CAN-SPAM if we are talking about the USPS here which has a monopoly on certain postage and thusly also carries a Universal Service Order which means they have to deliver all mail and cannot discriminate whereas email is a decentralized system made up of many providers and many recipients who have a choice in their providers. These thi
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1. USPS could charge more.
They should charge higher postage for junk mail.
I will vote for any politician who advocates this.
I'd rather jail any politician filling my mailbox with junk mail. Especially if they also talk big about their 'Go-Green' initiatives.
Hypocrisy should be criminal when those who represent the masses do it.
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The only reason they haven't pulled it off is that most of the mail is from businesses, and those businessmen are smart enough to know what they'd do if they were in charge of a private USPS...
Same thing happened when Microsoft tried to make an Apple style Walled Garden, people with money knew better than to let it happen because they'd get screwed to.
Re: two things (Score:2)
News flash: in civilized countries, retirements benefits are *always* prefunded. They are also managed independently. That way, they can't be looted, forgoten, or simply ignored when people actually do retire.
The weird thing us that this practice is unusual in the US.
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"retirements benefits are *always* prefunded. "
While it is false to imply that pensions are funded at 100%, it is also false to imply that the prefunding is done on a fully allocated basis rather than incrementally.
What actually happens in civilized countries is that each year some part of the net present value of the change in future costs over that year from currently enrolled employees is funded. This takes into account things like cost of living increased but also takes into account that an enrolled emp
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"The Government could give USPS even more of a break. The benefits pre-funding is a real issue."
The very link you provided notes that the pre-funding issue has been repealed.
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I think they still prefund the pension part for 75 years worth in 10 years.
Shipping Partners (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: Shipping Partners (Score:2)
Some of the private carriers do that too. I am in Canada and an order can start with FedEx or UPS, in the US, but then get handed off to USPS and then Canada Post.
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Some of the private carriers do that too. I am in Canada and an order can start with FedEx or UPS, in the US, but then get handed off to USPS and then Canada Post.
DHL is like that in my part of the world.
They won't delivery to the final address if it's not one of DHL's business customers so they handoff to the local Post people.
But I have seen that DHL to local Post people take days to complete, based on reports from DHL's own tracking system.
No, we blame moderators... (Score:1)
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This is an update to that story.
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Hire more people? (Score:2)
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Amazon's using the USPS for the last miles IT can't afford. The post is almost certainly losing money on the deal as it can't subsidize those routes with income from more efficient urban centers - Amazon doesn't give them those jobs.
Just great your carriers when you see them with... (Score:1)
a wave, a smile, followed by a nice loud "amazon sucks!"
Problem here I see? (Score:2)
USPS is a government provided service, paid for by our tax dollars. It was put in place long ago to ensure it was possible for US citizens to communicate with each other (back in the days when you wrote letters to people to communicate), and to ensure important documents could arrive in a timely manner for people needing them.
If Amazon is dumping so many packages on them that they can't handle the volume? That's not Amazon's fault, exactly. They're just trying to pay to use the service provided. But it IS t
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If Amazon is dumping so many packages on them that they can't handle the volume? That's not Amazon's fault, exactly.
It's very rare (less than 1 in 100) for us to get an Amazon delivery via USPS. In any reasonably sized metro Amazon has their own delivery and logistics operation. I'll spare the wall of text on how bad this operation can be, one amusing anecdote though, I work for a company with a warehouse operation and ONLY Amazon has an issue delivering packages to us. Weirdly, UPS, USPS, and FedEx, their drivers know what the sign that says "Receiving - Building C" means. The Amazon drivers usually stop in the driv
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"USPS is a government provided service, paid for by our tax dollars."
The USPS is not paid for by tax dollars, outside of payment for actual postage and congressional franking.
Amazon Prime... (Score:2)
...Your tax dollars at work.
Think about that stupidity. (Score:2)
When your medication and tax credits are less important than a fidget spinner, then the mail system doesn't work.
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"Frankly they should ignore the Amazon packages, and deliver the mail, then once all the mail is delivered they can spend the rest of the shift doing Amazon packages."
Amazon paid their postage just like everyone else. Furthermore, doing all of the Amazon deliveries in a second pass actually *increases* costs by sending delivery people out on the same routes twice
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Amazon paid their postage just like everyone else.
Amazon has contracts with USPS and doesn't pay the retail rate. They pay more like $2-3 a package on average.
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different prices for different people is not what "just like everyone else" means.
That said, I applaud Amazon for working this out to their advantage. It's USPS that has screwed up and charged too little to these big customers. USPS is supposed to bring in enough revenue to sustain itself and build out infrastructure. If USPS gets swamped every year by some extremely predictable demand that's bad management. If they don't have money to fix it, then I'm going to jump online like any self-respecting keyboard
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Where the blame is (Score:1)
"Did you vote for Trump?"
"well he put DeJoy in charge."
Time To Go Postal On Amazon. (Score:2)
Welcome to America where the rules only apply to the slaves, not the slave owners. You watch you mouth, boy.
Old Hat? (Score:1)
the post office is a public service not a business (Score:1)
You think that's bad? You ought to see just how much money the US Military "lost" in the past year!
The post office didn't "lose" anything. They spent it, just like any other public service.
When I see someone whine about about much money a public service "lost" it makes me wish I could deliver a nice satisfying slap over the internet.
Our service sucks because ... (Score:2)
We have too many big customers and we didn't charge them enough nor did we prepare correctly for demand.
so they can use the Giorgio line (Score:1)
"Now I'm not allowed to say it was Amazon, buÃt..."
It's complicated (Score:2)
Context: I am union representative at my place of work; different industry, different country (Norway), but from some general thinking on how unions (ought) to work ...
If a company sets a policy like "don't mention company X in communication with customers", you can't really fight that. It's probably within their right to make such a decision. You can state your opinion on the matter up the chain internally, and through union representatives, but not go against it when you are performing your work. You are
A better Solution (Score:2)
Temu (Score:2)
Every time I go to the PO I see a giant pile of orange Temu boxes.
Time to reverse Nixon's stupidity... (Score:2)
They're losing money? (Score:2)
What a tragedy! Oh won't the heroic private market please save us?
Gosh, who could have thought that intentionally running a part of the government into the ground to ensure service was terrible would result in the service being terrible?! That's some M.Night levels of plot twist right there.
Perhaps we should alleviate the forced slow motion suicide that the USPS has engaged in due to Republicans intentionally choking the life out of it and see what we actually have?
Oh, and why is there an expectation that t