Post Office Proposes Special Rate For Mailing DVDs

An anonymous reader writes "The United States Postal Service is seeking to implement a special postage rate for companies such as Netflix, GameFly and Blockbuster (PDF), which send DVDs to their customers and then receive them back. This proposal for special rates for two-way mailers of optical disks follows a protracted legal complaint from GameFly, which argued that Netflix was receiving special handling by the Postal Service while paying a cheaper postage rate."

Comments

How is this news?

[Adnonify]

You buy volume and pay a different price? Basic economics ... how can a company do business otherwise?

Re:How is this news?

[hairyfeet]

Because unlike every other business on the planet Dubya passed a law that says the USPS has to have the ENTIRE retirement plan, to the very last penny for every single employee, funded for something like 40 years?

I have to wonder if this law getting passed couldn't be traced back to Fed Ex and UPS wanting the business that USPS was doing so found a way to stick them with a bill that they could never pay while remaining able to compete. After all you don't see Fed Ex and UPS funding 40 years worth of retirement per employee in their retirement accounts do you? It lets them tie a boat anchor to USPS so that USPS ends up in a bind and either has to cut service or raise prices, both of which benefits UPS and Fed Ex.

Re:How is this news?

[Mitreya]

I have to wonder if this law getting passed couldn't be traced back to Fed Ex and UPS wanting the business that USPS was doing so found a way to stick them with a bill that they could never pay while remaining able to compete.

USPS is also not allowed to raise prices beyond some (official/fudged) price index increase.

It lets them tie a boat anchor to USPS so that USPS ends up in a bind and either has to cut service or raise prices, both of which benefits UPS and Fed Ex.

UPS/FedEx constantly use USPS on "unprofitable" routes, because USPS is also required to keep prices relatively constant. So if the package is going to the middle of nowhere, UPS and FedEx will gladly outsource it to USPS which will deliver it at a loss. USPS cannot actually raise prices, but if they cut services, that may actually harm their competitors.

Re:How is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this news?
You buy volume and pay a different price? Basic economics

Companies already had access to the Post Office's volume discounts. This is about them creating a special lower rate to keep a business (and now an industry) of physically distributed digital information alive.

Re:How is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

> I have to wonder if this law getting passed couldn't be traced back to Fed Ex and UPS wanting the business that USPS was doing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast

Basically, people who want government to fail set them up to fail. Then they say "look look, big government is failing!"

Re:How is this news?

[Y-Crate]

Because unlike every other business on the planet Dubya passed a law that says the USPS has to have the ENTIRE retirement plan, to the very last penny for every single employee, funded for something like 40 years?

It's worse than that. The law gives the USPS 10 years to come up with 100% of the money needed to fund all of its pension requirements for the next 75 years.

It's designed to destroy the USPS so Republican lawmakers can bemoan how government has once again failed to deliver. Except that they're the ones who have failed us.

Re:How is this news?

[arobatino]

When the PAEA was passed in late 2006, it was at right about the peak in total mail volume (which of course they didn't know at the time) and the recession was still 2 years off. Everyone (Democrats, Republicans, and the postal service and unions) thought the prefunding was easily affordable, so it passed with bipartisan support. For example see this from the NALC (the main letter carrier's union) giving it high praise. (Although after things went sour, they started insinuating that it had been shoved down their throats, and pretty much everyone believes that by now.) Prior to 2006 there was no prefunding requirement at all, so it was just bad timing - it would have been fine if done 5 or 10 years earlier.

By the way, the correct prefunding figure is actually 50 years (see this and this which debunk the oft-repeated false value of 75 years).

Re:How is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

i believe it was 75 years, you know, for people not even born yet.

Re:How is this news?

[KalvinB]

Every business should be required to actually fund their pension plans instead of whining to the government for bailouts later. See countless examples of companies going bankrupt over union demands and the unions whining about their pensions they're "owed"

By forcing the USPS to actually be accountable for it's promises to the unions, they can deal with the problem now rather than later.

Re:How is this news?

[0123456]

Because unlike every other business on the planet Dubya passed a law that says the USPS has to have the ENTIRE retirement plan, to the very last penny for every single employee, funded for something like 40 years?

And the USPS still lost billions more dollars on top of that last year.

It's a failing business with a broken business model, and nothing will change that. It's not as though postal organisations in other first-world countries aren't suffering too.

Re:How is this news?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

...and does not usually refer to spending on military, law enforcement or prisons

Why am I not surprised?

Re:How is this news?

[0123456]

Basically, people who want government to fail set them up to fail. Then they say "look look, big government is failing!"

Yes, but the OP was blaming Republicans, not Democrats.

Re:How is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be fair except 75 years is overfunding the pension plan.

Re:How is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Every business should be required to actually fund their pension plans

I'll do you one better: employer pension plans should be outlawed. You want a pension plan? It has to be managed by a outside entity, and the employer is never allowed to touch the money once it goes in.

Re:How is this news?

[Cardcaptor_RLH85]

Yes, it makes sense to pay up your pension fund in advance...not 75 years in advance though! By paying into your pension fund 75 years in advance, you are funding the pensions of employees who haven't even been born yet. I can see requiring that the next 25 years worth of pensions are funded in advance but 75 years is insanity and for most businesses would be completely untenable.

Re:How is this news?

[Y-Crate]

Every business should be required to actually fund their pension plans instead of whining to the government for bailouts later. See countless examples of companies going bankrupt over union demands and the unions whining about their pensions they're "owed"

By forcing the USPS to actually be accountable for it's promises to the unions, they can deal with the problem now rather than later.

I have absolutely zero problem with forcing institutions to pre-fund their pension plans.

But Congress gave the USPS entirely unreasonable demands in an entirely unreasonable timeframe. Even 40 or 50 years in 10 would be far too much.

But all of this is beside the point and not the real issue here, as the whole purpose of the stipulation is to trigger the financial collapse of the USPS.

Re:How is this news?

[NJRoadfan]

Both offer "last mile" USPS delivery to ANY address in the US for reduced costs. FedEx calls is "SmartPost" and UPS calls it "SurePost". Your package is still shipped via the parcel company's network, but instead of being delivered directly to your door, it gets dropped off at the local USPS distribution center where they take care of the rest of the delivery. The trade off is that it usually takes longer for your package to arrive. The only perk is that you get Saturday delivery (for now).

Re: How is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because almost all Democrats voted against it and it was in the lame duck session at the end of 2006 when the GOP were in control. This thing if always blaming our 50/50 spent always work. It was the GOP so they get blamed. End of story.

Re:How is this news?

[artor3]

Okay, here's the deal. You have until your 30th birthday to fully fund a retirement account that must last until you turn 95. If you can't, you must declare bankruptcy and lose everything. Sound fair?

Re:How is this news?

[g1powermac]

And, as a former rural carrier, I can tell you that arrangement is quite profitable for the post office. The rural carriers have to go their routes anyway, so the extra package load costs quite little. The only costs are some time for the clerks/management to sort the incoming packages in the morning, and the slightly higher evaluations for the routes (which translates to a small bit more money to the carriers).

Re:How is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

UPS/FedEx constantly use USPS on "unprofitable" routes . . .

The routes aren't unprofitable, they just can't compete with the socialized/subsidized USPS rate. Another part of the USPS's charter is uniform prices, which allows cheaper delivery to subsidize more expensive delivery.

. . . because USPS is also required to keep prices relatively constant.

True, but the reason the rural, more expensive, deliveries are able to be offered at a cheap rate by USPS is due to their ability to charge much more for delivery in urban areas than would be necessary. In other words, urban delivery subsidizes rural delivery.

. . . UPS and FedEx will gladly outsource it to USPS which will deliver it at a loss.

Not at a loss, but at a rate subsidized by cheaper, urban delivery.

USPS cannot actually raise prices, but if they cut services, that may actually harm their competitors.

First, the USPS can raise prices any time if the government, through law makers, changes the law. Second, USPS's competitors aren't able to evenly compete with the USPS, since by law, among other things, they are not allowed to provide letter delivery service. If private delivery companies could compete with USPS evenly, they may well be able to provide comparable service to rural areas directly.

Re: How is this news?

[JWW]

Yeah, how dare they fully fund the pensions, when they should be funding them like Detroit funded their worker pensions. Oh, wait...

I'm not saying the republicans may not be putting the USPS in a bad spot. But is is really rare for pension funds to be adequately funded and most of those stories end up with the workers promised the pentions being royally screwed..

Re: How is this news?

[Y-Crate]

But this is like telling you: "Since a lot of parents fail to account for the true cost of raising their future children, you have ten years to come up with every penny you'll spend for the first 18 years of their lives, their college tuition and their retirement. Anyway, congratulations on graduating high school!"

Re:How is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

First, the USPS can raise prices any time if the government, through law makers, changes the law. Second, USPS's competitors aren't able to evenly compete with the USPS, since by law, among other things, they are not allowed to provide letter delivery service. If private delivery companies could compete with USPS evenly, they may well be able to provide comparable service to rural areas directly.

Yeah, it's not like it takes an Act of Congress to change the law...

Even if private companies COULD manage to maintain a profit while serving podunk towns and the red sticks, why the hell would they? Why make a $1 in the city and lose $0.50 in the sticks to net $0.50 when they can just make $1 in the city?

Also, there's nothing prohibiting them from delivering a letter to me. I get stuff overnighted once in a while just fine. They just charge $20+ for the service to leave it on my door instead of in a box (or even fold it and stuff it in there anyway).

Re:How is this news?

[bill_mcgonigle]

It has to be managed by a outside entity, and the employer is never allowed to touch the money once it goes in.

I'm confused - how does that help me make promises to an employee that I never intend to keep, while relying on taxpayers to cover my compensation costs?

Re:How is this news?

[b4dc0d3r]

It's a failing business with a broken business model, and nothing will change that.

It's a government service that is required to be self-funded and independent. There is no business model. The board of directors is really just Congress, which makes it unique enough that it doesn't qualify as a business.

They exchange legal tender for goods and services and have accounting and HR departments, I assume, but you can't think of it like a business. More specifically, you can't fix the business model - getting mail from anyone to anyone while being constrained from raising prices is not a business model.

Re: How is this news?

[Rockoon]

But is is really rare for pension funds to be adequately funded and most of those stories end up with the workers promised the pentions being royally screwed..

We've heard the narrative before. When someone gets fucked out of their pensions because it wasnt fully funded, the Democrats blame the Republicans.
When the USPS is forced to fully fund its pension, the Democrats blame the Republicans.

See how this works?

Re:How is this news?

[fulldecent]

The company needs to pay $X in 75 years. To meet that obligation, the law (TLDR, assumed from parent) says that $X is needed in the bank today.

Well looking at me as a private citizen, if I plan on retiring in 75 years and put $Y in the bank today with an interest rate of dick% it will still be $Y by then. (And of course purchasing power will halve).

So... what's the problem?

Re:How is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because unlike every other business on the planet Dubya passed a law that says the USPS has to have the ENTIRE retirement plan, to the very last penny for every single employee, funded for something like 40 years?

75 years

Re:How is this news?

[hairyfeet]

I take it we have some "invisible hand" nutbars with mod points today?

Like it or not here are some facts, FACT the USPS was doing just fine UNTIL that law was passed that required them to fund a LIFETIME of retirement for each and every person that has worked or will work for them, NO other company has to do this and UPS and Fed Ex sure as fuck don't do this, FACT we have had several activists use the "starve the beast" meme that the AC pointed out, the Tea Party is just the latest, Grover Norquist and his "No new taxes EVAR" pledge being one of the most prominent examples, and FACT we haven't seen a damned thing passed this past 20+ years that wasn't either written by or sponsored by a lobbyist or lobbying group so you know damned good and well such a major change to the USPS had to be wanted by SOMEBODY with money or else it wouldn't have gotten done in the first place!

But you keep buying the "invisible hand" bullshit which even the libertarians know doesn't even exist in the stock market much less anywhere else, but I bet my last soon to be inflated to worthless dollar that if you follow the money either Fed Ex or UPS paid for the retirement law or a "starve the beast" true believer like Norquist and his followers paid to have it passed.

Re:How is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it's not like it takes an Act of Congress to change the law...

Right, that's one of the many "advantages" of a state monopoly on letter delivery. Nonetheless, the idea that the USPS can't increase its prices, outside of increases due to inflation, is false. They can increase prices through their board of directors, the US Congress.

Even if private companies COULD manage to maintain a profit while serving podunk towns and the red sticks, why the hell would they? Why make a $1 in the city and lose $0.50 in the sticks to net $0.50 when they can just make $1 in the city?

Private delivery companies would turn a profit because charging just above the cost of delivery both in urban and rural areas would eventually cause the USPS to do the same, allowing them to compete with each other more evenly. Urban service would no longer subsidize rural service, which is really how it should be anyway. Someone who lives in an urban area shouldn't be required to pay for service for someone who chooses to live in a rural area.

It should be mentioned that even if private companies were allowed to compete with the USPS for standard letter delivery service, the USPS is still at an advantage to private companies in many areas, including the realm of taxes, license fees, eminent domain, and treasury loans to name a few.

Also, there's nothing prohibiting them from delivering a letter to me. I get stuff overnighted once in a while just fine.

Wrong. The law prohibits anyone but the USPS to provide standard letter delivery. Overnight and other expedited delivery is allowed, but standard letter delivery is not. If the private companies were allowed to deliver standard mail and compete with USPS, they would have a larger presence in more rural areas making rural delivery of all kinds more feasible from a business perspective.

There's really no reason for the state-mandated monopoly on letter delivery, as it only serves to make service less available or more expensive than necessary.

Re:How is this news?

[MightyYar]

My understanding is that the 75 years number is, in typical politician style, misleading. Congress is making the Post Office fully fund current retiree pensions as well as current employee pensions. Add those numbers together and you get the equivalent of funding pensions out 75 years - but that's not the way the law is phrased.

There's nothing wrong with funding the pensions (in fact it's the only moral choice), but I do fault the congress for not approving a rate increase or for not letting them stretch out the time a bit. We've been letting the government rack up these pension debts without proper accounting, and it has to stop.

Re:How is this news?

[MightyYar]

Almost... You start working at around 20, so you have until your 50th birthday. And it's not 95, but your life expectancy.

Re:How is this news?

[MightyYar]

Why is this down-rated? Detroit is exactly what happens when pensions go unfunded - which is what the Post Office pensions were when congress passed that law.

Re: How is this news?

[MightyYar]

The timeline was aggressive and they didn't allow for additional revenue. But let's say that and not pretend that the Post Office wasn't running a scam before. At the very least, those unfunded pensions should have been showing up on the balance sheet like the liabilities that they really were.

Re:How is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

you worthless tard. he was referring to how the usps was required to prefund pensions 75 years into the future.

Re:How is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's worse than that. The law gives the USPS 10 years to come up with 100% of the money needed to fund all of its pension requirements for the next 75 years.

It's designed to destroy the USPS so Republican lawmakers can bemoan how government has once again failed to deliver. Except that they're the ones who have failed us.

Oh, it's even worse than that. When a veteran from the military gets employment at the USPS, now instead of the military budget being responsible for his/her retirement, the USPS is now responsible for it. Even for the years they were in the military! (Does any money already put in for that person by the military to any funds transfer to the USPS? Of course not, silly.)

This of course makes the military budgets look better, and the USPS budgets look worse. And veterans are given hiring preference by the USPS of course.

Re:How is this news?

[Neuronwelder]

Thank you for this post!!

Re: How is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pension funds need only, by law, funded to meet the expected costs for current workers. By funding for the next 75 years, the post office is having to fund for people they haven't hired a few of which won't even have been BORN yet. (21 year old working 30 years)

Re:How is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well looking at me as a private citizen, if I plan on retiring in 75 years and put $Y in the bank today with an interest rate of dick% it will still be $Y by then. (And of course purchasing power will halve).

So... what's the problem?

Companies don't retire. USPS can cover the retirement pensions as they're needed by adding it to it's operating costs.

More specifically, the law says you need to earn 40 years worth of profits from your current job in 10 years of time or you go bankrupt and they take everything. Also, the law prohibits you from changing jobs or renegotiating your salary. Good luck with that!

Re:How is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it makes sense to pay up your pension fund in advance...not 75 years in advance though! By paying into your pension fund 75 years in advance, you are funding the pensions of employees who haven't even been born yet. I can see requiring that the next 25 years worth of pensions are funded in advance but 75 years is insanity and for most businesses would be completely untenable.

You are mistaken about "employees who haven't even been born yet". For example, see this report by the (non-partisan) GAO. On page 2 of the PDF, the GAO specifically states that the liability which must be pre-funded "covers the projected benefits for about 471,000 current postal retirees and a portion of the projected benefits for about 528,000 current employees; it does not cover employees not yet hired." (I assume that the USPS hasn't hired anyone who is not born yet!)

Also, I would like to point out that that these benefits are not actually pensions in general but strictly the health benefit component.

Personally, I think the amortization schedule may be too aggressive, but it's really quite clear that a fund must be established and funded PDQ to cover the pension liability. If Joe Schmoe, an employee of LexCorp, was promised a pension (unlikely in these days) but learned that LexCorp did not have any kind of pension fund, then he would be foolish to plan on actually receiving said pension in 20, 30, or 40 years from now. Who knows if LexCorp would even exist when Mr. Schmoe is retired, let alone have sufficient income to cover the expenses of retiree benefits on a pay-as-you-go basis?

What's more, the core business of the USPS is a shrinking industry. If they have a hard time funding the benefits now, they will almost certainly be even less able to fund them in the future.

Re:How is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

In principle it's not hard to fund your retirement by age 30, if by fund we really mean to have a plan in place to secure a steady lifetime income.

First and foremost, realize that if you die while working, then you are home free. The goal of lifetime income has been achieved, since your lifetime is over.

Second, during your working years, be sure to buy disability insurance (total, not just worker's comp) sufficient to cover lost income due to the chance of an non-fatal injury that destroys your ability to work.

Third, contribute 10% of your income to a retirement fund - hopefully one that's tax-advantaged.

Fourth, balance your portfolio such that far from retirement your funds are high growth with moderate risk, and closer to retirement they are moderate growth with low risk.

Fifth, at retirement, shift your funds to very low risk. Buying an annuity with a large portion of your funds may be your best plan.

Finally, have reasonable expectations. The goal of retirement is not to live high on the hog but to to build up resources so that you can maintain a lifestyle more or less like the one you had in working years. If you find that your income is inadequate for your needs during working years, then you should not expect that retirement will be any better. Nevertheless, if you want to retire and not work to your dying day, then you will have to find some way to fund it.

p.s. During any period that you have dependents, you should buy term life insurance. But that is a separate issue.

Re:How is this news?

[emt377]

The only perk is that you get Saturday delivery (for now).

A much greater factor is that the USPS has a key to your mailbox and possible front gate, and will leave mail for you regardless of whether you're home or not.

Re:How is this news?

[emt377]

Even if private companies COULD manage to maintain a profit while serving podunk towns and the red sticks, why the hell would they? Why make a $1 in the city and lose $0.50 in the sticks to net $0.50 when they can just make $1 in the city?

Of course they won't, unless the government subsidizes the delivery. Which is no different from what it does now, except 1) it's free to contract with anyone based on an open bidding process, 2) expenses are accounted for as they're accrued. In other words, it will become clear exactly how much it costs to deliver mail to Podunk. Government can then make a proper cost-benefit calculation and determine if it's worth delivery once a week, twice a week, once or day, or on weekends. There's no point having daily mail delivery to a crossroads with 7 residents. For a small place like that once per week might be perfectly adequate. Unless they wish to make up the difference out of pocket, obviously.

Re:How is this news?

[emt377]

NO other company has to do this and UPS and Fed Ex sure as fuck don't do this,

Actually, every privately owned company by law is required to fully fund their liabilities to be considered solvent. That's why they hate liabilities like unused vacation and go to great lengths to avoid them. This just hit the USPS hard in part because it was a sudden change and in part because Congress overestimated its liabilities. Here's a good rundown: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-02/understanding-the-post-office-s-benefits-mess.html

Re:How is this news?

[emt377]

Okay, here's the deal. You have until your 30th birthday to fully fund a retirement account that must last until you turn 95. If you can't, you must declare bankruptcy and lose everything. Sound fair?

That's not the problem USPS is facing. The problem they're facing is that when you turn 65 the people who are 30 are paying your pension that was supposedly part of your compensation for 40 years. In effect they owe YOU money. If they do poorly and don't have money you might find that their liability to you is worthless. In effect, the taxpayers end up paying for it. The right thing to do is that when the liability is accrued money is put aside (i.e. invested, or a lien placed on real estate, or some other asset used to balance the liability) so that when it comes time to collect what they owe you there's something there that's yours. This is the state Congress wants to get the USPS to. It's a recognition that it can't keep writing "IOU" on a piece of paper and tell you it's part of your compensation package.

Re:How is this news?

[MightyYar]

Before you call someone a tard, look into the issue. They, over a ten year span, are being forced to: (a) fully fund their current employees' pensions, and (b) fully fund their retirees' pensions. Some opposing politician or commentator derived a "75 years" equivalency from this, which is misleading and meant to make the law seem more ridiculous than it is.

The flaws with the law are the aggressive timetable and the lack of authorization for increased rates, not the full funding of pensions. That is a good idea, and meant to prevent a Detroit moment in the future. It is reprehensible that we allow the federal government to rack up debts in the form of promised future benefits without proper accounting, let alone funding.

Re: How is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Paying future expenses with future profits is OK for operating costs. But when doing it with investments (ie pensions) this is called a ponzi scheme.

Re:How is this news?

[hairyfeet]

Uhhh, your own link says, I bold for emphasis "These firms are not legally obligated to pre-fund health-care benefits, but about a quarter do so."

So 75% of your businesses DO NOT do this, and while I can't find any data on Fed Ex and UPS retirement funding I wouldn't be surprised if they don't, which leaves USPS in a bad way because just like I said they are having to carry a burden the majority do not. Now if you want to pass a law that says they ALL have to do this, or phase it in for USPS over time? Fine and dandy but the way they did it frankly smells like somebody wanted to kill USPS and I honestly would not be surprised to find out that lobbyists for UPS and Fed Ex were connected to whomever pushed for this.

Re:How is this news?

[pla]

Okay, here's the deal. You have until your 30th birthday to fully fund a retirement account that must last until you turn 95. If you can't, you must declare bankruptcy and lose everything. Sound fair?

Why the hell did this get modded insightful?

Although the USPS pension mandate doesn't compare well to an individual's finances (for the simple reason that we can at least hold people accountable for their own failures to plan for retirement), you can still make a much, much better analogy than the drivel you posted.

As a better analogy, take someone who made damned good money all their life, and pissed away every penny of it without a single long-term asset to show for it (my generation calls them "boomers"). Now, ten years from retirement, the work doesn't come in as often as it used to, it pays a lower margin than back in the glory-days, and they honestly don't have the energy to work like a mule as in their youth anyway. And now, they suddenly look ahead and realize the need to seriously start saving or their retirement will consist of living in a cardboard box and eating cat-food.

Unfunded pension liabilities don't count as some BS government-imposed surprise expense; they build us as a basic cost of having employees, and very much count as "already spent" before-the-fact. The only "surprise" in this situation comes from the government finally realizing that all these parasitic businesses going under and passing that particular bill on to Uncle Sam, needs to stop ASAP.

Unfunded pensions mean that thousands of Detroit police and firemen, after putting in their 40 in a goddamned warzone and thinking they had planned appropriately for retirement - Will now get to eat cat food for the last 20-30 years of their lives.

Re:How is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Private delivery companies would turn a profit because charging just above the cost of delivery both in urban and rural areas would eventually cause the USPS to do the same (the competition in urban areas would steal business from the USPS causing them to lose the ability to subsidize rural delivery), allowing them to compete with each other more evenly. Urban service would no longer subsidize rural service, which is really how it should be anyway. Someone who lives in an urban area shouldn't be required to pay for service for someone who chooses to live in a rural area.

Re:How is this news?

[s0nicfreak]

Not relevant if your mailbox has no lock and you don't have a front gate (or leave it unlocked). UPS and fedex leave things regardless of whether I'm home or not. For some people, though, that isn't a perk...

Re:How is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Point of order - the government does NOT subsidize USPS. No taxes go to support mail delivery.

Re:How is this news?

[demonlapin]

And your own quote says, my bold for emphasis, "These firms are not legally obligated to pre-fund health-care benefits, but about a quarter do so."

Health care and retirement are different.

Re:How is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not directly. Although, the USPS does enjoy certain privileges that lowers their cost as compared to private companies, such as a lack of taxes and license fees, eminent domain on property, and treasury loans to name a few.

Also, those paying for service in urban areas do indeed partially subsidize the cost of service in rural areas.

Re:How is this news?

[bmo]

Why the hell did this get modded insightful?

Because he's right. It's what the law has done to the USPS. The part he left out is the USPS can't arbitrarily raise rates to meet the goal of the law. Indeed, the USPS is not allowed to make a profit - i.e., it must be revenue neutral. So it can't sock away money to meet the law.

What's happened is disgusting.

It's all about "starve the beast" - cripple a federal agency by choking off its revenue, watching it fail, and then pointing at the failed agency as if it was badly run before it was fucked with to justify the meme and libertarian fantasy that "all government is bad so let's kill it."

--
BMO

Re: How is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a better idea. Let's cut the boat anchor called the US government from USPS and privatize it. we will see it become as profitable and efficient as UPS and Fedx.

The rest of the story

[KalvinB]

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/03/the-cost-difference-in-mailing-netflx-vs-gamefly-all-of-gameflys-profits/

The reason GameFly pays more is because their mailers weigh more. Netflix keeps the mailer at 1 ounce and pays 44 cents each. GameFly's mailer is 2 ounces and they pay the two ounce price. The big giant clue in the linked article is that the USPS is considering changing the price of the 2 ounce mailer to the price of a 1 ounce mailer.

So the real story is that GameFly wants a discount with zero actual justification.

The packaging for GameFly costs more. Work it into your business model or reduce the packaging weight.

I don't do business with GameFly but if I did, I'd cancel. They actually have the nerve to pretend Netflix is getting some kind of special treatment while they are the ones seeking it.

There is nothing unfair about what the USPS is doing. The rest of us have to pay by the ounce for our mail.

Re: The rest of the story

[kiddailey]

Not excusing this, but perhaps they've tried and haven't been able to redesign a mailer that doesn't somehow infringe on Netflix's mailer patent (and any others that likely exist):

http://www.google.com/patents/US6966484

Re: The rest of the story

[OzPeter]

Not excusing this, but perhaps they've tried and haven't been able to redesign a mailer that doesn't somehow infringe on Netflix's mailer patent (and any others that likely exist):

http://www.google.com/patents/US6966484

All they need to do is to license the technology from Netflix. Is that what patents are meant to be all about?

Even I'm not sure if I should be appending that comment with a "</sacasm>" tag or not.

Re:The rest of the story

[Kal Zekdor]

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/03/the-cost-difference-in-mailing-netflx-vs-gamefly-all-of-gameflys-profits/

The reason GameFly pays more is because their mailers weigh more. Netflix keeps the mailer at 1 ounce and pays 44 cents each. GameFly's mailer is 2 ounces and they pay the two ounce price. The big giant clue in the linked article is that the USPS is considering changing the price of the 2 ounce mailer to the price of a 1 ounce mailer.

So the real story is that GameFly wants a discount with zero actual justification.

The packaging for GameFly costs more. Work it into your business model or reduce the packaging weight.

I don't do business with GameFly but if I did, I'd cancel. They actually have the nerve to pretend Netflix is getting some kind of special treatment while they are the ones seeking it.

There is nothing unfair about what the USPS is doing. The rest of us have to pay by the ounce for our mail.

Just read the article you linked. While interesting, it does kinda support Gamefly's case. A 2-ounce mailer cost $1.05, whereas a 1-ounce mailer cost $0.44. In other words Gamefly pays ~238% of what Netflix pays, 38% above any differences in weight. Further, at these weights, the majority of the cost of delivery is a flat cost, rather than an increase in fuel consumption due to weight. The cost of fuel to transport 1 ounce of additional weight is certainly less than a penny; the vehicle, occupant, and other cargo make up the vast majority of the weight (and the occupant's time is no small factor on the cost). Just basing numbers on the weight of the packages alone, charging ~$0.10 extra for the additional ounce will more than make up for the added costs.

Re:The rest of the story

[GIL_Dude]

Well, when you are in business you try to stay in business. As more and more content becomes "deliver over network" and more and more is DLC with only one user able to access the required DLC (killing rental and resale), the physical disk business (for both GameFly and Netflix) is drying up. GameFly will go out of business, drastically downsize, or convert to another method of making money within a couple of years. They might as well try to grab as much capital as they can from their declining business so that they can fund new business development efforts and keep their people employed. If getting a lower postal rate helps them do that, then that is what they will try to do.

Re:The rest of the story

[LordKronos]

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/03/the-cost-difference-in-mailing-netflx-vs-gamefly-all-of-gameflys-profits/

The reason GameFly pays more is because their mailers weigh more. Netflix keeps the mailer at 1 ounce and pays 44 cents each. GameFly's mailer is 2 ounces and they pay the two ounce price. The big giant clue in the linked article is that the USPS is considering changing the price of the 2 ounce mailer to the price of a 1 ounce mailer.

So the real story is that GameFly wants a discount with zero actual justification.

The packaging for GameFly costs more. Work it into your business model or reduce the packaging weight.

I don't do business with GameFly but if I did, I'd cancel. They actually have the nerve to pretend Netflix is getting some kind of special treatment while they are the ones seeking it.

There is nothing unfair about what the USPS is doing. The rest of us have to pay by the ounce for our mail.

Just read the article you linked. While interesting, it does kinda support Gamefly's case. A 2-ounce mailer cost $1.05, whereas a 1-ounce mailer cost $0.44. In other words Gamefly pays ~238% of what Netflix pays, 38% above any differences in weight. Further, at these weights, the majority of the cost of delivery is a flat cost, rather than an increase in fuel consumption due to weight. The cost of fuel to transport 1 ounce of additional weight is certainly less than a penny; the vehicle, occupant, and other cargo make up the vast majority of the weight (and the occupant's time is no small factor on the cost). Just basing numbers on the weight of the packages alone, charging ~$0.10 extra for the additional ounce will more than make up for the added costs.

There are other factors you haven't considered. Perhaps larger, thicker, or heavier packages tend to jamb in the automatic processing machines more often, requiring more manual intervention and slowing everything down. And even if that doesn't apply to gamefly's specific case, it may apply to packages greater than 1 ounce in general. And if that's the case, it would justify the post office making a special exception for gamefly since they wouldn't actually be costing more.

Re: The rest of the story

[kiddailey]

Maybe. Will that end up costing more than 2 cents per mailer?

Re:The rest of the story

[Kal Zekdor]

There are other factors you haven't considered. Perhaps larger, thicker, or heavier packages tend to jamb in the automatic processing machines more often, requiring more manual intervention and slowing everything down. And even if that doesn't apply to gamefly's specific case, it may apply to packages greater than 1 ounce in general. And if that's the case, it would justify the post office making a special exception for gamefly since they wouldn't actually be costing more.

Haven't claimed to have considered all factors, just refuting one. :-P

For example, the Ars article indicates that because Netflix does ~97% of the DVD mailer volume, and because of that, and the fact that Netflix mailers are easily identifiable due to their red packaging, they are often sorted out from standard mail and handled differently, reducing costs. I'm not sure how I feel about this, as on the one hand, a business has the right to pass costs (or savings) on to the customer, but on the other, a governmental institution should not be favoring or discriminating.

Re:The rest of the story

[EmperorArthur]

Interesting things about "favoring and discriminating." The cost difference is all because of the way that Gamefly ships vs Netflix. That's discriminating based on package weight.

Everything else the arstechnica article is talking about refers to the likelihood of breakage and the time to deliver. Gamefly uses only a few shipping facilities while Netflix has many. If you don't have to ship cross county then things are going to be faster, and thus have less of a chance of breakage.

The other trick is that Netflix has highly identifiable mailers that are all the same. The post office employees immediately know that the contents of these mailers are fragile. I would expect the post office to group similar items together. Especially if they're breakable. Gamefly decided that it wasn't worth the trouble since most post office employees aren't familiar with them, and they had too many disks stolen.

An option is for the post office to create a special DVD mailer that all companies can use. Allow some customization, but make it immediately apparent to the handlers that what's being shipped is a DVD. By standardizing the packaging they can give everyone the same quality of service while potentially allowing for more mail to be automatically sorted by a machine.

Re:The rest of the story

[icebike]

If special handling is required, and special treatment is offered to NetFlix Red mailers, and all of that for a reduced fee (the same as a first class letter) it sounds to me like Gamefly had a significant case. (And the fact that the Post Office is knuckling under would seem to support that).

If the NetFlix mailer is so inconsequential and light weight and offers so little protection for the contents that it requires special handling, it is clearly rate-abuse. They should have never been given special handling and let the chips fall where they may. Or maybe those "chips" foul the automated sorted machines so badly that the Post Office was forced to hand sort them. (In which case they should have rejected them, but probably didn't feel they had the clout).

Re:The rest of the story

[bill_mcgonigle]

I was a Netflix subscriber when they switched over to the current, thin mailers. The story at the time was that the new mailers could be handled by the automated sorting machines at the USPS facilities and that the difference in cost between postage and breakage was strongly on the side of postage - Netflix was willing to absorb the additional breakage, which they expected but at a low level, based on statistical sampling and tests they'd conducted.

One discontinuity is that, I think, the game discs are several multiples more expensive than the DVD's, so GameFly can't absorb as much breakage. That's probably why they've still got the thick mailers and why their subscription prices are 50% higher than Netflix.

It sounds to me like they have a more expensive business model and are asking the USPS to subsidize it.

Re:The rest of the story

[cdrudge]

The other trick is that Netflix has highly identifiable mailers that are all the same. The post office employees immediately know that the contents of these mailers are fragile. I would expect the post office to group similar items together. Especially if they're breakable.

I think you're really overestimating the amount of handling actual employees do of standard mail including Netflix envelopes.

After the mail has been collected, it's dumped onto conveyor belts. Envelopes are ran through automated machinery that orientate the envelope correctly then then OCR/barcodes are used to route the envelope to the correct destination. No humans are looking at the envelopes unless they are oversized and can't use the machinery, or the machinery can't read the address. Neither of these are the case in order to get as low of postage rate as possible.

The only time that a employee would manually look at or sort an envelope is at the final delivery where the carrier is sorting them into individual slots. However for processing centers near netflix or any other very high volume customers, it wouldn't surprise me if their mail gets automatically sorted/pulled out as well.

Re: The rest of the story

[Anonymous Coward]

I think instead of trying to re-adjust prices mabey we should take a look at patents stifling competition

Re: The rest of the story

[Dog-Cow]

Patents are supposed to stifle competition. That's exactly why they exist. Idiot.

Re: The rest of the story

[Skapare]

So true. Changing that is a whole different topic/thread. But we do need to do that. Just for the sake of argument, I suggest dropping the patent system in its entirety. OK, now let the debate begin ... in a separate thread, though.

dumb

[RedHackTea]

Then Netflix will just start using UPS or Fedex. If it costs the same, why use USPS when the others offer better service?

Re:dumb

[Mitreya]

Then Netflix will just start using UPS or Fedex. If it costs the same, why use USPS

Hehehe, have you tried to send a letter with UPS?
At the current rate that prices are increasing on USPS postage (controlled by Congress), it would be centuries before a USPS letter is as expensive as UPS (I believe FedEx is similar).

Re:dumb

[PRMan]

Because then I couldn't send it back just by sticking it in my mailbox at the curb.

Re:dumb

[metiscus]

In the USA, it is illegal to deliver first class mail unless you are the USPS, unless it is delivered at a cost of 6x the current USPS delivery rate.

http://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-history/universal-service-postal-monopoly-history.pdf

We have laws preventing exercise of free enterprise in the delivery of standard mail. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Express_Statutes

Companies in the past have attempted to circumvent these restrictions and have been run out of business by the government through legal means. The competing company was quite successful financially. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Letter_Mail_Company

Re:dumb

[EmperorArthur]

The USPS has their own police force. If they think you've been sending non time sensitive things through anyone but USPS then they're legally allowed to fine a company hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In theory the Post Office gets regulated by congress because congress has granted it a monopoly on certain kinds of mail.

Re:dumb

[Seumas]

If you have the cheapest prices, by far, for a service and you still can't compel people to use it without the threat of "law", then you truly operate a shitty service.

Re:dumb

[metiscus]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Letter_Mail_Company the post office was not always the cheapest. Who is to say that it would be cheapest today if companies were allowed to compete against it freely? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Express_Statutes

Re:dumb

[Seumas]

Oh, I'm sure they wouldn't be. My point is that your service has to generally be shit for people to be willing to pay a lot more to avoid using you. If they were free to compete like any other business, they would both have to raise their prices and improve their service. It's a win-win.

I definitely understand the value of always retaining a very cheap service for delivering letters (though even at double the current price, it'd be ridiculously cheap and reasonable). For anything other than a standard postcard or letter, though, they should be allowed to compete.

Re:dumb

[metiscus]

Thank you for a very reasonable response. I didn't intend to come off as snarky in my reply. I'm not certain that they would both have to raise their prices, competition generally causes price levels to decrease. The situation I can envision where prices might increase is when due to the halving (let's say that there is only one competitor) of volume, marginal costs might be higher ending up in everyone paying more. I'm not sure if the outcome of the duopoly would result in a price equilibrium situation or if eventually the market would either fragment or revert to a monopoly. Economics is pretty bad at telling us what will happen, but it describes the past quite well :)

Re:dumb

[icebike]

Then Netflix will just start using UPS or Fedex. If it costs the same, why use USPS when the others offer better service?

Maybe the answer to your question is that IT DOES NOT COST THE SAME?

Netflix is getting a 44 cent rate, the same as a letter. Lets see you get that from UPS or FedeX.

Re:dumb

[Anonymous Coward]

The reasons for the Postal monopoly are not at first obvious. A Libertarian minded person would cry foul at the legalized monopoly, citing private enterprise being able to do it cheaper. Until one looks at what would happen if the USPS was not the only game in town.

From the USPS Monopoly History link you provided:

"Without such protection, Congress reckoned that private companies would siphon off high-profit delivery routes, leaving only money-losing routes to the Department, which then would be forced to rely on tax-payers to continue
operations"

If the US did allow first class mail to be delivered by private companies, the USPS would not be self sustaining, and would require tax revenue in order to keep operating in all jurisdictions in the US.

Re:dumb

[emt377]

Hehehe, have you tried to send a letter with UPS? At the current rate that prices are increasing on USPS postage (controlled by Congress), it would be centuries before a USPS letter is as expensive as UPS (I believe FedEx is similar).

This is because a business is not allowed to compete with the USPS. You can't compete with a better mail delivery service more than you can compete by printing better money. It by definition has to be something other than mail, which includes charging so much no one will confuse you for the USPS. The USPS is an anachronism in the first world and it's embarrassing that our government still runs our mail service.

Re:dumb

[s0nicfreak]

Crazy idea, but why not require people that want to use the USPS to pay for it? I'm sure there are many people that only get junk mail from them that would be happy to give it up...

Re:dumb

[s0nicfreak]

You get to just stick it in a mailbox at your curb?! If I don't want to take something to the post office, I have to schedule a pickup on the USPS site - it's the same amount of hassle as doing the same on the UPS site. There's none of those big blue boxes on the curbs anymore around here.

Re:dumb

[suutar]

I drop it in the outgoing mail at the office. The outgoing box at my apartment complex has been broken into before, so nobody trusts it.

Re:dumb

[suutar]

The problem is that to be free to compete like any other business, they have to be free to cut their losses, which will remove universal coverage. Private industry is kind of sucky at universal coverage, as seen with phone and cable companies. So they get the monopoly in exchange for being required to cover nonprofitable areas and still break even.

Re:dumb

[s0nicfreak]

Yeah, this is why the majority of the outgoing mailboxes were removed in the city where I grew up... the few left are in parking lots with cameras, which most people have to drive to anyway. I don't know why they were removed in my current neighborhood (where I'm not afraid to leave packages out on my porch for pickup), but I'm guessing that having people schedule pickups is more efficient than checking the outgoing boxes every day. However, if I just put something in my mailbox (or on the porch) without scheduling a pickup, the mailman will simply not take it. And you have to schedule it the previous day, so if I've got something that has to be in the mail today and I forgot to schedule a pickup yesterday, I have to make a trip to the post office.

So, schedule a pickup at USPS's site, or schedule a pickup at UPS's site... go to the post office, or go to the UPS store... it makes little difference to me. And I've found UPS and FedEx to be MUCH more reliable, I have never had a package lost or damaged by them, never had them lie about attempted delivery (I know other people have, but I haven't), etc. but I have had countless problems with the USPS...

US Post Office is messed up big time

[NormAtHome]

I have Netflix and I'm on one of the bigger plans of 5 at a time and this last week has been a postal service cluster F***. Last Saturday I put 5 DVD's in the mail slot at the post office and on Monday two were received by Netflix and the other three didn't get there until Tuesday. Then on Wednesday I put two back in the mail and one arrived Thursday and the other still didn't arrive on Friday and I had to call and have it declared missing. Now keep in mind that according to the mailers the PO box that it's going to is in the next town over, I can't understand how DVD's that go in the mail at the exact same time some take an extra day to arrive.

Re:US Post Office is messed up big time

[PRMan]

Because the postman liked that movie.

Re:US Post Office is messed up big time

[NormAtHome]

Don't think that I haven't thought of that, someone could have taken those three discs home Saturday and watched them Saturday night and all day Sunday and then put them back in spare mailers in the mail Monday and so they arrived on Tuesday. The question is how would you ever prove that in any kind of complaint, it's impossible.

Re:US Post Office is messed up big time

[Anonymous Coward]

The plural of anecdote is not data, but I also do a high volume of Netflix discs (I've returned 589 discs since Feb 2010 according to my Gmail inbox), and I also experienced trouble with Netflix this past week. I have my mailing down to a science, and I've had a few discs ever miss the 1-day turn-around, and I haven't had any problems in more than a year, except this past week.

On Wednesday afternoon I handed the disc to my regular postal carrier, and I watched him put it in his box of outbound letters. The disc should have arrived at Netflix on Thursday morning, but they claimed they received the disc on Friday. Result: I had nothing to watch last night, but I'll get two discs this afternoon.

Re:US Post Office is messed up big time

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem here is that your only source of information for whether or not Netflix received the discs is Netflix itself.

Wasn't there a class action suit against Netflix over throttling of discs for heavy users?

Maybe next time you mail five at once, pay for the postage yourself and get delivery confirmation. (That won't necessarily prove anything, since they'll be handled by USPS differently that way, but if they all arrive on the same day and Netflix says otherwise, you'll know.)

Re:US Post Office is messed up big time

[artor3]

I've actually got a sneaking suspicion that this is exactly why Netflix uses envelopes that don't let you see the name of the movie without opening them. There's a little window to make the barcode visible, and they could easily make the title visible as well if they wanted. It would even be useful for customers with a multiple DVD plan. But the risk of theft probably goes up if people are able to see what they're stealing.

Re:US Post Office is messed up big time

[g1powermac]

That's pretty difficult, actually, at least if you dropped the dvd's at the post office. The back room of a post office is pretty well secured to protect such things, with cameras everywhere. I've worked at a small/medium sized post office and have toured a processing plant, and there is quite a bit of interesting things going on to prevent stealing of mail. I especially liked the closed in catwalks with one way mirrors for the postal inspectors that go all the way around the processing plant. Even at my post office, there was a separate entrance with its own key going to a secured room for a postal inspector to enter only. The joke of the whole thing is though that outside of the post office/processing plants, there's pretty much no security. Most of the rural carriers drive their own vehicles, and there's no inspections to make sure you cleared out all the mail in your car. And for the postal trucks, there's no cameras or gps to track where you're going, but they at least check the truck to make sure everything is out. So, how difficult is it to take mail while on route? Sadly, incredibly easy. And many carriers have went to prison for it because of doing even more incredibly stupid things, like stealing tracked packages. Now, here is a possible reason why those dvds got there at different times. I was told that I needed to separate all netflix dvd's I picked up from the regular outgoing mail. The clerks then did something different with them compared to the regular outgoing mail, but I'm not sure what. I would happen to guess that they are sent through different channels. So, maybe some of your dvd's were separated, but not all. So some got there faster than others.

Re:US Post Office is messed up big time

[Belial6]

No, there was never a class action suit against Netflix for throttling. There was a class action suit against Netflix for the manner that they prioritized who got disks first. Everyone always got disks sent out right away as long as they had movies on their list. The media, and some users incorrectly used the word throttling when it had nothing to do throttling.

Gamefly on the other hand. They definitely throttle. If your a heavy users, they will just sit on disks and not send you anything for up to a week.

Re:US Post Office is messed up big time

[icebike]

I put 5 DVD's in the mail slot at the post office and on Monday two were received by Netflix and the other three didn't get there until Tuesday.

Oh, NOes! A whole (half) day for non-timesensitive shipment! Big Post Office problem!! Call your congressman!

You have no idea whether these arrived or not.
Far more likely the netflix low-lifes on the shipping dock were on a smoke break and didn't get that box of returned scanned on that shift.

Re:US Post Office is messed up big time

[icebike]

Don't think that I haven't thought of that, someone could have taken those three discs home Saturday and watched them Saturday night and all day Sunday and then put them back in spare mailers in the mail Monday and so they arrived on Tuesday.

Someone who actually has a job wouldn't spend that much time watching YOUR movies. If you cam out out your mom's basement once in a while you could have a job too.

(I know, right? What was I thinking...).

Re:US Post Office is messed up big time

[icebike]

In bulk, you can buy a DVD for less than the price of postage. (Sub 15 cents in industrial quantities),

In the quantities that netflix uses it would make more sense to burn disks on demand, and have a peel off top bar code that would destroy the disk when peeled off. You could put those in one envelope, and trash the DVDs.

It hardly makes sense for them to handle DVDs upon return, clean, Sort, and repackage them for shipment. Way too labor intensive.

Re:US Post Office is messed up big time

[b4dc0d3r]

Everyone always got disks sent out right away as long as they had movies on their list.

Nope. I had Netflix around that time. I sent movies back immediately, and could see when they were received. The turnaround time mailing to me started taking longer than the return trip - noticeably so that I paid attention to the shipped/received status and timing.

I dropped Netflix because it was obviously throttling. A queue of 100-120 movies all the time, of all types - blockbuster, indie, documentary, popular, unpopular - there is no way that they didn't have at least one to send me. But the timing data did it for me. Suspicious, but I didn't keep the data anywhere other than my head.

Re:US Post Office is messed up big time

[NormAtHome]

I don't usually respond to trolls, but for your information I live in my own house and have a full time job. I share the account with my live in girlfriend and my tenant and we split the cost of the subscription and we each get a few DVD's per week.

Better make sure of your facts before you mouth off.

Re:US Post Office is messed up big time

[icebike]

Lol. Post your pictures and photos of your mom and dad and girl friend, and maybe I'll believe you.

Re:US Post Office is messed up big time

[s0nicfreak]

Someone that has a job that isn't pretty much slavery has the time to watch 2 - 3 movies after work...

Re:US Post Office is messed up big time

[s0nicfreak]

Logically, that makes the most sense, but unfortunately the copyright laws don't work on logic. The licensing fees for the legal ability to burn the movies is, most likely, prohibitively expensive.

Re:US Post Office is messed up big time

[icebike]

Not really.
You can do that as often as you want, as long as you don't create any more copies than you are licensed to have at any one time.

Besides, Netflix has a totally different license than you or I. They pay a few pennies per rental, not by the number of copies they hold.

Re:US Post Office is messed up big time

[s0nicfreak]

You can do that as often as you want, as long as you don't create any more copies than you are licensed to have at any one time.

Nope, that's not how copyright law works. Netflix would not be able to switch their current licensing system over to this new idea; a whole new licence would have to be created. And movie companies would have to agree to it, despite the fact that there is no way to ensure a copy is destroyed before a new copy is made. Due to that hangup, I'm sure this new licence would be very costly.

Why would I click on a PDF story link?

[93 Escort Wagon]

PDFs can contain all sorts of crapware, and Slashdot isn't exactly known for vetting its submissions.

Re:Why would I click on a PDF story link?

[SeaFox]

It's from a government site. NSA paranoia aside, a Postal Regulatory Commission complaint is not going to contain some ridiculous scripts or other executable bits.

You always have the option of opening it with the built-in PDF reader on Firefox, which would only be able to open the plain document portion of it if there is anything else embedded.

Re:Why would I click on a PDF story link?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh the fallacies...

Re:Why would I click on a PDF story link?

[Anonymous Coward]

PDF stories don't really bother me because, given the state of the modern web, HTML pages could have all those problems and more.

Re:Why would I click on a PDF story link?

[bidule]

PDFs can contain all sorts of crapware, and Slashdot isn't exactly known for vetting its submissions.

PDF from People's Republic of China? no way!

Oh, Postal Regulatory Commission...

Re: Mail DVDs?

[alen]

For those of us not living in Molly's basement and paying for electricity, Netflix is cheaper than the power to keep your computer running 24x7 as well as the higher bandwidth costs

Re: Mail DVDs?

[Anonymous Coward]

What basement living? With the smug attitude the GP presents, they're probably just leeching off someone else's wifi and running a barely-hidden extension cord to their house. There's probably also a well-rehearsed speech they downloaded that "proves" why these services should be provided to them for free ("free", in this case, meaning "free of any evil taxes, you freeloading socialist").

Re:Mail DVDs?

[Anonymous Coward]

These are Americans... I cannot remember the last time I used a DVD, I do not even have a DVD player. In America the people are owned by companies for whom they work like slaves. They pay all their money to companies that own their rights. One post higher up was talking about a patent on an envelope :-D Monty Python could not write stuff like this. It is way out further than George Orwell.

You have got to be kidding

[Anonymous Coward]

"We can't (won't) qualify for the special rate that the post office created for use by other DVD mailers, so we want to force them to give it to us anyway or stop giving it to those that do qualify" What a bunch of crybaby asshats. I remember that Netflix had to re-design their mailers to be able to go through the postal automated system, if gamefly won't then too bad for them.

Rule of Aquisition #299

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't put your customer out of business.

Herp Derp....

[Lumpy]

It's called media mail. I've been using it for well over 20 years now.

Re:Herp Derp....

[Anonymous Coward]

And how fast is media mail delivery? Usually considerably slower than first class. Herp derp, indeed. Moron.

Re:Herp Derp....

[Anonymous Coward]

Media mail isn't going to arrive in 1-3 days.

Re:Herp Derp....

[Lumpy]

Yes it does. Like I said, been using it for decades. When you ship to adjacent states or cities like Netflix already does (they have shipping centers all over the place) it arrives in 1-2 days.

Re:Herp Derp....

[suutar]

Media mail would cost more than either of them are paying now (the minimum is $2.36 for one pound), and GameFly can't use it anyway because Media Mail rules prohibit video games.

Re:Mail DVDs?

[TheRaven64]

So what service do you use instead for watching films that works on all operating systems?

Surprised netflix hasn't

[sixsixtysix]

Surprised netflix hasn't just started renting games. They'd kill off gamefly in a heartbeat.

Re:Surprised netflix hasn't

[Belial6]

I would use them. I used GameFly for a lot of years, but every month I would look at the $40 price, consider how badly they throttle their mailings, and the price of just buying games outright. They only barely a better choice than just buying games. When they started their shutdown of supporting Wii games, they dipped below the value point that they made sense to me.

Why not just cut the CDs and DVDs locally?

[mi]

If the USPS were really smart, they could've offered the overnight delivery for an even lower price by taking the media from the sender, ripping it, transmitting the data to the recipient's local office, and making a new disk over there to deliver...

Re:Why not just cut the CDs and DVDs locally?

[Joe_Dragon]

and bust all the mail workers for illegal movie distribution?

Maybe can be a good way to get out paying for retirement plan.

Re:Why not just cut the CDs and DVDs locally?

[Osgeld]

how does making multiple copies of a physical item any cheaper than just moving them when you have no equipment to do such things

Re:Why not just cut the CDs and DVDs locally?

[mi]

Yes, I suppose, you'll need to buy the equipment. The burner — even a good one — is still cheaper, than monthly maintenance and fuel of one USPS truck...

Re:Why not just cut the CDs and DVDs locally?

[mi]

If they were really into that, they could as well open the numerous Netflix envelopes passing through them, rip copies, and put them back. Heck, for all we know, they may already be doing it — stealing Social Security checks and gift-cards has already been done by some enterprising USPS workers.

Re:Why not just cut the CDs and DVDs locally?

[Anonymous Coward]

This kind of electronic-to-physical service has already been considered and rejected because of protest from brick-and-mortar stores.

Startups doing it (electronic-to-physical document delivery) have tried it.

Re:Why not just cut the CDs and DVDs locally?

[PPH]

Evidently, you have more industrious postal workers than I do in my town. Here, all they do is borrow my copy of The Economist and read it in the can for a few days before putting it in my PO box.

Re:Why not just cut the CDs and DVDs locally?

[g1powermac]

Sadly, this does happen, but really for social security and other gov't benefits checks, it takes a whole corrupt post office to pull it off. When I worked for the post office as a rural carrier, social security checks came in via a different system, outside of your DPS mail. It wouldn't take much at all to tell if a single person in the chain was stealing them. But, if the supervisor was in on it, then all bets are off. It would have to go through the postal inspectors only to try to catch it.

Re:Why not just cut the CDs and DVDs locally?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I suppose, you'll need to buy the equipment. The burner — even a good one — is still cheaper, than monthly maintenance and fuel of one USPS truck...

Except that that one USPS truck is used to deliver many times more mail than gamefly or even Netflix discs. If those were the only things USPS delivered, then yeah, maybe, but both of those is just a very small fraction. Even if it does technically make good economic sense, it's like trying to reduce your electric bill by disconnecting the led lights on the front of your computer.

Re:Why not just cut the CDs and DVDs locally?

[Osgeld]

yea you are not going to do this at any scale with a dvd burner bought at walmrt and a spare pc

even a good one = press

otherwise its a garbage copy that will peel off in transit during summer = waste of time

wake up to the world of reliable production

Re: Mail DVDs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I own a house, have a job and 3 kids. I pay my own electric, cable, and many other bills. I do have a basement, but I don't live in it. My servers do however.

I suppose that if you download stuff on a metered cell plan then the bandwidth used to download a DVD worth of data could affect your bill. I'm on cable so it would not affect mine. And with 3 kids, the cost of leaving a computer running doesn't make a large enough difference in my electric bill for me to worry about. Mailing DVDs isn't something I'd bother with, but everyone's situation is different I guess.

mailing discs is old?

[Anonymous Coward]

To those who claim that mailing discs is old or that optical media is dead:
Where do you get your high quality (spec-wise, not content-wise) audio and video?
Has streaming just become "good enough"? Where are high bit-rates, the uncompressed audio, the extras, the commentary tracks, the subtitles?

Re: mailing discs is old?

[Anonymous Coward]

For most streaming is good enough. The main complaint people have isn't the quality of the stream, it's the lack of content.

Re: mailing discs is old?

[PPH]

it's the lack of content.

The studios have fixed this problem. The 'for rent' DVDs are now stripped of all the extras. So now they are just as bad as streaming content.

Well, maybe not just as bad. There is still content on DVDs not available via streaming.

Re:Mail DVDs?

[Anonymous Coward]

pirate bay

Re:Renting DVDs by mail.

[Cardcaptor_RLH85]

Everything isn't available in the Netflix 'Instant Queue' to be streamed. Therefore, some things require optical disc's by mail.

Actually they do, by law

[raymorris]

Actually private companies DO invest money so the pensions they promised will be paid. Typically, the employer sendd their part to an IRS or 401k account in the employee's name. That way, the money is there 40 years later while the employee is retired.

Occasionally, an employer will get caught screwing around with that and not properly investing that money on behalf of the employees they promised it to. That's called fraud. It's just that federal agencies were allowed to commit this type of fraud. With the internet, USPS may not have the revenue to in 40 years to cover the retirement pay for today's employees. That's why they now have to invest retirement pay for today's employees today, just like private companies do.

Re:Actually they do, by law

[TubeSteak]

With the internet, USPS may not have the revenue to in 40 years to cover the retirement pay for today's employees. That's why they now have to invest retirement pay for today's employees today, just like private companies do.

Except USPS has to prefund for 75 years.
They're literally socking away money for employees that haven't been born yet.

Re:Actually they do, by law

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly, most of these 401(k) accounts are underfunded, so the employee will end up with nothing like a traditional pension when they reach retirement age. They are a sham where the employee is never educated enough about investment vehicles to properly access their balances and contributions. Worse, beneath the level of outright fraud there is a corrupt practice of offering retirement accounts through providers with absurdly high fees that prevent the employees' accounts from ever experiencing the investment growth that they deserve. This has the same effect as an employer raiding the pension fund, but it happens slowly and continuously rather than with one news-breaking event.

Re:Mail DVDs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Netflix works on Windows, OSX, Android, iOS, and WinPhone. I'm sure you can find some obscure devices it won't work on, but those five cover all but a rounding error.

Re:Renting DVDs by mail.

[Seumas]

Lots of stuff is only available by DVD, but the hassle of saying "I want to watch this in five days", ordering it, waiting for it, hoping it isn't stolen, getting it out of the mail, putting it into a player, watching it and going back through the whole return process just seems like a total hassle. Yeah, first world problems and all, but . . . if I want to watch something, it's something I want to do right away. Not plan for "later in the week or next week".

So . . . I'm just holding out for when someone finally gets their shit together and can offer a "EVERYTHING EVER... on streaming demand" service.

Mail?

[binarybum]

What is a DVD?

false rumor. Only estimate cost of today's promise

[raymorris]

That's a rumor put out by the union, and false.
They have to ESTIMATE, not pay, what today's employees might collect 75 years from now.

When they hire a 20 year old worker, they are promising to continue paying that worker when he's 80 - which is 60 years from now. They have to make a written estimate of how much today's promises will cost them in the future.

This is standard stuff, what's called Generally Accepted Accounting Practices (GAAP). Every company that issues stock follows the same rules.

the problem is they got forty years behind

[raymorris]

There IS a problem for them. The problem is they were allowed to get forty years behind. Now they have to get caught up. Private companies generally don't get behind to begin with.

What they were doing is using today's revenue to pay retirement for employees who worked forty years ago. Now they have to switch to investing today's revenue for today's workers. Paying as you go, as they are now required to do, isn't a problem. That's how everyone other than government does it. The problem is the switch - catching up from being forty years behind.

It's a lot like they'd been living on credit cards for forty years. Now they are only allowed to spend what they make - and they have ten years in which to pay off the debt they had racked up.

Moving into cable's service area

[tepples]

I suppose that if you download stuff on a metered cell plan then the bandwidth used to download a DVD worth of data could affect your bill. I'm on cable so it would not affect mine.

In that case, the real estate cost of moving into cable's service area might affect your bill.

What tea are you smoking?

[Anonymous Coward]

Private companies generally don't get behind to begin

HaHaHa!!! Put that tea down buddy, so many private companies have fallen so far behind on their pension funding that the rate of pension plans being rescued by government insurance has skyrocketed and the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation has had to dramatically boost insurance premiums. And that's *after* the government revised the funding laws to allow the private companies to assume returns that are only achievable by putting your pension money in investments of the same risky quality as the CDOs which did so well in 2008.

Slashdot has SWF ads

[tepples]

SWFs from ad networks can contain crapware as well, and Slashdot itself embeds SWF ads unless you subscribe or karma whore to get the "Disable Ads" checkbox.

Song of the South

[tepples]

A streaming service with every film ever produced is not likely in either of our lifetimes. For one thing, it'd have to include Song of the South, and Disney has made it clear by its actions over the past two decades that it doesn't plan to release that film as part of its standard "vault" rotation.

DVD for areas without cable or DSL

[tepples]

Digital Versatile Disc is a cost-efficient medium for moving 4 to 8 GB packets of data in and out of geographic areas not served by a wired broadband provider. Cellular ISPs in the United States charge on the order of $10 per GB for microwave data transmission; satellite ISPs aren't much cheaper.

Re:DVD for areas without cable or DSL

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget that once content is acquired on DVD/BluRay, it is available forever (or the life of the physical media, which has proven to be quite long thus far). On a streaming service, the streaming provider can remove any content at any time.

I decided to rewatch Babylon 5 via one of the streaming providers, since they had all seasons available. I got halfway through season one, when apparently the license expired and suddenly no episodes were available. Lesson learned.

Re:DVD for areas without cable or DSL

[KVM]

What I think DVD is good for is if you want to transfer a pretty huge amount of data (although at that rate you could just mail an external HDD) Imagine downloading a WPA-WPA2 rainbow table list for 33 GB when you could just buy it off from DVD And even a small GB file is good from DVD if you got a slow internet

Re:DVD for areas without cable or DSL

[Anonymous Coward]

If I lived in a place like that, I would just move.

This is incredible news

[Smallpond]

I had no idea Blockbuster was still in business.

Rationale?

[manu0601]

What is the rationale for subsiding DVD rental?

I understand the special rate means the price difference comes from tax payers' pockets. That could be fine if it was something for the sake of general interest, but here?

Re:Rationale?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no subsidy ... the mailers fall under the 1 oz mark, so it's the same as anyone else bulk mailing letters.

Re:The rest of the story - too bad you didn't read

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course you completely ignore the FACT (as established by a court of law) that the postal service is, rather than putting the Netflix envelopes through the sorting machines that GameFly's disks have to travel, hand sorting the Netflix envelopes at no extra charge so that they are not subject to the same levels of breakage as GameFly - and when Gamefly asked to be treated EXACTLY THE SAME AS NETFLIX, the post office refused.

So go take your bullshit elsewhere until you learn how to actually read more than one biased story.

It's not favoriting to make a process efficient

[SuperKendall]

Netflix does ~97% of the DVD mailer volume, and because of that, and the fact that Netflix mailers are easily identifiable due to their red packaging, they are often sorted out from standard mail and handled differently...on the other, a governmental institution should not be favoring or discriminating.

I would hope like hell that ANY business, government or not, would evolve a special process to handle any one item that represented such a large percentage of traffic. Although it might appear to be favoritism, in reality it's just being efficient by treating a known quantity in a way that reduces the load across the rest of the system.

lower than expected returns failing to invest

[raymorris]

With the economy sucking ass for the last five years, pension plans haven't received the investment returns they planned on, so some are a little behind what they expected. They invested the money as required, they just couldn't have predicted the worst economy since the great depression. That's a completely different thing than failing to invest at all and falling 40 years behind, as USPS did.

Since 1974, companies have been legally required to make those investments. The law is called ERISA. USPS now has to do the same.

If you Google "pension failure", you'll see about 20 stories about failed government pension plans for every 1 failed company plan. Why? Because companies are required to invest ahead of time and governments aren't. Governments are allowed to engage in the same boondoggle as USPS, so they fail. Just last week, Detroit's city workers found out they aren't getting the pensions they were promised. Should we do the same thing to postal workers?

btw half the sponsors were democrats

[raymorris]

On another note , the bill requiring that USPS catch up on their payments had four sponsors, two Democrats, two Republicans. None of Democrat senators objected to the bill. So the idea that this was a republican thing is just silly. It's a common sense thing.

Re: Mail DVDs?

[s0nicfreak]

You don't need a computer running 24/7 to use Netflix streaming; just turn it on when you want to use it. Though, for those of us with families, there is probably at least one thing on using electricity at any given time (except for those families where everyone leaves the house for a good portion of the day).

Re:Renting DVDs by mail.

[Anonymous Coward]

None of those things are required viewing. The Instant Queue is enough really. I can't watch everything. Between Netflix, Hulu, and piracy, I can get more than enough stuff.

Re:Renting DVDs by mail.

[Anonymous Coward]

Such a service would cost too most.

First 10 Hours free!

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally, AOL can make its triumphant return.

Re:Renting DVDs by mail.

[suutar]

I find that if I care enough to not be willing to wait a week, I can find it at Redbox. If I don't want to pay the $1.20 or so, then I don't care enough to worry about waiting. I've never had a disc stolen, out of a couple hundred by now, and only two broken. I would love to have a "stream anything you want" option, but until then, this is what the 21st century has. Maybe the 22nd will do better.