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Internet Usage Boosts Post Office Revenue
setirw writes "Contrary to popular belief, the New York Times reports that Internet usage has actually boosted the USPS's revenue, instead of decreasing it. It is commonly believed that the rise of the Internet has negatively affected the Postal Service's revenue, since e-mail usage is rapidly superseding snail-mail usage. 'Six years ago, people were pointing at the Internet as the doom and gloom of the Postal Service,' said James Cochrane, manager of USPS package services. However, the widespread usage of e-commerce sites has boosted USPS revenue, since millions of packages are shipped from such sites daily."
..is about minimising your fixed costs while maximising your variable returns.
Ok - IANAE (economist) and IANAPM (postman) - but this is probably a reasonable simplification.
With the postal service, fixed costs are about delivering a single item, where as high variable returns come from large packages. With the decline of letters and such (due to e-mail etc), and the concurrent increase in parcels (due to online shopping) - how could they not make better returns.
If a postal service is making losses and is in decline (as a number are in Europe), I would suggest that they should stop looking at environmental factors, start modernising their organizations and provide a service that complements the needs of their 21st century customer.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
That is why they are just about to change the postal charges for packages to include the size of the object as well as the weight. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5231576.stm Previously they only charged based on weight.
If this were really happening, what would you think?
The story on the old rumour mill over here was that Amazon was almost single handedly responsible for saving the royal mail in the UK due to the massive increase in revenue it brought with postage of larger packages.
Personally, I don't beleive Amazon would've single handedly saved it, but no doubt it contributed alongside all the other online retailers. I think it'll only get better for postal services and couriers too, it's the high street that should be (Well, "is" rather than "should be" in most cases) worrying as people shift from a culture of high street shopping to having everything delivered by mail.
Interesting to note that a survey was done recently of the most trusted Government branches/offices/operations and the USPS was ranked #1. This is in direct contrast to the Executive Branch of government.
t ml
http://www.directmag.com/news/usps-022306/index.h
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
There's bunches of online vendors I do business with who I have to use paypal with (if they support it) because they will only ship to my billing address and won't ship to a PO box, and I have my mail sent to a PO box because I've had too much trouble with material sent to my street address going missing.
I don't know what the underlying reasons that they only use Fedex or UPS are, I just now they're pretty damn pervasive, and I wish the USPS would make them unnecessary.