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USPS Losing Battle Against the E-mail Age
An anonymous reader writes "An article in the NY Times explains how the United States Postal Service is in dire financial straits, and will need emergency action from Congress to forestall a shutdown later this year. Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said simply, 'If Congress doesn't act, we will default.' Labor agreements prohibiting layoffs are preventing one avenue for reducing costs, and laws forbidding postage rates from surpassing inflation rates keep income down. On top of that, the proliferation of e-mail and online bill-paying services have contributed to a 22% reduction in snail-mail volume since 2006. They're currently hoping for legislation that would relax their economic requirements and considering an end to Saturday delivery."
All /. posters should commit to mail their comments for one week to make up the difference.
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This system is so brilliant, I may even patent it.
Wearing pants should always be optional.
For at least 15 years I've been hearing that various postal services all over the world are "losing battle against e-mail age" while in fact that scary "e-mail age" (or Internet age, as I would call it) should be the best thing they should hope could possible happen. Never before in human history we were buying so many goods from remote locations all over the world to be delivered by ... postal services! And now they want an end to Saturday delivery? They should start Sunday delivery. They missed the opportunity to start the biggest online payment system in the world so they should at least focus on being the best at delivering good bought on the Internet, not being worse still.
The "proliferation of e-mail and online bill-paying services" should have been started by USPS because they already had the infrastructure to do that and the client base. If back in the nineties everyone paying bills at USPS were told that they could do the same faster, cheaper and more conveniently at USPSpal.com then people would do that. The problem is not that the world is not friendly to postal services but that they don't want to change. They missed the train and now they want our help to survive. This has never worked in the long term before.
Karma: Positive (probably because of superiour intellect)
Fedex labor cost is 32%, USPS is 80%.
Weekly delivery of bills, junk mail, offers etc is enough. Lay off 60% of the delivery workforce, the other 20% will be needed for daily "express" deliveries.
Alternatively, deliver 3 days a week. Does anyone really need mail delivery daily?
This continuing argument about Saturday delivery is first, highly flawed, and second, not going to save any reasonable amount of money. The Postal Regulatory Commission says it will take 3 years to implement and only save about 1.7 billion a year starting in the fourth year. And even the GAO states that "it would also reduce service; put mail volumes and revenues at risk; eliminate jobs; and, by itself, be insufficient to solve USPS's financial challenges".
So while the PO loses its one attractive monopoly, it also fails to meet its financial obligations. The whole Saturday argument is just a scapegoat for Donahue to push along - then send the next PM over to beg for something else next year.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
That all the postal services have been so slow to get into parcel delivery. We all order on line these days and surely it would have gone some way to offset the impact of reduced post.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
The USPS is losing a long, drown-out battle against the impossibility that it's supposed to be both an unsubsidized "private-sector" corporation that's "run like a business", but also is micromanaged by Congress and not permitted to make sane business decisions. They are required to deliver six days a week; have exact stamp prices down to the penny for many services mandated by Congress; are required to provide certain extra-subsidized services, e.g. cheap shipping at "media mail" rates; are not permitted to levy surcharges for delivery to expensive locations (e.g. remote areas); and they even have their pension plan micromanaged by Congress, which is one of the current cash-flow pressures (Congress changed how the pension accounting has to work).
Basically Congress needs to decide if the USPS is going to be a government-mandated service that delivers flat-rate mail to every corner of the country six days a week, and subsidize it accordingly, or if it's going to be a private-sector business that will neither be subsidized nor micromanaged.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
To what purpose, I don't know, but making them fund pensions and expenses in a way never budgeted and that no other Government Sponsored/Sourced/Seeded Corporation has to, it is designed to fail.
Anyone know why, other than to break the unions and piss away the pension money?
And this is a surprise?
Lets see:
Can't raise the price of stamps faster than inflation regardless of actual cost to deliver.
Can't layoff employees
Can't reduce the delivery days
Must deliver to everyone
How many people see a positive outcome for this 'business'.
From everything I have seen over the years they are between a rock and a hard place. They either need to be set free to be a private corporation or be yanked back in to be a complete government service. Both political parties over the years have successfully pushed the USPA into a situation where it has the worst traits of a government organization and a private corporation.
by Anonymous Coward: I, for one, welcome the shift from car analogies to pizza analogies. um.. overlords?
The internet has not only made letter delivery almost obsolete, it has also dramatically increased home shopping. If the US postal service is not seeing its share of that, despite not being allowed to raise prices (i.e. having very competitive prices) or letting go part of their huge workforce (i.e. having spare capacity), they're doing it wrong. Consequently it's not the internet that's doing them in, it's their management. Oh wait, that's congress, isn't it?
A postal service is simply too important not to have, just like the roads. It is necessary for the smooth running of a country to be able to reliably move physical goods from one point to another in a moderately expedient and cheap fashion. It is so important that the very basic service should be run by the government.
Has the US government done anything to actively sabotage the USPS?
I know that in the UK, the Royal Mail has been sabotaged to the point of being unable to opeate profitably. The Royal Mail has been forced to outsource the only profitable part of mail, which is the bit where you take letters and charge people for the privelige. As a result, there are suite a number of companies who rake in vast amounts of money doing the easy bit. The hard bit is the sorting and delivering which the Royal Mail still has to do and is legally not allowed to charge very much for. In a sane world, the latter part would be funded by the former part. But the government has managed to separate the two so that the Royal Mail simply cannot turn a profit so that it can then be sold off. In general, though mail in the UK is still a profitable venture and the Royal Mail would run itself comfortably if the world was half way sane.
Has the US government done something similar?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I joined Postcrossing last month. I liked the idea of sending random people postcards, and in return receiving cards from other random people.
I send cards to a child in Finland, a girl in Germany, a student in Taiwan, a recent-graduate lawyer in the Netherlands and a woman in Siberia. So far, only the first two have received my cards, and I've not received one in return yet -- but it's only been two or three days. (I live in the UK, so it's no surprise that the cards to Finland and Germany arrived quickly.)
I like travelling and meeting people from other countries, so hopefully I'll like reading the cards I receive too.
Problem solved
Strange that /. is missing the real crux of the problem; a bad 2006 law:
>In 2006, Congress passed a law requiring the Postal Service to wholly pre-fund its retirement health package – that is, cover the health care costs of future retirees, in advance, at 100%.
most organizations are allowed to fund retirement and pension funds in a graduated manner that provides funding at the time of need rather than decades in advance. Its almost like this crisis has been engineered...
Source:
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/18/is-benefits-law-dragging-down-the-postal-service/
....state-owned monopolies in countries commonly decried as "socialist" by the American right wing got out of this mess decades ago and are raking in the cash now.
Last time I heard, Deutsche Post and TNT were making a nice, sustainable profit. Amusing to see that the motherland of capitalism's own postal service never got out of the 1970s way of thinking.
an every-other day delivery schedule would be fine by me and would lower costs (thinking Mon, Wed, Fri only).
That would be great, I could have a single reminder for both mail and XKCD.
PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
Fedex doesn't have a legal mandate to provide service to most addresses 6 days of the week. The comparison isn't particularly useful.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Of course I live in exosuburbia so I have never experienced the horror stories that usually come from the city but when you think about it they do a pretty darn good job. I can put a piece of mail in a box at the end of my driveway and have it delivered relatively timely to anyplace in the USA for $.50, that's freaking amazing.
The problem is (and why I am starting to use epay rather than check+snail mail)... The USPS loses too much stuff
In the four years since I've moved into my current residence, they've lost one mortgage check (eff that, from now on I drop the damn thing off in person), and one electric bill.
That may not seem like a lot, but it is enough for me.
Translation: they aren't losing my service because of competition, rather their own inability to reliably provide their offered service.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
The USPS doesn't want to change, or can't. They are an supertanker with 2 steering wheels- the USPS leadership on one and congress on the other. They already do USPS money orders, why not make them electronic? They feed letters into automatic sorting machines at various points along the delivery route, why can't they have a scannable barcode with tracking information on each piece of first class mail?
One point that I would make is that a first class envelope usually carries a lot more weight than an email. Somebody has to open it up, and read it, and then physically put it in the garbage, or write back. E-mails to companies too often disappear into an abyss or are replied to with a generic form letter. Companies lately have been burying their e-mail addresses too behind e-mail forms, support forums, etc. Their postal address is usually wide open. Sometimes e-mail support is offshore to India or who-knows-where, but will they really forward my postal mail to India? I doubt it.
By the time I write a quick letter, put postage on it, print it out, and walk it out to my mailbox, I would have just found the e-mail address in some cases. While the delivery is slow, the time for me to get it out may be the same or faster. And the response will probably be better.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
...with literally 3 letters and 2 catalogs a day being shipped to my home address.
Of course, my wife spends money at a reedonkulous rate through catalogs like this, but my neighbors seem to get 'bundles' of mail every day just like we do as well.
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I'm still waiting for /. to start supporting IPoAC... RFC 1149 came out 21 years ago and was built on well established technology. It was updated over 12 years ago and the latest, IPv6-compatible version came out this spring.
It's much easier to get evidence of delivery in if it's USPS ("official records" don't need the testimony of a custodian of records in, e.g., California state courts, unlike FedEx/UPS "business records"); that, and statutes requiring USPS (e.g., CCP section 1013), are pretty much the only reason I use the postal service anymore...
geek. lawyer.
They've got a delivery route to every single household in America every single day, and yet they can't seem to track a package through their system or guarantee a delivery day. Even their "Next Day" service is "We'll do our best, but it's not really a guarantee, and even then there are some places where we charge you the "next day" rate but we know it will be two days."
Fedex and UPS do essentially a semi-custom route each day, and they drivers are pretty well taken care of (though they have long hours certain times of the year), and they can track and guarantee your delivery dates, for essentially the same price as USPS. USPS needs to be a value option, or a better/more reliable service. Right now they're neither, and they cannot compete.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I don't think we need 6 day delivery. I really don't think we need even 4 day delivery. Mon/Wed/Fri should be enough. There used to be a time in American history where people were expected to go to the local post office and check if they had mail. With USPS tracking, people could sign up to get mail waiting emails or voice mails. Then, if the mail was important enough, they could go and pick it up or wait for the next scheduled daily delivery. Would provide a vastly more efficient system in the long run I believe.
Yeah that's because a rethuglican Congress required that the USPS fund both the retirement program and the health plan at 100%. The average for the S&P 500 funding is 80%. Other federal employees is 41%; the military is 24%; and the SAME GOVERNENT bureau which requires the USPS to fund at 100% does not fund its retirement and health plans at all. The $75 billion dollars needed to fund both the retirement program and the health plan at the 100% level is equal to a year's income at the USPS. The stated intent of these rules chages were to make the USPS look like it was losing money. Not so strangely the year the rule changes were enacted FEDEX/UPS were complaining that USPS had an unfair advantage because they had to fund their employees healthcare and retirement at the 80% level, but the USPS was only at 41%. Strange that the sponsors of the bill requiring 100% funding received large campaign donations from FEDEX/UPS. Futher you might check the FEDEX labor cost. FEDEX says it's higher and they don't include the costs of all the part timers they hire around christmas. USPS is has far better service than the FEDEX/UPS. At least USPS delivers the package rather then sending you an email that says come pick up your package since it couldn't be deliverd. USPS actually pays for damages to a package rather than telling you to f**k off which I ALWAYS get from UPS when UPS punctures packages
So they can ship their free trial discs again. That's easily 20% added mail volume nationally.
Look at the bulk of mail you get over the week in the mailbox.
For us, it's about 80% junkmail.
Of the 20% that matters, probably 17-18 points of that are bills, which could easily come as email, but in any case don't (or shouldn't) require first-class handling.
The other 2 points are miscellaneous mail that matters for one reason or another - magazines, notifications, netflix, etc.
Do the postage charges for junk mail really cover the costs? I'd definitely agree that the bulk rates can float above inflation - that's a commercial enterprise.
NONE of our mail is urgent enough that we need daily delivery. We could easily live with 1/week.
In fact, we personally have discussed that we wouldn't be put out if mail delivery stopped entirely - we could stop by the post office on the way home from work 1/week.
Now, I understand that knocking off deliveries 6 days a week will NOT eliminate 6/7ths of the costs....with the fixed costs of buildings, trucks, etc. I'd guess that a 80% reduction in deliveries probably will only net a savings of 50%. But that's 50%.
-Styopa
Neat idea. Should have called it Post Roulette.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
There is no such thing as: "If Congress doesn't act we will default", this means they are bankrupt, that's all there is to it.
At the risk of being moderated down further I must say anyway that this does not surprise me at the least, I've said that on multiple occasions that this is what is coming to the USPS
Quote:
When somebody says that government can do things efficiently, and they use the postal office as an example, they should really go back to that premise and realize, that the US post office is out of cash - it's selling 'forever stamps' today, and assuming it doesn't just dissolve over the next few years, it won't be able to make any money at that time and it will be in a worse fiscal shape than it is today, because the stamps sold today are basically protection against the 10% (current level) of monetary inflation that US Fed and Treasury are incurring on US population. Today the postal office cannot function already and they sell the forever stamps, tomorrow, they'll have to raise the prices but people will use those forever stamps and the postal office will either have to default on that stamp or dissolve, or there will be another bail out, and people use that as one of 'better' examples of government 'efficiency'.
Then people say things back to me that make no sense about how USPS is not or used to not have problems. Well yes, as long as there is a way to print more money the gov't will keep subsidizing these money losing programs, like military and wars, USPS, SS, Medicare, bank bail outs, stimulus programs, anything that is subsidized by government borrowing, printing and spending can go on for a while until the currency is destroyed.
The S&P downgrade was not just downgrading US debt risk, it was downgrading US CURRENCY.
--
Everything goes back to the question of fiscal responsibility, and there is no such thing in USA at all anymore.
Do you know what a USD is? Ben Bernanke does not. He believes a dollar is what it buys, though in USA the dollar has precise meaning (certain weight in gold or silver).
USD is a federal reserve note. Do you know what a "note" means? Note means an IOU. It's a promise note to give you gold or silver for your currency. But since 40 years ago when Nixon decided to default on the dollar (they did it a few times in history of USA, defaulted I mean), the IOU stopped being a promise note. It's not a promise by the Federal reserve bank to give you anything for that piece of paper/cotton/computer record.
Since the Federal reserve promises to give you nothing, that IOU is worthless, that is what S&P downgraded. They should have downgraded it to JUNK, because that's what US federal reserve note promises to you - nothing.
Because USD is a note, which now gives you nothing, it's worth 0, and this means that anything that the Fed buys is actually STOLEN by the Federal reserve. That's right, any asset they buy (and gov't "economists" are now suggesting that the Fed just buys out any assets - houses, businesses, etc), this means that Fed is completely openly STEALING those assets.
The US T-bills that are bought by the Fed, what do you think this does? This means that nobody else wants them, so Fed monetizes the debt and thus inflating the value of whatever USD denominated assets you have.
The USPS is suffering because it does not generate any revenue that is real. It's subsidized, and it was selling so called "forever stamps", and people were buying them, thinking that they would be able to USE those forever stamps in the future, thus protecting themselves from inflation, because stamps
You can't handle the truth.
Should have called it Post Roulette.
"Post Roulette" might encourage people to send postcards of things that are quite phallic. At least "Crossing" keeps it firmly in G rated territory.
FedEx pays much more per package for labor. But as a percentage FedEx' labor costs are lower because FedEx delivers $18 packages, while the USPS delivers 15-30 cent letters.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
It's not the unions idjiot look at the bill the Rethuglicans passed to destroy the USPS so Rethuglicans could sell it of to their masters
FedEx and UPS both provide tracking that works reasonably well. USPS doesn't. FedEx and UPS both provide insurance that will pay out in a reasonable time if the item is damaged or lost. USPS doesn't. FedEx and UPS both actually show if a package has been delivered. USPS doesn't (they SAY they do, but what it really means when they say "delivered" is they don't know where the package was delivered, who they delivered it to, or when -- but they probably don't have it any longer.) FedEx and UPS both bring the goods right to my door when the weather is really bad; USPS employees won't even come to my mailbox if there is snow on the curb. FedEx and UPS both will pick up packages I have to go out. USPS won't. USPS sometimes delivers letters sent to me (eastern MT) from the east coast (eastern PA) 2...3 weeks after they have been sent. These letters are dirty, sometimes wet, and often no longer timely. FedEx and UPS have never delivered anything more than a day or two later than expected, and every time it has happened to me, there's been severe weather to account for it.
USPS has stagnated while private companies whipped their asses for them. I find myself without sympathy.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
What he's doing won't, but now the /. readers in the US are aware of the service and can start using it, too.
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I almost never need to mail or receive a letter, so that only leaves packages for me. (Actually, I do get quite a few bills and letters, but I want almost none of them. I'd rather have them electronically... It's just not an option for them.)
Package delivery by USPS is the worst out there. They are the only service that refuses to leave packages with the apartments' leasing office. It would save -everyone- time and money if they did so, but they won't... Even if I beg and sign things. It makes them such a huge hassle to deal with that I usually pay more to have another service deliver the stuff instead.
And mailing things? They are the slowest and grumpiest bunch of workers I've ever met. (This doesn't apply to all offices, but this has been my experience at about 4 of the last 5 I've used.) They don't explain things well, they're slow to do what they need to, and they aren't pleasant about anything.
However, I will say that the attitudes are the same when I have to pick up at FedEx and UPS as well. It's just that I don't usually have to, since they'll leave it with the leasing office.
And now Amazon is partnering with 7-11 to ship packages there so you can pick them up without any fuss. I'm wishing more people could do that so I could avoid the USPS office altogether. (Amazon is the one company I know I won't need this service for, sadly.)
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
As long as each house is getting at least one piece of mail per day, the carrier is already going to the effort to visit each house. Is delivering four pieces of mail to a given house that much more effort than delivering two?
And instead of paper bills, those companies are using... Yup, Email. You invalidated your own point.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
That's the sound of inevitability Mr. Anderson !
The point is that the system is prone to human error and/or interference. It's old tech which has been replaced - get over it.
In 10 years time when another generation is kicking up daisies, there will be very little post. As the following generation moves out of God's waiting room, the postal system will be eradicated completely.
Are you trolling? What do you mean by complaining for no reason?
He/She's complaining because mail was lost.
Only a few short years ago, the USPS was boasting of profits and windfalls. It's present demise is clearly not due to email, but rather it is due to mismanagement.
Yep. Now if only Congress would stop passing laws telling it what to do and how to do it, it might be able to manage itself. Bonus points if Congress repeals the laws they already passed.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
The internet has not only made letter delivery almost obsolete, it has also dramatically increased home shopping. If the US postal service is not seeing its share of that, despite not being allowed to raise prices (i.e. having very competitive prices) or letting go part of their huge workforce (i.e. having spare capacity), they're doing it wrong.
To see what USPS is doing wrong, one must first figure out what FedEx and UPS are doing right. FedEx and UPS are competitive in every part of the postal business where USPS doesn't have a state-sponsored monopoly.
At my prior address, I'd had in the course of three years, two packages (not even letters) undelivered, or delivered to the wrong address), and on 6 occasions gotten letters and packages for other addresses, even on different streets. I stopped ordering online from places unless UPS or FedEx delivery are used.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
And when the Democrats had all 3 branches including 60 in the Senate throughout 2009 and 2010 what did they do to fix this problem?
Fedex labor cost is 32%, USPS is 80%.
There are so many things that Fedex isn't required to do that the USPS is that it doesn't seem useful to look at just labor costs as a percentage of operating expenses. Fedex isn't required by law to deliver packages six days a week. Fedex isn't required by law to maintain an office in every dippy little town in the US. Fedex isn't required by law to investigate cases of mail fraud, they leave that the the USPS. Fedex doesn't hold packages and mail when people are away from their residences. Fedex isn't required by law to fully fund 30 years of pensions and medical expense for retirees in a ten year time span as the USPS is. The USPS actually makes a profit on its operations. There are estimates that the USPS has been overcharged $75 billion in contributions to the Civil Service Retirement System pension fund. If it weren't for a 2006 law requiring it to over fund it's retiree pension and medical expenses it likely wouldn't be in the financial mess it's in.
I thought we were past that age and now in the social network and smartphone age!
Somehow, you wound up at Slashdot when you clearly thought you were posting a comment on a Brietbart story.
UPS and FedEx! You are a Prime member right? ;)
-Xen
I admit it; not everyone is me. I don't need the US postal service, but somewhere, there's someone who doesn't have a computer and needs to get her cancelled checks back from her bank every month in order to balance her checkbook. (Obviously but a single example of many.)
So, let the rates boost. If you're going to demand a postal service and also not adapt to modern times, stop making everyone else subsidize you. Pay the rates the market bears. I hear dumb people on sites like consumerist complain about the outrageous price of $0.44 postage stamps. But you know what, that's dirt cheap! Why not charge a flat buck? What not two bucks? Hell, when I need a guarantee, I happily pay $10 and up for mail.
Also, ./ apparently doesn't like cents symbols, at least on preview.
--Jim (me)
I get mail six days a week and it is nothing but junk. So much junk, in fact, that it fills an entire plastic sack from a grocery store each week. I never get anything but junk mail. I don't send anything through the USPS and I don't order things unless they're going to be shipped by UPS or FedEX. Any billing is done online. Any communication is done online or on the phone. I receive absolutely zero benefit from the USPS and my life would be better for them not providing me service. I don't need spam once a week, much less six times a week. And I certainly don't care to subsidize a government spam-delivery service.
I send cards to [...] Finland, [...] Germany, [...] Taiwan, [...] Netherlands and [...] Siberia. [...] I live in the UK
That is going to help the USPS how?
In the whole scale of everything, it probably won't. Although 14% of Postcrossing members are from the USA (36k users) between them sending over a million postcards.
My next two cards, which I will write this evening, are to be sent to Washington, USA and Austria. Me sending the card to Washington is a result of the person in Washington sending one to someone else, so that has helped the USPS in a tiny way.
I don't have any statistical data, but I find it unlikely that most people go their entire lives without losing anything. Unless I'm just the extreme outlier who has had tons of bad experiences with USPS. It's hard to verify exactly what is lost, but between mail that never showed up that people swore they sent, mail people tell me they never received that I know I sent, and neighbors mail that I've received, I estimate I'm up to around 20 something lost.
I've also more than once had mail that had clearly been opened and looked through. I've twice had mail show up more than a month after the postmark date (hey at least they found those pieces that they lost.) Nor is this just one bad mail carrier. I've had these experiences spread across 6 different addresses, in five different cities and two different states. Every one of those six addresses had problems.
I follow the policy of not sending anything by USPS that I can't afford to lose. If it's important, I stick it in a box and send it UPS. It's more expensive, but I've never had a single problem with them. That's why I would be thrilled to see private competition for letter delivery, was the final nail in the coffin of the post office as we know it.
Har har, aren't you witty.
roman_mir brings up a lot of very good points, especially the one about the USD no longer being backed by anything other than "the full faith and credit" of the US government. Your dollar is only worth X because people decide that it is. There is nothing backing that value at all and that is one of the reasons the government is able to pull all kinds of retarded tricks with your money.
Even if the dollar was still backed by a real asset then the monetization of the debt is still a major issue. It devalues the money that you yourself have right now. Most people don't realize that this is, in a way, yet another form of taxation. The US government magically creates money (and they have done so; all they have to do is update a database row in a bank account these days. It doesn't even have to be printed), devaluing your own. They now have more cash at the expense of the entire economy.
I'm sorry that you cannot understand these concepts and think they're crazy, but they're really not. It's a serious problem.
Love sees no species.
What are you talking about? Amazon uses UPS.
I send cards to a child in Finland, a girl in Germany, a student in Taiwan, a recent-graduate lawyer in the Netherlands and a woman in Siberia.
Congratulations, you are now on the MI5 watch list
Considering that Obama has shown himself ready to cave to just about anything the Republicans want, any union executive with any brains would be better to push for a Democratic primary and a candidate that isn't either a) a coward, or b) a corporate shill (thank you, Ralph Nader, you were dead on right when you called him a metaphorical Uncle Tom) and/or c) a class traitor.
--srj/mmv
of the GOP's war on a functional government?
http://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/2011/07/union_busting.html
... and you think dropping a check off in person will help?
My (previous) mortgage company deposited my mortgage check... and I have no idea whose account got credited for it, but it wasn't mine.
The check cleared, I marked it as such in my bank book, and the only clue something was wrong was when I went from 0 bill collector calls (since I pay all my bills on time) to 4 in one day all about my mortgage. Even after I opened a case, and they started investigating, AND finally credited me back, they STILL had the hounds calling me.
I had to tell them the next call was going to my attorney before they stopped.
So, even dropping that check off in person won't necessarily help. Mistakes can (and do) happen.
how will Kevin Costner save the country and bring back civilization after the Third World War?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119925/
Ironic; the movie is supposed to take place in 2013, just in time to see our country fall apart *and* have no postal system to bring it back together.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Actually it seems like some politicians are creating the problem because they want to cash in from further privatization. Annual postage increases of a few cents are no big deal but the government's veto of increases for 2 years has cost the USPS billions of dollars.
Put Bernie Madoff in charge. If it worked for Lord Vetinari...
What's the USPS budget for rubber bands? Sometimes I get just one letter with a rubber band wrapped around it. I always leave the rubber band in the mailbox so they can at least re-use it.
You never expect irony, do you?
Want to be a professional wrestler? Visit www.iyfwrestling.com
@iyfwrestling
How long until they banter around the idea (again) of charging for email? I remember back in the early 90's the urban legend of the postal service charging a nickel for 100 emails or some such thing kept floating around, but, you know the postal service, and the imperial federal government is still trying to figure out how to get their slice of the information superhighway. Taxes on "Amazon" type purchases, money for email....
Plenty of good people are hurting so badly in this economy they would take the post worker's jobs at half pay and no retirement benefits. Toss all workers out and on their ass and hire a whole new worker force. Also, the government can lead with a four day work week, starting with the postal force. Tuesday through Friday delivery is good enough.
"What will replace the USPS?"
Electronic payments instead of sending checks, .... ....
Fax, Email, IRC, FB
DHL, UPS, USA couriers, Bongo, MyUS, FEDEX, Parcel2Go,
Over half a million errand boys and >218000 vehicles don't come cheap these days.
That's relatively low for a company with over half a million employees and $67 billion in revenue.
Considering that it is a given that some items will forever (relative to our current lifespan expectations) ...
No need for a constraint here, unless you expect matter to cease to exist.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
... Moist von Lipwig when you need him? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moist_von_Lipwig
Unlike private corporations, the USPS is required by law to give preferential treatment to military veterans. The exam scores of vets get a bonus when the USPS is deciding who to hire. I'm not arguing that vets aren't capable of being good postal employees -- my father is a vet and a retired postal employee. My point is simply that it's one more additional constraint.
Here's another: the USPS, by law, has to deliver everywhere. Not everywhere every day -- some remote locations don't get daily service. For the same price in the case of letters. UPS and FedEx, on the other hand, have no such restriction and therefore they don't offer the same product, because getting a letter to the northern tundra of Alaska or to an adobe hours away from any other building in New Mexico will never be profitable.
The OP is right, but there is a third possible option: allow the USPS to raise the price of postage. It doesn't necessarily need subsidies [though it's a reasonable proposal]. Let them charge what it costs.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
At least they didn't show up asking for money, they showed up with a plan to work within their means.
Yes, let's introduce a profit motive into the postal system. I'm sure that won't lead to cutting corners (and lost mail as a result) or anything like that.
The postal service is way way WAY too critical to leave in the hands of a company that cares nothing about quality and everything about profits. (The fact that higher quality will lead to greater profits is too long-term a concept for Corporate America, as it usually takes more than a quarter to realize the profits.)
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
or c) a class traitor.
Since university at least Obama has never been below upper middle class...how can you call him a class traitor? A race-traitor perhaps, but he is mixed race. Has he let down the masses he fooled with all the promises of change? Absolutely. Has he betrayed his own class? Not the least, he is an integral part of the ruling class. Or do you think there are substantial differences between the Republican and Democratic parties? If there is no real substantial difference between the parties, why do you think there is a substantial difference in their candidates? The only difference is on the campaign trail.
Sig is on vacation
What makes you think that online banking isn't prone to human error and/or interference?
As well when you pay a bill online, unless it's an ACH, the bank generates a check and mails it to your payee via usps.
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
They never did.
But they were always cheaper overall than anything else you listed for physical delivery to the entire country as a whole.
It costs the same to mail a letter anywhere in the US. All the other carriers you listed do not flat rate, and will refuse to deliver to places that aren't profitable.
Everyone in the US can get a letter from the US postal service regardless of where they are. If they've got an address (so any private property and most public parcels) they can get postal drops. But they may not be able to get anything else, including an Internet connection.
The USPS is a socialist service designed to ensure that EVERYONE has SOME form of communication, and reliable communication at that. Nothing else offers that, even if you don't realize it because it doesn't effect you.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
'If Congress doesn't act, we will default.' Seems to be how we get things done in this country! Next month, I'm going to tell my mortgage company the same thing.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
I have not bought a stamp or used one in over 10 years (aside from wedding invites that I didn't buy the stamps for), however, I use eBay and Paypal and buy sell things all the time and I spend WAY more on that stuff than all of the stamps my parents used to use in a month combined. A lot of people I know do as well. Unless their margins are terrible there (which I cannot believe as it cost me $30 to send a small mixer to NJ from PA last week the cheapest way) but even if they are they need to re-align their business to focus on this side of things. They are the default on eBay and with everything bought and sold there and online in general I can't see how they are hurting.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
) Cable companies would prefer to not provide cable to all people in a state, only providing cable to those who will buy premium services and in highest concentration areas so it's most profitable, but states general have laws stating "no, cable for everyone or you ain't in business." So the USPS should not provide mail service to absolutely everyone in the US?
I wonder when this nonsense started. We used to have the ability to make progress in an economically sensible and viable direction.
Imagine if New York hadn't been allowed to have paved roads until there was a plan in place to pave the entire Western frontier. No rail roads in California until Louisiana has a direct line to Idaho. No canal to the Great Lakes until the government builds a canal for North Carolina.
At some point we lost the idea that progress has to start somewhere. Now it's all or nothing which usually devolves to the nothing side of things.
MI5? Why MI5? Is he a terror suspect? What have I missed here?
Oh, you mean that the civilian police at Scotland Yard might think he's a paedo? What's that got to do with Military Intelligence (after all, that's what the MI stands for)?
Why do these idiots have a monopoly on first class mail now? They can't even operate at a profit. Kill the monopoly, kill all funding to the USPS and let the market decide. If they shape up their act, then they will survive and continue to provide the "high quality" service they are known for (snort). If not, then we didn't really need them, and more likely some other company would do a better job anyways. After all, there is NO REASON for it to cost the same to mail something in the same town as it does to mail across the country. It is stupid decisions like that that keep these guys coming back, hat in hand looking for bailouts.
Maybe if they fired the top 10% of the USPS bureaucracy every time they got a bailout, things would change for the better.
Obamacare. You don't remember?
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
Just a heads up this is the real issue behind the default http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/09/06/postal.default/index.html?hpt=us_c2. It has to do with the retiree health care trust fund payment (5.5b) being due on Sept 30th.
And when the Democrats had all 3 branches including 60 in the Senate throughout 2009 and 2010 what did they do to fix this problem?
Since every major democratic party initiative since 2009 was held up or killed by the threat of a republican filibuster, I'm not sure they could have done anything about it. The democrats never really had a filibuster proof majority in the senate. The death of Kennedy and the interminable series of re-counts in Minnesota effectively kept the democrats from controlling the senate for most of 2009 and all of 2010. Since all legislation has to pass through the senate it's difficult to argue that the democrats had free reign to pass whatever they wanted in 2009 and 2010.
Except commercial companies like UPS take the piss out of the USPO by sub contracting the expensive bits (the last few miles). That won't make it any cheaper or more reliable, it will just transfer the profitable parts of mail delivery to a private company. How is that going to save the USPO?
Spoken like someone who's never sent, received or needed proof of delivery of certified mail.
Look it up... then consider my question again. If the USPS goes away, your next court summons would have to be delivered by a law enforcement official, you would have no legally protected proof (audited) of mailing or receipt... Good times there.
Some things cannot be privatized.
help me fix this "Terrible" karma, please!
You use cheques for your mortgage? Why doesn't the bank just take the money from your account like normal people do? And before someone complains that the company might take more than they are supposed to, that's the point of online banking so you can spot that kind of thing quickly and get it resolved.
So, even dropping that check off in person won't necessarily help. Mistakes can (and do) happen.
True. However, you can reduce the probability of an issue arising by reducing the complexity of the system. By trusting USPS with your cheque, you give USPS the chance to lose it. If you don't send it by mail, they can't lose it.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Oh no! The end is near! Ever since the introduction of this new high tech telephone, people no longer use the telegraph to communicate!!! We will all be out of jobs! We need the government to give us more money so we can stay in business forever!!!
Some things aren't supposed to last forever.
IMHO I think it is time for private industry to start bidding on mail regions.
Capital idea. Then I'll just have to travel 50 miles to get my mail like I do whenever stupid companies ship via Fedex.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
To be honest, about the only thing I use the postal service for is Netflix since the majority of what I want to watch is not available on streaming.
The USPS is also very cheap compared to rates in other counties, for instance a first class letter in the UK is 46p, about $0.74 cents, and they are unable to raise their rates greater than the rate of inflation by US law .
The digital age hasn't killed the post office. they're just too focused on what they used to do: letters. Inability to change is killing the USPS. They should be focused on what people do now: buy goods online and have it shipped in a box to their home. I almost never see the USPS listed as a shipping option. The post office needs to ask themselves why this isn't so, and then figure out how to fix it.
I don't generally dislike the use of epithets like "Rethuglican" and "Democrap" because it just makes you sound childish, no matter how important your point.
It also obscures the fundamental issue: A significant majority of Congresscritters and Presidents, and at least a few Supreme Court justices, regardless of party, are making it very clear that they can be bribed to wreck the US government. How they wreck it varies, who bribes them varies, but that's the problem in a nutshell.
I am officially gone from
There's no way to ensure you won't be wrongly harassed, because people are idiots. But when the company cashes your check, you have a scan of it that proves the company cashed it in and possibly the original check if you have that service with your financial institution. You probably also have an ACH record, as most financial institutions find it most expedient to change the check into an ACH transaction. It's not your problem if they deposited in the wrong account; they need to fix it.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
We have a perfectly good ACH system, but not everyone has access to an automatic bill paying system. That being said, almost any financial institution will withdraw the money from an account you specify, but a lot of people like myself would rather have more direct control by "pushing" it instead of allowing it to be "pulled".
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
If labor agreements preventing layoffs and providing for expensive labor compared to the private sector are causing this, wouldn't the Post Office be better off going into default to restructure and renegotiate these agreements? A government bailout looks like a way to simply continue the problem and make it worse.
You can't half a drop in business and not be able to cut staff. Who in hell agreed to not allow layoffs?!?! That is ignorant business decision. Sometimes layoffs are necessity because business dictates it.
In cases like that you send a registered letter to the agency requesting proof that you owe the debt. That will stop them dead in their tracks, especially given that lately even legitimate mortgage debt often can't be proven to be owed to the party wanting to collect.
FEDEX makes drivers pay all costs and they are 1099 working even when they must use fedex uniforms, buy / rent fedex truck, pay for gas and all upkeep, buy / rent the route, be on fedex time table. And missing or lost packages come out of there pay as well.
Is that what you want works to be like have to pay for the right to work?
Complaints about the insolvency of the USPS invariably point the finger at the internet. From my perspective, though, I spend a lot MORE on the post office in the last ten years than in the previous ten-- because of ebay and its subsidiary, half.com. Allowing me to print USPS shipping labels right from the web, and dump the package in a mailbox or leave it for the carrier to pick up six days a week, is a killer app. This doesn't seem like an unfixable situation. Maybe they need to get rid of media mail, because I used to send out some heavy books for peanuts with that service.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Canada Post has a big thing on the front of its web page "Pay 200 bills online with epost"
Irish post offices have savings accounts and passport offices.
As for Saturday delivery we dont require UPS or Fedex to deliver on Saturday why should we require the post office to do so???
Make saturday for priority and express mail only.
Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal... but in my experience the USPS has mangled my mail and packages at multiple residences, left a set of apartment mailboxes open several times (which exposes 8 mailboxes to the elements and everyone else), delivered mail addressed to another address (multiple residences again), folded my mail (when it wasn't necessary to fit in the box) (multiple residences), and not delivered mail (have had to call to get bills re-mailed -- at several residences).
Not to say that the other shipping methods don't have their own problems (UPS, FedEx, and DHL have all done very very stupid things) but the others rarely misdeliver. I rely on the USPS for certain types of correspondence and I expect better.
I know I don't need delivery to my door. I wouldn't mind having no delivery and just a PO box. I would check once or twice a week or more often if I was expecting something important. If to the door service was eliminated in a lot of areas it would save them a lot on fuel and employee costs. Pretty much anything important I do online, through email and electronic payments. It's faster, cheaper, and easier. I just plain don't need daily delivery to my door. In a lot of rural areas they don't even offer that service at all addresses and the only option is to go to the post office and get your mail. I've been there and done that and it never bothered me.
That's not safe, really, in that both UPS and FedEx use the US Postal Service as the final deliverer for their cheapest (and therefore what you tend to get any time an online store offers you cheap or free shipping) shipping option.
It's a stubborn and extremely out-dated service, not to mention run by complete morons that barely know how to do their jobs. Whenever I order something online and have the choice of courier, I avoid the USPS like the plague. They've just made too many mistakes in the past for me to trust them with expensive goods anymore (not to mention their tracking system is a complete joke).
I was just hoping it would fall apart...
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The dirty little secret of those private carriers you named is that, when delivering a package to a rural location, they hand it over to the USPS for delivery. That's why the Postal Service can't compete with Fedex, UPS, et al on cost... they need to maintain a huge workforce and vehicle fleet to cover the 100% of the population, whereas the private carriers only cover the cheapest 90%.
If the Postal Service fails, a lot of people out in the country will suddenly find that ordering a $5 replacement wiper blade from Amazon is gonna cost them $100 in shipping, or won't be available to their location at all.
Allow post offices to serve as drop off and pick up points for UPS and Fedex packages. Let the postal clerks offer ups, fedex(and whoever else) or post office shipping by using the post office some shippers could offer lower rates by not having to have their own customer counters.
Allow post offices to be used for ebillpay and money wiring (let the postal clerks provide western union and moneygram).
Some banks charge a "convenience fee" for automatic deductions like that. On my car loan when it was through CitiFinancial it cost me roughly an extra $15/month for doing a direct debit payment online. If I mailed a check in I could avoid that. Not a huge savings, but still worth it over time.
I have since paid that particular loan off, but I'm sure there are still companies doing it.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
I'm in Canada. When I order a package from the US, using USPS (stateside) + Canada Post (past the border) is the only option that doesn't randomly screw me with things like "brokerage fees" that often hit half or more the value of the package itself.
The private carriers seem to *love* brokerage fees, which allow them to hold packages hostage for fees way beyond the sending postage after crossing the border. It's always fun to get a bill for $10-15 duties/taxes and an additional $25-40 in "brokerage"
Is that an argument for hand delivering all checks, or what? Any other method, whether by mail or electronic, has a risk of something going wrong. And if you decide to hand deliver your checks, the probability that you get mugged (small as it is) is probably greater than the odds of the USPS losing an envelope.
The web and electronic services offered by the USPS are certainly part of their problem. You would think that by now, almost everyone would be logging into USPS.com to print POSTNET/IM barcoded prepaid envelopes and labels with inexpensive tracking and delivery confirmation options. You would also expect USPS.com to contain complete information and offer every service your local post office offers.
Instead, USPS.com has not changed much at all in the past 10 years. You cannot print out an envelope with delivery confirmation from your PC. Delivery confirmation is not even available for the first-class envelope you use to pay your electric bill, unless you stick in a couple of styrofoam peanuts to make the envelope 1/4" thick to convert it from a flat to a parcel. The post office does offer a certificate-of-mailing service, and their legacy certified and registered mail services, both of which require you visit a post office and handwrite all the information out on paper forms.
The USPS offers a bloated Windows desktop "Shipping Assistant" application, which still cannot print out a simple envelope.
They updated the USPS.com website about a month ago, but that was barely more than a homepage redesign. click a few times and you're back to their old web apps.
It's such a stagnant situation that the only viable fix is to have the federal government just sign a contract with stamps.com and make it a free service for everyone.
Congress is considering doing the following: Take the budget used to subsidize phone service and postal service used to ensure universal access and put it towards universal access to fiber internet. Package delivery would still need to be supported but communication would be taken care of. The big huge drawback is the layoffs that would be needed. Congress would need to fire a ton of post office employees. They may wait till the post office collapses in debt. Then they can be viewed as fixing a problem instead of firing a bunch of people.
UPS has delivered my package to random neighbors on 2 occasions. At work FedEX delivered one of our packages to the people in the adjacent suite. This all happened this year. The insinuation that UPS and FedEx does not make the same mistakes is laughable at best.
Fedex doesn't have a legal mandate to provide service to most addresses 6 days of the week.
So?
How's that math work?
A significant majority of Congresscritters
Honestly, "Congresscritter" makes you sound just as childish as using "Rethuglican."
For myself, three out of the four bills (energy, internet, water/sewage/etc. and insurance) I regularly pay (last time I checked, anyways), charged a "convenience fee" that greatly exceeds what I spend on stamps, usually by two or three times as much (plus the envelope is included, and I don't have to put an address on it other than sometimes a return address). Also, it probably takes me slightly longer to write the check and walk it down to the box but I regularly got fed up when trying to pay online because I usually had to set up an account and re-enter all of the things that they already know for my billing account; only one time was it as simple as entering the billing account number, the amount being paid and the method of payment. This is good for the same reason that Google did so well - the result is the same with or without it, but I don't need or want a portal into the company's e-world in order to do so.
Point being, if an area of the country has low enough population density that delivering there is unprofitable, FedEx doesn't. (Or, rather, they'll turn the package over to the local USPS for final delivery.)
Whereas the USPS isn't allowed to say: "Fuck Montana. We're losing money delivering mail there. Let's just focus on cities instead."
Company A makes deal with Union. Company A can't pay for the promises they signed. I (taxpayer) give 5 billion to Union. Union gives money to political candidate I disagree with. This is a good thing why?
The OP didn't say anything about a receipt. Having one showing the account as being credited would have cleared up the problem. I have always received receipts whenever I made a loan payment at a bank counter.
Allow them no only to close down saturdays, but fridays as well, and you would have to pay less to your employees!
Sad thing is if they go under, the monopoly created for all fedex like companies, will allow the price fixing for parcels just like the oil industry has been doing.
I call this progress.
Speed: Email is at least 175,000 times faster (1 second for email vs ~2 days for snail mail, at best)
Environment: Considering paper use, delivery truck emissions, etc....How many times more environmentally friendly is eMail over snail mail? 100X, 10000X?
Cost: how much cheaper is sending an email rather than a letter...again tougher to quantify but it is orders of magnitude.
Reliability: What is the success rate of email vs snail mail?
I mean honestly we might as well be subsidizing a carrier pigeon service or telegraph technology.
No politician will downsize USPS due to the loss of jobs. I have to think we would be able to invest this money to more progressive endeavors, which would create some jobs (albeit not 500K of them)
In 2006 Bush and the Republicans put a forward funding mandate on the USPS. That payment is due this year, to the tune of $5.5B -- 5,500,000,000.00. Guess how big the shortfall is expected to be in this "crisis."
It's easy to make government fail, just cut revenues below expenditures, then cut expenditures, then repeat -- sooner or later the food isn't safe, the roads fall apart and Medicare can't be sustained any longer. Unfortunately, one party in the U.S. has embraced this as a "policy" of "governance." The other party is full of messaging fail.
-GiH
Currently you can get shipping materials for free https://shop.usps.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10052&catalogId=10001&categoryId=10000036&parent_category_rn=10000002&top_category=10000002 which is ludicrous. They need to stop giving away shipping materials and charge for it like everyone else does. Countless times I have known of folks to hoard the materials, and use them for shipping using other carriers, or for personal storage. This needs to stop NOW.
Raise the rates on the bulk mail, even if it requires congressional approval to do so. Bulk mail companies already pay way less than the general public to send their spam direct to your box, and at times they receive hefty discounts as well ( http://www.dmnews.com/usps-provides-more-details-on-summer-sale/article/131151/ ) which should be stopped. The First Class postage we pay subsidizes junk mail. It is high time they pay their own way. The ridiculous threat that bulk mail companies will stop using USPS if rates for them are increased is pure bullshit. Call their bluff, and raise their rates, for they can afford it. Do you really think they will start using FedEx or UPS to deliver their junk? The US mail is a government monopoly they must use, due to the cheapness of it when compared to other options. A friend of mine who works in the sorting of US mail told me that bulk mail has steadily increased every year.
Additionally, the Postal Regulatory Commission believes that bulk mailers do not pay their fair share, and that their rates should be increased roughly 22% overall. An audit found that the current rates bulk mailers pay run afoul of the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act http://www.prc.gov/PRC-DOCS/UploadedDocuments/ACD%202010_1697.pdf , which is hotly contested by the lobbyists in the bulk mail industry. The current Postmaster General caters to the whims of the bulk mail industry, and needs to be gone.
Create a Do Not Mail registry, which works similar to the Do Not Call registry. Currently I have no way to stop all the loose-leaf flyers/advertisements from infiltrating my mailbox. The sorting and delivery of this bulk-junk takes up a considerable amount of time, including mine. The junk mail problem alone has me flirting with the idea of eliminating my mailbox entirely, for I can pay all my bills, and do all my banking electronically now. Granted, this may cost money initially, but I can dream, can't I?
Granted, there are many problems leading to the current crisis, and I have only touched the tip of the issue. We have to start somewhere.
The postal service is way way WAY too critical to leave in the hands of a company that cares nothing about quality and everything about profits.
I'm sure it will be quite safe in the hands of the government. As it sits it is already about profits. The USPS is a quasi-governmental agency that is theoretically self funding through the sale of postage and services. It may not be out to function as an investor driven business with quarterly growth, but its not a tax sinkhole nor a charity/non-profit organization.
Quick read: http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/consumerawareness/a/uspsabout.htm, the last two sections are relevant.
You sound like some of these Tea Party yahoos who were cheering at the concept of a government shutdown. What you're advocating here would be a catastrophic event. I know that my employer would go out of business were they not able to have their customers mail letters to us for a nominal fee; UPS and the like would charge too much.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Bulk mail may be annoying but it subsidizes the cost of delivering "regular" mail. I support getting rid of bulk advertisement mail but that means that sending a letter will probably cost a lot more.
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Since the USPS is created (and required) by a constitutional mandate, and not an amendment either -- its part of the core document. Other famous "communist plots" the Army and Navy. Let us not forget the super-double-secret socialist brotherhood known as "voters." Damn them and their lenin lovin' ways.
-GiH
STOP! You're bankrupting the USPS. They *lose* money on these items.
Do you have a source for that claim and in particular does that source distinguish between overall profit/loss (apportioning some part of the fixed costs to each delivery) and marginal profit/loss?
They'll have to charge the true cost of delivery if they want to actually solve the problem.
As I understand it the real problem with a "postal service"* is that their costs are more related to the size of the service area and the frequency of service than the volume of post. Sending a postman down a street costs about the same regardless of how much mail he puts in each box.
So as mail volumes naturally go down due to competition from electronic communication the average cost of a delivery rises. The governments that own and/or regulate them must choose betwen subsidising them, raising prices or reducing service. None of theese are lightly to be popular and the latter two options run the risk of driving down mail volumes further. Unions add to the problem of course as they are resistant to downsizing.
I suspect in the long run we will end up with an infrequent and possiblly subsidised delivery to everyone, commerical postal services in areas with high mail volume and expensive courior services for the few items that absoloutely must be delivered physically and quickly to an address in the middle of nowhere.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
"...the United States Postal Service is in dire financial straits..." ...
More cowbell?
If the USPS wants to stop the hemorrhage of cash they top pissing off the retail customers (or potential customers) by:
1. Stop the rate reduction of bulk mailings so everyone pays the same
2. Enable rules that allow people to STOP mailings they do not want
3. STAFF the service desks in your locations so there isn't a 30 person line waiting for help
As it stands the USPS has entered a race to the bottom along with the bulk/junk mailers. Contantly reducing bulk mailing rates to get pieces moving. The reason seems to be that the managers and supervisors are paid bonuses on piece movement, not profit.
USPS has had a failing business model for decades. I personally am happy to see it finally catch up with them. Now if we can just prevent Congress from doing anything stupid like throwing more cash at them.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
Why do you assume that the government "cares" about quality? A profit motive gives a reason to care about quality. A guaranteed monopoly does not.
As long as we're trading anecdotes, the USPS has NEVER lost a single check I mailed over a period of about 50 years, nor have I EVER failed to receive a bill I was due for. I think that's pretty remarkable. Also, nothing I have ordered for delivery via USPS has ever been stolen. I know some postal systems are infamous for loss and theft, but this is just my experience with the U.S. system.
I order a lot of things. Packages delivered by the USPS generally arrive pretty mangled when compared to UPS or Fedex, but I can only think of a single case where the goods were damaged, and that was glass headlights very poorly packed and sent from overseas.
If it weren't for a 2006 law requiring it to over fund it's retiree pension and medical expenses it likely wouldn't be in the financial mess it's in.
It would be in a different mess, with an underfunded pension liability like many state governments.
The postal system is an archaic but necessary system - however, I think it should be scaled back. Personal to-your-door delivery service when most people drive everywhere? Why? Instead, limit home delivery routes to those who show a need - elderly, disabled, etc who cannot physically make it to a central depot. Then, create neighborhood depots This would reduce the number of employees needed, lower fleet costs (number of vehicles and fuel cost), and allow regular service days to be maintained. For example, in many small towns in the USA, the post office would be in walking distance - and in large urban areas like New York City you could expand the network so that it remains in walking distance for the majority of customers. (As an aside, maybe add a law that says any unsolicited mail can be returned to the sender at that companies cost... that would take care of the tons of junk mail shipped every day.)
I've had far more emails "lost" to spam filters than lost by the USPS. In fact, in the last 13 years, USPS has never lost a single package letter (that I know of) - sent to/by me.
Beetle B.
I imagine that the trip back to the post office to pick up more sorted mail is less labor-intensive than the trips to people's houses. So it might be a net labor gain to make two trips to the post office and make only one trip past each house, compared to two trips to the post office and two trips past each house.
The USPS could reduce costs a tremendous amount if they stopped with the all-coverage simplified address bulk mailing schemes. It requires the letter carriers to visit every address on every street. It requires a lot more fuel to carry all the mail pieces.
If Bulk mail were charged at the same rate as standard first class mail, the USPS would not be in this financial mess.
bulk mail discounts are a race to the bottom (loose money on each piece, but make it up in volume)) mentality that has not worked for anyone in the long term.
UPS/FedEx do not have to visit every house, but they do service every house, or at least the overwhelming majority. They don't go down a street unless there is something to deliver there; saves time, fuel and money. USPS is in the business of making sure there is something to deliver at every address.
As for USPS shipping faster? I disagree. FedEx and UPS ground are much faster then USPS. The priority packages may be lower cost at USPS, but I always have to go get them from the post office instead of having them left at my door, so there is no cost savings in the end.
UPS and FedEx probably DO have more business because of the internet; they have better services (like tracking and employees who care). USPS only has most of the business it does have by acting as an advertising distribution company.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
FedEx won't deliver to the condo that I live in unless there are at least two packages to deliver or the package was sent using the most expensive class of service.
They'll have to charge the true cost of delivery if they want to actually solve the problem.
But then we'd never hear of the 'great' Sarah Palin...oh wait, maybe that isn't so bad...
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Nope.
Money was tight a few years back and we weren't able to make our car payment until about five days after the due date.
I received a call from someone asking about the payment the day after it was due. They even asked where the car was parked.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
I don't understand why people feel that of all the things that the government does this one should be a money maker. It is not a requirement of mine that government services break even or make money. That's why I pay taxes. That's not to say that they should not be more efficient of innovative but they provide a valuable service that I am willing to subsidize with my taxes.
This Slashdot discussion is not touching on the one issue that matters to the USPS's fiscal health: the payments it owes retirees. There's an entire generation of Americans retiring and collecting their retirement pensions, and it's killing the financial system - not just the USPS. This is *not* about good or bad service, or email, or flat rates, or whatever. Those issues will sort themselves out naturally. But the USPS - like the USG on the whole, and many many private companies - have promised healthy retirement packages to lots of people who worked there for a lifetime, and now they've got to figure out how to actually pay them.
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
The real reason for USPS problems is not e-mail or online bill pay. The real reason is the Postal Act of 2006 which requires USPS to pre-fund 80% of future retiree health-care obligations by 2016. This costs USPS 5.5 billion $ per year. If not for this, USPS would have shown a 600 Million $ profit over the last 4 years.
None of the USPS competitors (or for that matter any other company) has this burden. It's very likely this was lobbied for by USPS competitors - No lobbyist left behind.
I really don't understand this. Prior to the internet, snail mail was the primary means of communicating in written form across long distance. Now that the internet is nearly ubiquitous in many countries around the globe, there is a natural shift from snail mail to email. Email is technologically superior. Why should USPS expect that taxpayers should continue to foot the bill for services that have become obsolete. It is only natural that USPS should decrease in size now that its technology is used far less because a more superior technology has replaced it. For now, at least until we have some matter disassembler/transmission/re-assembler technology, there will always be a need to send packaged goods. Certified mail is certainly still useful. But obviously, the USPS services are not as relevant in today's world as they were say 20 years ago.
In order for the USPS to stay viable at the size it currently is, it will need to find a way to re-invent itself to make itself more relevant in the so-called digital age. That is the name of the game in business. If you want to stay relevant, you have to adapt. Survival of the fittest.
We'll make great pets
the probability that you get mugged (small as it is) is probably greater than the odds of the USPS losing an envelope.
At least you will know that you were mugged in a timely fashion. You dont know that the USPS lost your mail for a long time that often has financial consequences.
"His name was James Damore."
yeah, it's also a great way to ensure you don't ship international.
UPS - charges anywhere between 30% to 200%+ for a package (those are the rates I've been charged). They wanted $20 for a $10 item (TOTAL, including shipping) - I rejected it. The tax owing was $1. USPS/Canada Post would've just ignored it (because it'll cost them that much to collect $1). They also wanted $140 for a $300 item as well. The least I've been charged was $21 for $50 items. And there was the time they wanted $40 for a $50 item. Bleh. Useless, and an instant skip if I can. Hell, just a couple of those pays for a US mailing address for a year.
FedEx - OK, we're more reasonable here, as FedEx charges just $25 brokerage plus taxes. Not useful for anything under $500, but hey.
DHL - Probably the most reasonable - $8, same as expedited (express) mail.
USPS - $5 for priority and slower, $8 for express.
The US address we have is mostly for the "free shipping US" deals most places have - where you can save $20 over shipping to Canada. It only takes two UPS packages to pay it off - the Canadian shipping ($30+) plus UPS' ourtrageous brokerage charges. Hell, even *one* moderately sized order ($300) could pay it off for two years!
The problem is, most people ship UPS. FedEx/USPS are rarer. DHL is practically non-existent.
That's odd.
Here in Britain some people are complaining that more and more businesses are requiring a fee when customers don't pay electronically. I'd have to pay, I think, £2.50 per month to pay my Internet connection bill by cheque, and £5 for the gas, electricity and mobile phone bills. Receiving a paper bill costs extra on top of that. But, I signed up for cheaper deals where I knew part of the discount was because of this.
Paying "Council tax", a local tax I must pay, by cheque doesn't charge any extra, but the council explains that it's in my interest to reduce their costs.
Some smaller places don't accept electronic payments, but if they've invested in a system to accept them it's to save staff costs, so they will want people to use it. Even the residents association prefers electronic payments.
Processing paper cheques means the company has to employ lots of staff to move bits of paper around. Finding out the cheque is no good takes longer than for a bad electronic payment.
What are checks?
I worked at a very large computer chain (MC) in the tech shop and we used to get FedEx delivering laptops to us that were supposed to be shipped to our competitors' shops; a couple miles away, on a different street, with a completely different business name. We had to call the competing tech shop up and let them know, "Yeah, it's Matt from MC, we got another one of your packages. You can come and pick it up"
One time I went to mail some documentation for a legal matter I was involved in where I needed receipt confirmation and had never done that before. First, I went to the post office but the workers there were rude and the lines were so long that I eventually just went to a Fedex Kinko's. While it cost a bit more, the employees at Fedex Kinko's were very friendly and I was in and out of there in less than 10 minutes.
We'll make great pets
I could live with getting mail once a week. If it's urgent send a courier or FedEx or something else.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
I get mail for entirely different addresses at least once a week and they used to lose at least a couple pieces of important mail per month. Packages can take up to 90 days for them to deliver from neighboring states.
Your USPS branch sounds awesome compared to mine.
I sent two mass mailings (wedding & other event) to 100-200 people each time.
In those, was able to confirm that 30% of the people didn't get my invitations.
When I complained to the USPS, they said unless I use certified mail, there was no way for them to do anything about it. The event were separated by 3 years.
Since then, I've used email and for those that don't have email, I call them. Like the OP said, too much error in the system.
Oh, and as for this:
Most people would go there entire lives without losing anything.
EVERYONE I talked to about my losses responded with horror stories of their own. So, unless you have stats that show that 51% of customers never lose anything from the USPS over their lifetime, my personal experiences trumps your presumptions.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
Joe_Dragon: Did you read the post? Go back and try again: I am agreeing with everything you are saying. FEDEX paid off the congresscritters from Tennessee to push through a bill that would destroy the USPS. Then FEDEX could buy the remains of the USPS at pennies on the dollar. Of course FEDEX costs are low they make "drivers pay all costs and they are 1099 working even when they must use fedex uniforms, buy / rent fedex truck, pay for gas and all upkeep, buy / rent the route, be on fedex time table. And missing or lost packages come out of there pay as well." But Again that's what they Rethuglicans/TeaTerrorists/Libertarians want. Unfortunately what they want creates a race to the bottom. Think of SysAdmins working for 25 cents and hour and working more than they do now.
Do you expect that level of service if the USPS closes? Where do you think that line of people at the USPS will go? Oh that's right to Fedex at Kinko's. Guess what, those employees will probably turn into the unfriendly monsters you see at the USPS because their relatively calm job has suddenly turned into an incredibly busy one.
While I once thought the postal service was a requirement, at this point I have -two- bills I don't pay online, one because it's a local office and I actually just drop the check off (I could pay online, but it's a town thing so might as well say hi every month), and the other I mail because the company is still in the dark ages. A lack of a post office would simply force this particular company to finally update to at least take credit cards or some such. So for the inconvenience of a single business in my life it would mean I'd no longer get floods of junk mail in our box every week (that goes straight in the recycle bin, horrible waste of resources mailing that shit), and it will get rid of all the mail that goes to previous and nonexistent residents of our house. The previous residents of the house didn't put in a change of address form, so we get a LOT of mail to them. We're not legally allowed to put in a change of address form for them. We legally aren't allowed to toss the mail out. And marking it as return to sender or any other thing has served no purpose as our local postal office just doesn't seem to give a shit. Then we have the people who gave our address but never lived here, apparently they had the wrong street name or some such. Same thing, no matter how often we say they don't live here, we still get that same mail every month with no way to do anything about it.
At least e-mail I can filter.
And then sending things through them? Last package I sent by USPS never arrived... it simply vanished. They had no idea where it went. Which how that happens in this day and age I don't know.
So IMO, let the post office die, pass a law requiring every business to provide a way to accept direct bank payments at the least, and UPS and FedEx for packages. If that means people in the wilderness have to head into town to pick up their packages once a week, well you know, that's what you get for living in the wilderness.
Of course none of the "solutions" will work. Laying people off will mean less service. And no, reduced volume doesn't mean they've got excess people. It takes just about as many people to handle, sort and deliver one piece of mail per address as 20 pieces. Less service means more reasons for former customers to find and use alternatives. And higher rates means more former customers find the alternatives more attractive.
And taking an honest look at my mailbox for the last couple of months, I find maybe half-a-dozen pieces of mail per week that I actually asked for. The rest is advertising of some sort or another. And of the small fraction I asked for, I only actually need a couple a month. The rest I could get through e-mail or the Web if I wanted to, I only keep them coming through snail-mail in case I'm hospitalized or something and someone else needs to handle my bills (it's already happened once). The USPS's problem is that changes in technology are steadily making them obsolete. They let UPS and Fedex and others take overnight delivery and parcel post away from them. E-mail took the regular first-class letter business away. On-line options are eating away at the use of mail for bills and payments. What's left? Advertising, and stuff where delivery by USPS carries a legal presumption of receipt. That's not much to build a business on.
Actually, a profit motive gives a reason to care about profit. Bernie Madoff, for example, was quite motivated by profit, but the investing services he offered were rather low in quality.
You forgot to mention the Koch brothers, no breathless, invective-filled anti-Republican screed is complete without them.
Those who track inflation based on how it was done before all the tricks used to generate the number today became standard find that real inflation is much higher than what is stated. shadowstats.com is one site which does this. A difference between real inflation and stated inflation of atleast 4 percent makes a huge difference for USPS and others who recieve income based on stated inflation. Their income is limited to government stated inflation, their expences are based on actual inflation. The difference piles up and grows bigger every year. This is not the only reason they are having problems, but it is likely a huge part of it.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
It is odd. What is even more odd is that most banks this side of the pond (I'm in Canada now, instead of the UK), charge for personal banking. From what I can see, most will charge you for every cheque you write, every transaction you make. Worse they don't even give you a significantly higher rate of interest than the UK. Companies in the UK, small and large, still have to pay per transaction, though if they are big enough they can get a discount. Which sucks if you're a small company trying to make a living. Of course, the really large companies like Sainsbury's just start their own bank so they can get even cheaper per transaction costs.
Cheques (or checks for those this side of the pond) are a royal pain in the ass for small companies. They get lost easily, or they bounce which is worse. Credit cards are costly but at least you know you are going to get your money. And it turns out per transaction they aren't that costly compared to cheques.
If the Postal Service fails, a lot of people out in the country will suddenly find that ordering a $5 replacement wiper blade from Amazon is gonna cost them $100 in shipping, or won't be available to their location at all.
The sad part is those same people seem to elect the politicians who want to cut government services to the bone....
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
How will I get weed from Silk Road delivered to my doorstep??
And yet those last few miles are still profitable to the subcontractors. Sounds like a management/organizational issue more than a "can't make it work" issue.
I have only had the USPS lose one package that I can recall. Tracking showed that it made it to Houston, but never left the sorting center. Amazon refunded my money. At least with USPS deliveries, I can expect a specific time each day when they might come in. Fed-Ex delivered a box just last friday, after 10pm.
I'm sorry, but the whole postal service crisis is BS. I get pounds, literally pounds of mail every week. Flyers, ads, coupons... These companies pay a fraction of a penny to dump this crap into my mailbox, and every time I put a stamp on something it's 2 cents more than last time!? Let them default. Let them go under. Get rid of the lazy bastards and subcontract the work to UPS or Fedex.
Let's try a thought experiment:
You have won the Publisher Clearing House sweepstakes and will receive $10 MILLION dollars - all that is necessary to collect is you have to deliver a signed response back to PCH by noon on Friday. (we're just using delivery service here, no driving, flying...)
Would you trust your financial future to:
A) Post Office Mail
B) FedEx (profit driven)
Personally, I trust the execution, SLA and customer service level of the profit driven organization far more than the government bureaucracy.
Canada Post is still profitable, but it's probably just a matter of time.
One of the things that happens here occasionally is postal strikes. We just went through one. When there's a threat of a postal strike, billers (like utility companies and whatnot) step up efforts to get people to switch to electronic billing. And once someone has switched to electronic billing, they're probably not switching back once the strike is done.
I don't think the postal employees realize the damage they're doing to their own business by going on strike.
Well, we actually did build not just one, but two highway systems that were designed to connect the whole country from the beginning. So yeah, actually, a lot of freeways in New York were not funded until there was a plan in place to build counterparts throughout the country. (Fun facts: first state to sign a contract to build an Interstate highway: Missouri. First state to start actually building one: Kansas. First state to open a segment of one: Pennsylvania. First state to finish all of its route: Nebraska...)
Are you adequate?
I don't remember ever re-mailing or seeing anyone re-mail anything to the USPS during the time I sort-of worked for UPS (a 3 week full time temp job during the summer while I was still in high school), nor did I see anything like that when I worked in billing (another temp job just before college, but 2 weeks this time, filling in for a lady on maternity leave). I'm not saying it isn't possible, I just didn't see it, nor did I load anything that was delivered to the post office, or see any billing code for re-billing to the post office, though there was a misc category that was mainly used for, say, checks missing a billing statement (so we didn't know where to file them). I did see mail delivered from the post office, however, in massive quantities (20+ mail bags a day).
Delaying packages for several days to maximize efficiency delivering to an area was very common, though (probably much more-so than today), and that isn't a luxury the USPS gets. A few trucks went out with only a few packages destined for remote locations, but it wasn't too often, and when you see something like a "3-7 day window," hitting 7 days, it usually was for remote deliveries. The USPS, on the other hand, has to visit every house every day, 6 days a week, even if it is in the middle of nowhere, while companies like UPS only visit if they need to drop off or pick-up. I remember reading about some guy in Nevada over 100 miles from the nearest post office and they have to visit him even if there is no mail to deliver or pick up at the cost of hundreds of dollars a day. The post office wanted to end Saturday service just for those people and they threatened to sue, because it is their constitutional right to get mail delivery (the constitution says nothing about daily delivery, but that was the argument I remember).
Exact opposite of the UK.
The point of online banking is to make it easier to do banking. Letting some creditor pull money out of my account and then having to check the account twice daily to make sure they did it the right way is not easier. It is much easier to push the payment yourself.
All /. posters should commit to mail their comments for one week to make up the difference.
SWEET!
I'll work on the T-Shirts to advertise this new movement! We'll ship those via USPS, as well. Oh, and the TV ads! Problem solved in less than a week. :>
LOL..
Humor, folks.
Shut down the post office.
But let's get real, such an effort even if successful may fund one postal worker. The USPS is one of the biggest employers out there.
I think they should do several measures:
-Alternating day service. Route 1 gets Mo-We-Fr delivery, and Route 2 gets Tu-Th-Sa delivery. Mail carriers cut in 1/2. Express Mail already is handled by a different special carrier (I'm told) so that's unaffected.
-Cut down all underperforming post offices that are within a certain radius of other, more successful, USPS locations. I'm close to such a one, that is in a shack of a location, and within 7 minutes drive of it's main branch. It has one guy working there, less than 75 PO Boxes, half of them unrented (the next most rural place I know has at least 300 boxes, 90% rented). USPS has been trying to close it down for years but the union is resisting, even if the worker is taken to the main branch. Hard to understand.
-Open up automated kiosks to serve as advanced versions of blue mailboxes in malls/supermarkets/what_have_you. Emulate redbox, except for packages. Try a trial run. (All the USPS advertising is for flat rate boxes, they WANT the package business. Might as well try something novel.)
-Back in WW2, Post Office has Vmail. It's mail on special sized letters, shrunk to microfiche, and reprinted. Save many cargo ships for other purposes - they used to be pioneers. They should have an email to mail service - afterall laywers and a ton of businesses need to send out certified mail all the time. But why should they have to print it, run someplace to mail it, and keep track of slips of "certified" this and that? Send it to the USPS server, let a central place print it out, and mail automatically, for postage plus a small fee. The software keeps track of what was sent.
Just a few ideas. The USPS has to change and fast. It has to reduce their workforce. It has to do a lot of things. But ceasing to exist should not be an options, lot of online and offline commerce depends on them and will do so until perfect replicas of objects can simply be generated, like in Star Trek, just like computers can copy data files. Then they can call it quits.
Humor. He beat me to it.
I was gonna say "...but but but I'm a male and I can't safely do that without being impounded!"
Ha. I made a funny.
It's called offshoring the production assets and offshoring the capital assets ---- are people really still clueless about this??????? I.e., there is NO ECONOMY, and since there's NO MEDIA, you'll have to do the arithmetic on your own.
So that they can dissolve the ink in the 'payee' line and replace it with "Cash".
It'd be relatively common for the company itself to give you a call to inquire about the missed payment (and gather some sneaky info while they're at it). It's a whole different thing to sick the bailiffs on you. Not least because debt collection firms cost the lender quite a lot of money too; if they're too quick to call in the debt collectors, they're just throwing money away.
UPS would charge too much because it is illegal for UPS and FedEx to deliver a letter unless it is mailed overnight. It is illegal to put anything in a mailbox marked "US Mail" or "USPS" without paying postage--if FedEx delivers it, if DHL delivers it, if you deliver it, you better put postage on it, because God dammit, the USPS will get paid for the use of a USPS destination mail box! It was almost illegal to overnight letters, but the USPS couldn't actually supply the service at the time and so the law covering that left a gap due to skillful business arguments and pressure.
UPS doesn't have facilities to handle normal mail because it's illegal for UPS to have facilities to handle normal mail. Thus it would be unprofitable for them to not charge you a fuckton for normal mail at the moment. Thus if the USPS craters, hopefully the law will change soon enough for UPS and FedEx to catch up to USPS in function, and we can all live happily ever after.
USPS comes out of stamp money, not government money. The government doesn't support the USPS except by ridiculous legislation that supports a monopoly business, and needs to be excised. The laws in place stifle all competition against the USPS and they need to change.
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Everything I do on a daily basis bankrupts the US and hikes the taxes. It's MY fault!
How do I know this, you ask? Cuz the gub'mint said so.... :->
And they said I shouldn't innovate and/or change processes because that costs them money, too.
Hmm...sounds like the unions here are one of the problems with the post office and efficient handling of routes, outlets and # of employees they can handle.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
For mission critical documents like that, yes, I would probably go with FedEx. (Should be noted, however, that FedEx loses stuff too, despite your faith in them.) However, that's not the market I'm talking about. I'm talking about typical bills, letters, small packages, and so forth, that right now are cheap to send via USPS. Right now you can send letters for 44 cents. If FedEx, UPS, and the like were to take over that segment of the market, you can bet your last dollar it won't stay that cheap (at least not for long.) Before you know it, you'll be paying $2 for a first class - level delivery, because the company MUST continually show increasing profits lest they be sued by their stockholders.
Your assumption that "government bureaucracy" can't get anything done is a poor one. They get things done every day, and usually with a high level of quality, just like private industry. In fact, in some segments of the economy, the government is beating the stuffing out of private industry in terms of efficiency. (See Medicare.) Do those programs have problems (fraud, for example)? Sure. Do private industry programs in the same markets have the same issues (like recission, denial of care, poor/slow reimbursement rates, etc.)? You betcha. The difference is that less money goes into overhead with the government program, because it doesn't have to show a profit.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Trouble is, we NOW have a service that cares little about quality and nothing about profits.
Maybe if we could more easily fire poor postal employees....and only have ones there that do want to work to keep and earn a job, like the rest of us out here in the private sector...we'd get better service, and a more efficient PO.
Can't do that till we get rid of the grip public unions seem to have on govt. services. That's one area, IMHO, that we don't need them, or shouldn't allow them. Let the voters decide policy...not the unions.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
You obviously have NEVER been to any DMV that I've ever been to. I pretty much resign myself to take about half a day off whenever I have to get new license plate renewals or drivers license.
I shudder to think my healthcare would be metted out by such an organization.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I second this. Especially the prisons. The prisoners should have to pay rent and should be set free if they cannot pay the rent. That will teach the socialist fucks!
Before you let it fall apart - consider this. A good chunk of postal employees are veterans of foreign wars. Do you think you are doing those guys a service? Plenty of them probably couldn't get work anywhere else.
People don't realize that $15 a month adds up. If you have a 36 month loan on your car, that's $540 down the drain. That could be a new set of tires depending on how much you drive by the end of the 3 years.
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
How about they just increase rates for junk mail. I still get plenty of that. And how about making future stamp prices be multiples of 10 cents? Is a bump to $0.50 or even $0.60 going to kill anyone? UPS and Fedex charge $20 for the same service, because they are more efficient private enterprise operations.
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Oh, and right now I will tell you where USPS absolutely lags behind where it could get an easy jump. For ebay, it absolutely sucks right now making international shipments for things under $300. You see, UPS and FedEx for a small guy will cost around $100 overseas (not something a buyer is likely to pay) to send a package. With USPS it costs 4-5 for really small items to, say $30 for something under 4lbs. The problem is that USPS lacks tracking - buyer says he never got it, Paypal will side with the buyer every time. Many sellers have given up selling overseas.
And forget registration (that's insured to 45 some odd dollars to many countries) -- many customs offices became absolutely anal retentive about packages. So if it's from the post office, it can get held... and held... and held.... months at a time even. But by paypal/ebay rules, if they don't get it within 21 days (or 28?) internationally , the seller is boned. If you declare the real value, the buyer gets to pay 30% of it or something mindboggling stupid in may places... they refuse, and the sender somehow never gets his package back. UPS and FedEx somehow managed to zip these items through customs, and if there are problems, often the item get back to you. (I swear, this shit was easier 10 years ago...)
Even if it gets through, if it's registers, the other PO system just doesn't know what to do with it. I got a registered package from China. The mail clerk tried to scan it in, and it just wouldn't work. He had me sign for it on a slip of paper because he couldn't understand the other PO system code (I'm sure they'd never find the signature again if I contested it).
So the weak point of the USPS system are the foreign post offices, which UPS and FedEx obviously don't have. Plus customs. USPS is trying to mitigate that with Global Express Guaranteed, which basically uses FedEx's system after it leaves our borders and is quite a bit cheaper than FedEx.
But if USPS could convene an international Congress, get the various customs offices to back off on the nickel and diming average people (good luck with that), work out an agreement with the foreign POs on a bunch of these issues, use universal forms that rely on easily recognizable symbols for registered mail (+ other services) that would be used in all countries, and have a universal scan code, they could really pick up business if they offered cheap, reliable package tracking on 1st class international parcels. Right now tracking even for a small business costs $0.17 or so. They could charge as much as $3 per package for 1st class intl tracking (as an option on top of the postage), and the the total postage would still be 10% of FedEx/UPS for 0-4 lb packages. They could earn a TON of intl business away from FedEx/UPS and generate a lot more from businesses that aren't willing or quit some time in the past.
Good luck finding some place (any place) that will give you cash in exchange for a random personal check that says "Cash" in the payee field.
Relaxed economic requirements and cancelling Saturday delivery won't help. Canada once had a postal system just as good as that of the US, including Saturday delivery and cheap postage rates.
CanadaPost was allowed the same things USPS wants and also allowed to degrade service levels. It hasn't helped . It is a joke - and an expensive one at that. Here it can take days for a first class letter to cross the city and I can generally ship something faster, cheaper and with less chance is it getting lost by using Fedex Ground rather than by parcel post.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
I read down on some comments...one that struck me interesting...was one mentioning something about a Federal Land Patent, and a guy that used it to keep a city from annexing his land....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
It *has* to be either overfunded or underfunded?
How about trying to find a middle ground?
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
Yes, because poor performance at a chronically understaffed and unresourced part of the organization is indicative of the organization's capabilities as a whole.
I can be in and out of my RMV in less than an hour. It's pretty much a model of efficiency considering what it has to work with.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
um, yes.. that's exactly what he said. And your point is what? That all unions are a bad thing because of one example? Of course, it would be almost impossible to find a single example of a corporation or gov't unfairly exploiting labor. They would never do such a thing.
You've got to be careful with the word "mandated". It has more than one definition. One means authorized; another means mandatory. In the case of the postoffice, congress is authorized to create one but not required to.
"The Congress shall have power... to establish Post Offices and post Roads;"
Again, congress can establish a post office, but they don't have to.
I don't think it's ever taken more then 5 minutes for me to renew my drivers license or license plates or do anything else in regard to that stuff.
Of course, I live in a small town and the local "motor license issuer" is a small office just down the street. They are also sell insurance and package tours....
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
Don't care. Society is not charity; charity is part of society. The USPS has a huge cost to society, as does anything else--the inflated price of college, the over-used duty cycles on cars, bank and realtor schemes to convince everyone that owning is better than renting (shittiest "investment" ever), gentrification and inflated rent prices.
In the case of college and renters, it's the charging for a service because they can--because people exist with more money and the area is desirable (renting) or because you "need" a college degree to get a job paying enough to survive. Cars and houses are more of an education thing (drive less, rent until you have a specific need and highly favorable conditions to own). Both of these create a large economic cost to society, called "economic rent." This is the increase in cost without providing an increase in value of services offered.
The USPS, on the other hand, is legally sheltered by the government. It's protected from competition, and was so protected while it was favorable. It's like if the government wrote laws saying, for example, that only Microsoft could sell operating systems for bundling on PCs, and that any third party installing any OS on a PC must pay Microsoft for the cost of Windows (even if it's Linux or whatever). The USPS is the only courier allowed to deliver general purpose post--the USPS couldn't overnight letters at the time, so the law allows other companies to provide overnight letter delivery. If you deliver to a mailbox marked "US Mail" or "USPS"--even a milk crate I painted "US MAIL" on--you must pay postage.
Cut those laws and FedEx/USP/DHL will learn to deliver mail effectively. Then the USPS will collapse on its own. I am hoping that with its death throes Congress will open up the market for competition so that it doesn't leave a vacancy in the market for a needed service.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
I'm not the person you're replying to, but I'm about as progressive as it comes. I get nothing but massive amounts of coupons in the mail, catalogues and bills addressed to previous occupants, and an occasional birthday card. I transport my mail to the trash every couple weeks. If I could cancel my USPS service (Kramer-style) I would. That said, I'm all for minorities (i.e. the poor) getting privileged access to services that would make their lives easier and keep them on their feet. If I could be convinced that there weren't better alternatives to the USPS, I'd be more supportive of it's continued existence.
The deal with lawyers... they need the papers with your actual PHYSICAL signature on it. That's a fedex round trip for a lot of things. They cannot accept scanned images of a signature. (with an image of your signature, I could photo-sign your name to everything.)
Put the letters addressed to the previous occupant back in the mail, and write "not at this address" on the outside. You'll be amazed at how quickly the post office fixes it.
YES. Let's leave it in the hands of a "company" that cares nothing about quality or profits.
Think about the huge carbon costs in moving large volumes of paper from one part of the country to another part of the country. In this day of high speed networks, this is foolish. Kill the existing system and start over. The post office needs to reinvent itself as a leaner, more focused organization. People have to get it into their heads there is a real cost to moving crap all over the place.
Here's what they need to do.
1. Go down to 2 or 3 day delivery.
2. Ditch the bulk mail crap. Nobody wants credit card offers and all the other tripe.
3. Close the small town post offices, roll them into an existing establishment, or replace them with a drop box. For the Holidays you could even roll up a more elaborate van that would have someone in it that could handle larger packages.
The currently system doesn't make any sense in the digital age.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Perhaps USPS should get into the official government email business...
That might work.
Sincerely,
My_Federal_SSN_ID@GENERALPUBLIC.USPS.GOV
I made a tax payment to my city recently, and found that they are now adding a surcharge for credit card payments, essentially to recoup the discount fee (not sure if they add it for debit card transactions as well, as I didn't use one for that particular payment). There was no similar charge for using checks.
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.
I'm not in favor of unions, but I'll say they may not be bad in all cases.
I don't, however, think they should be allowed in in PUBLIC jobs...as that the rules, pay, etc...are voted by and should be dictated by the public for those jobs.
And not to mention...govt. is inefficient enough as it is inherently....due to difficulty of getting civil servants out when they aren't effective...laws and regulations, etc.
You add in union on top of that, and it goes downhill fast into a money sucking entity that returns little if any effective service to the public that funds it with their taxes.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Have many overpaid family members working for it, it would actually improve their life to get away from USPS's ridiculous ways.
This is just karma working.
With debt so high, and with people still in a mood to misuse and abuse money, no system run by the government is going to be anywhere near flawless.
Why would I go to the DMV to renew my license plate or drivers license? That's what they have the Internet for.
Because the private sector has done such a bang up job.....
Ah, that's the only case where I would be charged a fee.
But that's because credit cards companies tend to charge a percentage of the total, whereas debit cards, electronic transfers and cheques have a fixed cost.
Labor represents 80 percent of the agencyâ(TM)s expenses, compared with 53 percent at United Parcel Service and 32 percent at FedEx,
They have too many workers that are paid too much that they can not layoff. They can try all of the tricks and gimmicks that they want, but getting rid of dead weight is the only viable option.
No, probably more likely that not all unions are necessarily good. It's sort of like police misconduct: "Well, yes there's police misconduct, just not here."
It's alright for others to lay off employees, or close locations, just not here.
Governments, corporations, and unions all cause problems. They just cause different problems. Pointing out the problems one causes does not imply that the problems another causes do not exist.
Can't do that till we get rid of the grip public unions seem to have on govt. services.
And I'm going to fight that as long as the anti-union rhetoric is as out-to-lunch as it is. Teachers salaries aren't the problem, a banking/property collapse and two wars are the problem.
Despite that though I dislike unions and think they're a patch for a broken government.
The problem is that the powers unions need to combat corruption are also useful for keeping lazy workers around. A small price to pay for modern worker safety but still something to be aware of the next time we try to fix things with laws.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAKhtYgoIqE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89SKOBQTEuY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1mhz1-biEY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoCYePvJJmE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fN7Lmk5ykXI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7EJ2wdI1Zo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4JWiZbVowk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Zh9kFJzDnA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slk6zeM4Of8
Yep. For profit companies clearly provide the best execution, SLA and customer service level available. And there are dozens and dozens more similar videos online and hundreds of complaints about both FedEx and UPS if you bother to look.
USPS, UPS and FedEx do not release statistics to show what percentage of packages they lose and what percentage they damage. Without that information, your claims that one is better than the other just shows that you're biased.
Sometimes catastrophic events are necessary to rebuild things that are failing or flawed.
Otherwise, inertia holds back effective changes. "Too big to fail" is a buzzword that means the system that allowed it to get that large has a fundamental flaw.
Your assumption that "government bureaucracy" can't get anything done is a poor one.
Conflating "can't get anything done" and "can't do everything it tries" is pretty common. Your assumption that the poster actually meant the above is a poor one.
I send stuff all the time for a small side business, and I haven't had them lose a package in a several years. After that, I went to Delivery Confirmation and they've never lost anything.
If it's really important (like a check), you have to send it by a trackable service like Express Mail. Yes, it's expensive, but $25 is a lot cheaper than the trouble of dealing with a lost check. Or better yet, just use an electronic method like paying your bills online, or sending Paypal payments if it's a personal transaction. With the sheer volume of mail the USPS handles, you can't expect perfect service.
Ever heard of the good-fast-cheap triangle? You can pick any two. The USPS is cheap, very cheap, 50% on the fast, and 90% on the good IME. If you want really good, you're going to have to give up on cheap; as a bonus, you also get really fast (overnight) thrown in. There's no market for really good and cheap and slow, so no such service exists.
Thanks to electronic payment services, USPS is mostly obsolete for sending money. But there's still a lot of things that people need to/want to physically send to each other. For super-fast service, there's FedEx/UPS (and USPS Express which is actually handled by Fedex), but if you're not in a big hurry and would like to save 80-90% of the cost, USPS is a great option.
With the advent of the web instead of physical stores, there needs to be a way to pick up packages. Leaving it on the doorstep if nobody is home is not secure (at least not in my town).
USPS could turn post offices into Package Pickup Depots for web orders.
Table-ized A.I.
Because not every state has it available online? What if you didn't own a computer or internet connection? This method is still highly optional.
But given that, I recently was able in my state a few years back to renew online...EXCEPT for cases like:
Change of address
Change of name (marital status)
Needing a new picture....etc.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Same banks and credit unions have an online billpay service where you can pay your bills directly from your account. There's no extra fee (at least with the CUs I've used), and you wouldn't pay that $15/month either, because what's happening is your bank is generating a paper check and mailing it to the lender.
Everything is backwards here in the USA. Corporations try to sneak in as many fees as they can to improve profits, and "convenience fees" are popping up everywhere, even though they also reduce costs for the company accepting payment as it's a lot cheaper to just have money come directly into your account than pay someone to open up envelopes and process paper checks manually.
Since Americans are so lazy, most of them will willingly pay this fee, and the number of those who stick with paper checks to avoid it is small enough that it's actually profitable for the companies, or else they wouldn't do it.
Maybe they would save some resources if they charged full price for all that junk mail instead of giving it just a big bulk discount.
I hear ya!
I've been fighting the move to send my mail by the horribly unreliable (deleted) mail carrier and retain my reliable-over-many-years Manning Post Office service but some bureaucrat decided to hand a few hundred yards of "route" over to (deleted).
Apparently some Post Offices don't run a tight ship and their diversity hires don't actually have to perform their damn jobs. Too bad the "good" Post Office is more likely to be closed or reduced...
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
How 'bout instead of the USPS, we spend the money on last-mile solutions that can get the last people out there online. What with sub-$100 tablets and netbooks it ought to be possible to just get everyone who can currently get mail connected. Digital signatures are already legally equivalent to normal ones.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Stop giving spammers discounts. Instead make it cost the same (or more!) as standard first-class to send junk-mail. Best of all, if this strategy fails, at least you end up saving a few million acres of forests in the process...
The post office had their chance and goofed. They could have become ISPs back in the mid-1990's. There was a push for it but they didn't do it. By making all the post offices ISPs they could have brought internet to the masses of people out in the rural areas. Then they would have been ready to deliver the final mile via Wi-Fi when that came along. But no, they were scared of email and the web. They actually tried to tax emails and pass laws that you had to use the USMail for anything that wasn't priority in need of extra fast delivery. Losers.
Oops, can't send a registered letter if there's no USPS anymore....
Who the hell pays their mortgage by cheque?
Facts bother you?
The postal service has been threatening to go out of business since late last century. Time to put up or shut up. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens. It can't be any worse than all the whining about it.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Maybe you just don't know about the things you've lost, ever considered that?
About a block away from my house is another house with a very similar address.
My address is 16W535 Reindeer Place. Theirs is 6S535 Reindeer Avenue.
My mailman regular delivers my address-twin's mail to me, and my mail to them.
One letter (from a mortgage company) I had to put back into the mailbox twice before I stopped getting it.
In fairness, UPS and FedEx have both done it also. I called UPS up and explained how they'd abandoned $2,000 in prescription medication on the wrong porch and they haven't done it since.
The preferred solution is to not have a problem.
I'd like to see evidence that it is really email that is killing USPS. With internet shopping, there are more packages being sent than ever. I don't know the facts, but I imagine that packages must be far more profitable than letters. However, for reasons I just don't understand*, many online shops use UPS or other private services instead of USPS. I would argue that it is competition that is killing USPS, not the internet.
* I always choose USPS when I order things because then the items end up down the street from me and I just go pick them up. Contrast to UPS, where if I'm not home when they drive to deliver (before 5pm of course, who's home at that time?), then I have to somehow get my ass very far out of town to their depot to pick up the package; without a car, this is extremely inconvenient. Sadly, some shops don't even seem to give you the option of selecting the postal service.
My brother's girlfriend drives for FedEx. LA to Atlanta and back. Every week. But she's not a Fed Ex employee. She works for a trucking company that carries freight for FedEx. So no, they may not show up on FedEx's balance sheet as "labor", but I'll bet labor makes up a good chunk of all their subcontractors' balance sheets.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
I do the same except I use email and I send to millions of random people telling them how this wonderful pill changed my life :) Not many people reply though :(
I stopped reading when a commenter got the idea to "start armed rebellion."
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
Nope, they just provide service to every address 5 days a week voluntarily, for a price that is comparable for the same Postal Service delivery.
I guess the difference is that Saturday delivery costs more via a private company?
FedEx provided universal delivery coverage prior to their USPS contract. It just means that, for whatever reason, it is more profitable to pay another entity to deliver to some addresses. What it doesn't mean is that it is unprofitable for them to deliver themselves. Both are obviously profitable, given how many years FedEx did it themselves. In other areas, they contract with other private couriers for final delivery. Paying someone else to use their infrastructure is often easier than capital investments in your own. When that infrastructure doesn't exist though, it is still profitable to put it into place.
If the USPS declined to renew their last-mile delivery contract, you can bet FedEx would still provide universal address coverage. The contract just proves FedEx believes A > B. It does not prove B is a negative number. Even if B is a negative number, it does not prove FedEx would decline to subsidize B through the profit of other routes.
Shame on them for not calling the Republicans' bluff. A filibuster requires continuous facetime by a member of the filibustering bloc.
Make them stand and deliver, 24/7, until they're tired of holding the issue up.
Nothing happens because nobody has the balls to call the bluff, and make them deliver until they drop from exhaustion.
I'm not saying you're for 100% sure wrong, but having spent several years of my life working for one of the two aforementioned large American shipping companies, I have my doubts that you're right. The numbers and profitability on these things have shifted a lot over time.
To give you one easy example, gasoline costs at least twice what it did before FedEx's USPS contracts.
In other areas, they contract with other private couriers for final delivery
Interesting side note: for some zip codes, private couriers and the USPS and FedEx are all involved in handling a single package from pickup to destination. Good luck tracking that one online.
Judging by the fact he quoted the entire list, I think he actually meant MI5 and not paedo fear. Communicating with random people around the globe being suspicious behaviour.
I stopped reading when a commenter got the idea to "start armed rebellion."
Just going to that site probably puts you on a list somewhere.
Flappinbooger isn't my real name
Yes, no response.
The electric bill never showed up at my place - so I don't know why anyone would steal that. The mortgage check went to a post office drop box, in a very safe neighborhood. Prior to arriving at the bank, it should have only ever been accessible to USPS employees.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
I usually get my neighbors letters once a week. Addressed correctly to my neighbors. I tend to just bring them over.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
I always go the cheapest UPS/Fed Ex route with online packages. They always come in a UPS or Fed Ex truck. Not USPS.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
I put my account number on the check. I have reciepts that I've paid. My owed balance is going down. Never has a check been lost in delivery this method.
So, yeah, it helps. There is one less space for error.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Do you mean constables?
My bank is about a mile from my house. I live in a *VERY* safe neighborhood. I've never been mugged, and in this neighborhood, I won't be. I have lost mail to USPS, including a mortgage check, so I have to disagree with you, at least for my situation.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
I assure you that many "normal people" still pay things by cheques.
The American spelling of checques, or however it is spelled in British English.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
My mortgage isn't with my bank I use for checking. Also I prefer to set the amount, because most months I pay extra. Finally, my company pays me monthly, around the time the bank would take it out +/- 2 days. I don't want them taking it out before I have it there (I keep enough of a buffer that wouldn't be a problem, but the month I don't have the buffer, would be the month they try).
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
it is not that it was late, it *never* showed up. Also, my bank has a huge window from "due date" to "late payment date", I pay long before the end of the window. At the time, I tended to have my mortgage paid about a month before being due - which saved my ass there.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
That's nice, that could account for my missing electric bill.
However, my mortgage check was dropped in a secure post office box, prior to arriving at the bank, it should have only been accessible to the post office. The check was never cashed. I put a lock on it nearly a month after someone would have had a chance to cash it, so I think it was just carelessness by the post office.
Fortunately, I pay my mortgage well in advance, so I didn't have any troubles from this, except wondering where the hell my check went, or if it would be cashed much later (say the post office found it in two years, and finished delivery after the lock expired).
So, no, I'm not using it as an excuse for not making a payment and getting extra charges. I'm using it as an excuse to not send anything *really* important via USPS. Twice in 4 years is twice too many.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
If the USPS can't at least break even, much less make a profit, I'm sure the private sector can step in and not only replace it, but do so at a profit, and even reduce the postage rates, while providing a more reliable service. That is the kind of progress we need to see.
Or better still, tax each email classified as junk. Junk is usually advertising, etc, which is what kept the postal service alive
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
That wasn't my point.
It depends on where you live... the fact they've been using USPS for last mile delivery really sucks imho... I've been getting packages at work lately.. since there are regular UPS/FedEx deliveries, and it always comes in (so far). Even USPS has been more reliable at work.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
Actually, that may be legitimate.
Governments are a different situation. Working for a county government that is in the same situation, it's actually not legal for us to take a credit card payment directly for payment of taxes. What we do instead is essentially forward a bill to a 3rd party entity which allows you to pay them with a credit card, and in turn they pay us the taxes owed. Naturally, such a service entails a surcharge. We don't actually charge it - the 3rd party charges and keeps that charge, but it still gets blamed on us a lot.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
The contract just proves FedEx believes A > B. It does not prove B is a negative number. Even if B is a negative number, it does not prove FedEx would decline to subsidize B through the profit of other routes.
That was pretty much the CYA line in my post. I may well be wrong about the profitability of providing universal coverage sans a USPS contract, but I still doubt they'd decline to service unprofitable locations should they no longer have the USPS contract option. After all, they deliver to BFE locations in much of the world, many of those surely at a loss.
Actually, I have a prime example for you on why your statement is a broad, inaccurate, generalization:
I recently purchased a computer from a small, one-man computer seller/repair shop. Like any business, he gets charged a percentage of all credit card transactions by his merchant. (I'm also aware of this because I worked for a small business and was privy to this sort of thing internally.) Because I didn't want to use a check (or cash), I paid an additional 2% over the cost of the invoice to cover his fees. You can argue that I could have taken my business elsewhere or a number of other things, but that's entirely irrelevant to this statement. The point is that using credit cards costs (additional) money, and sometimes that cost is passed on to the consumer.
Using checks is still a normal method of paying debts. Just because it's less convenient (for the payer) than other methods doesn't make that untrue.
As and addendum, that's also the reason why some gas stations charge a lower price for gas on transactions made by cash.
I don't know how it works in your region, but in Pennsylvania, subpoenas and court summonses are still served by constables.
Umm... first of all, as a libertarian and supporter of very much of what Ron Paul advocates right now?
I thought Ron Paul was a strict Constitutionalist. Maybe you've never bothered to read the document, but the USPS is mandated in there. The other Teabaggers don't give two shits about the Constitution (Palin, Bachmann, etc.), and those are the real Teabaggers, not Paul. They've successfully co-opted the Tea Party movement, so they're not just people rallying under that label, they really do represent that label, or else Tea Party events wouldn't have them appearing there. Also, you can't be a libertarian and a Teabagger. While there are some things they sorta agree on, Teabaggers want a fundamentalist religious government; true libertarians are fundamentally opposed to religion in government. Also, Teabaggers are big supporters of government-run medical insurance, but they want the guvmint [sic] to stay out of it: http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/funnypictures/ig/Teabagging-Pictures/Government-Out-of-My-Medicare.htm
why not outlaw all the mail-slots in people's front doors?
Different rules for different locales. In my current subdivision, all the houses have mailboxes next to the front door of the house. The mailman stops at the end of the street and walks to every door. In my previous subdivision, all the mailboxes were in a single giant box bolted to the sidewalk at the end of the street. The mailman only made one stop at each giant box, and the residents had to walk themselves to the central mailbox to get their mail (a lot of apartments are the same way, except there's a single wall of boxes for the whole complex). I haven't seen curbside boxes since I left the East coast, but the key in every case is uniformity. You can't have a subdivision with giant boxes at the end of every street, but then one or two morons who have to be different and have their own box at the end of the curb. You can't have a subdivision with boxes at the curb, but then one or two morons who want a box next to their front door. It has to be the same within every locale.
My garbage pickup company doesn't specify how many inches from the curb I have to leave my trash out for them, for them to pick it up....
Your garbage company also doesn't have to worry about the trash containers being different sizes and shapes, because they require you to use the container they give you, the exact same container all your neighbors have. They don't make a rule about it because they provide the trash can. The USPS doesn't provide your mailbox and install it for you, you have to do that yourself (or your home builder), so they have to set standards. Also, your garbage company (if it's like my company) has a nice truck with a giant mechanical arm that can reach out and grab containers without having to worry about a few inches here and there. The mailman has to use a human arm, which is much smaller and has much less reach. Finally, the USPS is a Federal institution, so any rules they make are necessarily going to be Federal law. The local garbage company (or city garbage service) is local, so any rules are either going to be binding to customers of that company, or residents of that municipality (depending on if your trash collection is private or government-run as mine is).
More importantly? People who want to distribute advertising flyers shouldn't be made into criminals because they're trying to save money on postage by hand-delivering the materials themselves.
No, they should be made into criminals for littering. No one wants your stupid flyers.
Right now, they're told they should "rubber band or other affix the materials to a front door-knob". I actually did this sort of work once, trying to help promote my wife's housecleaning business, and I can tell you it triples the time and effort required to canvas a neighborhood, vs. being able
I can easily see the argument being made that an officer of the law personally delivering a court summons would constitute "legally protected proof."
Um, you just used an anecdote where you specifically avoided using a check to try to argue that using checks is still a normal way of paying for stuff.
Yes, I did. Imagine that. I wasn't going out of my way to avoid using a check, but faced with the simple fact that I didn't have one on me. Because I didn't go home to get one, I paid more money. Unless you're implying that trying to spend less money is "abnormal."
This isn't a question of whether I did wrong or right, but a simple statement of fact.
Maybe you need to do a little more research.... Ron Paul ran on the LIBERTARIAN ticket in the past, and has NOT ever been a member of the Constitution party. The difference between the two parties, realistically? Not a huge amount, BUT, the Constitution party generally expresses much closer ties to some sort of "God" and/or religion having a place along-side of "proper governance".
In any case, the fact that the Constitution currently mandates the USPS doesn't negate the possibility that it's time to pass a new amendment to said Constitution to delete that requirement. We've already got quite a few of those amendments to the original document, because *sometimes* a revision is needed as times change. Most Libertarians I know would be more than accepting of the discontinuation of a Federal govt. provided service, if it's failing to work as intended and private industry has proven it's capable of handling the task. (When the USPS was new, mail was delivered on horseback .... a LOT has changed since then. The Internet is a HUGE factor, as is the proliferation of electronic bill-pay, either by touch-tone phone or Internet.)
As for your opinion on a private business trying to advertise with flyers, on a tight budget, being "criminal"? All I can say is I hope, some day, you try to start your own business and you receive a rude awakening about the cost of advertising, and how it can easily make or break your new start-up operation! The fact is, for every 100 flyers I distributed? I very consistently got at least 1 to 3 new customers, so SOME people were appreciative I handed those out. For everyone else? It was just one more piece of paper they could use as scrap paper if they wished, or recycle, or use as some extra fuel for their fireplace. Whatever ... The idea that it created some huge hardship for you to have this one extra advertisement in your mailbox is insane.
I know I occasionally receive a flyer on my doorstep from a landscaping company or other such "home improvement/repair" related place, and quite often, I actually save them and scan copies into my computer to hang onto. Why? Because personally, I'd much rather give my money to the "little guy" trying to advertise that way than to some big firm running TV ads or taking out glossy color ads in the local papers. I know I'm not just paying inflated prices to cover that advertising!
Maybe you need to do a little more research.... Ron Paul ran on the LIBERTARIAN ticket in the past, and has NOT ever been a member of the Constitution party. The difference between the two parties, realistically? Not a huge amount, BUT, the Constitution party generally expresses much closer ties to some sort of "God" and/or religion having a place along-side of "proper governance".
WTF? I said he was a Constitutionalist, not a member of the Constitution party.
Are you going to tell me now that he's against democracy because he's not a member of the Democrat Party? Or that members of the Democrat Party don't believe in having a Republic because they're not members of the Republican Party?
Most Libertarians I know would be more than accepting of the discontinuation of a Federal govt. provided service, if it's failing to work as intended and private industry has proven it's capable of handling the task.
So you believe corruption is a good thing? The USPS isn't working because of corruption, because private industry handed bags of cash to politicians to get them to pass a law that they themselves don't have to follow, which cripples the USPS financially. Private industry has never proven they can handle delivering the mail cheaply to every address in the country.
As for your opinion on a private business trying to advertise with flyers, on a tight budget, being "criminal"? All I can say is I hope, some day, you try to start your own business and you receive a rude awakening about the cost of advertising,
I own a small business. I advertise with this newfangled thing called the "internet" (using specially targeted ads), and more importantly, word-of-mouth. Maybe you've heard of these things. I don't need to spew litter all over peoples' private property. And I don't have to spend much money on it either.
And yes, I consider littering to be criminal. I think you should be harshly punished.
The idea that it created some huge hardship for you to have this one extra advertisement in your mailbox is insane.
So I guess you don't mind having one extra "spam" email in your email inbox here and there. Or maybe a few thousand extra emails every day advertising "important products" like penis-size enhancers.