Door-To-Door Mail Delivery To End Under New Plan

First time accepted submitter Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Reuters reports that under a cost-saving plan by the US Postal Service, millions of Americans accustomed to getting their mail delivered to their doors will have to trek to the curb and residents of new homes will use neighborhood mailbox clusters. 'Converting delivery away from door delivery to either curb line or centralized delivery would enable the Postal Service to provide service to more customers in less time,' says Postal Service spokeswoman Sue Brennan. More than 30 million American homes get door-to-door delivery and another 50 million get their mail dropped at their curbside mailboxes. But the Post Service, which is buckling under massive financial losses, sees savings in centralized mail delivery. Door-to-door delivery costs the Postal Service about $353 per address each year while curbside delivery costs $224, and cluster boxes cost $160 per address. But unions say it's a bad idea to end delivery to doorsteps and will be disruptive for the elderly and disabled. 'It's madness,' says Jim Sauber, chief of staff for the National Association of Letter Carriers. 'The idea that somebody is going to walk down to their mailbox in Buffalo, New York, in the winter snow to get their mail is just crazy.'"

Comments

Re:Already happening

[dyingtolive]

Once you price spammers and old people out of the market, the postal service collapses in upon itself.

Re:Great for parcels

[Anonymous Coward]

Not my carriers. My cluster-box is across the street but I haven't had a parcel go in the parcel-box for probably 10 years. All parcels get marked "oversize" and taken to the drug store where I have to drive, during business hours, on the next business day, not the current one, to pick it up. I've called the delivery supervisor and invariably they say "the carrier states they attempted delivery, nobody answered, and the parcel was too big to put in the parcel-box"... Even for something as small as a digikey order or my optical order... I run zoneminder, so I've supplied video footage showing the truck appearing, leaving the notice in my box, and driving away, but nobody ever coming to the door. The union says the word of the postie is accurate and any assertion on my part is to be disregarded.

There's a reason they're posties. Because they're lazy and generally not capable of complex thought.

Re:I don't know about the 'cluster' mailboxes.

[DigiShaman]

Think of it as a deposit. Because democrats don't have fuck-all worth of credit. They just like to spend. Republicans are having to teach these children a lesson in balancing a budget. Don't have enough money? Oh well, guess that means you'll have to not expand government. That's the goal BTW. Starve that fucking beast!