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Postal Service Starting To Use Mobile Point of Sale Tech
An anonymous reader writes "The U.S. Postal Service is conducting a pilot test of mobile point of sale technology in 50 facilities, using a modified iPod device and printers. During the holiday season, the 50 facilities testing mPOS processed more than 102,000 transactions using the technology."
Many USPS locations already have a kiosk with a scale and a vending machine type arrangement to do that, without the need for a postal employee. Or you can get a USPS account (which is free) and print your own bar-coded package labels with postage. Just like FedEx. There's even a discount for that, and you get free tracking.
When you use either of those methods, no postal employee has to do any data entry.
Because you can't Instagram your rampage with a mere cash register.
Yes, since it's the government, it just has to be inefficient! We need to have FedEx and UPS show USPS how to send letters from Florida to Alaska for 46 cents.
I too am sick of and disappointed in the inaccurate and unsourced assumptions that presume government processes are less efficient that for-profit processes. My unsourced opinion is they're both about equally inefficient, but the for-profit solutions cost more.
Specifically, what the parent is referring to is the retiree prefunding required of the USPS. They have to fund health benefits for retired employees for 75 years in advance, far beyond what any other company or government agency has, or chooses, to do. Consider that the USPS is currently funding health benefits for employees who haven't even been born yet, and you can see how absurd this concept is - yet Congress still decided this was a smart idea. The USPS appears to be floundering to the outside world, but that's because of that particular $5.5 billion payment they have to make yearly, not due to some competitive pressure, or environmental change like "lower delivery volume". AFAIK, at the beginning of 2013, they had about $44 billion banked for these retirement benefits.
There is evidence that government run out heavily regulated operations can be more efficient. It depends on your definition of efficient though.
For example national energy production was a lot cheaper before it was privatised. It is now not efficient at making profit but worse if you need electricity, which everyone does. We end up paying for new infrastructure through our bills that is then privately owned and used to extract even more money from us. It's horribly inefficient.
Companies like British Telecom used to build new infrastructure when it was needed. Now they are nationalised they do so only when they can make money, so our broadband is slow and crap. Here in Japan my phone has 150mb up and down, while the absolute best the UK has to offer to your home is 120/10 (with shitty traffic management to make it pointless).
Government run operations are far more efficient for consumers and the country/economy as a whole when any kind of essential service or infrastructure is involved.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
On the other hand, I went to a major retail chain (formerly renowned for their catalog) and the guy told me he "had to" use his Apple-powered checkout gadget, because of some kind of quota.
It took at least 5 times longer than if he had use a good-ol' cash register like the one right next to him, on which he still had to type a couple things, and which printed my receipt. Actually, it was the machine 8 feet away which was linked to his toy, making the whole thing patently ridiculous as he went back and forth. He had to scroll on the tiny apple screen to input data which has dedicated keys on the productivity-optimized dedicated hardware.
I'm glad there wasn't a line, because this was a perfect example of not-an-upgrade. As an "extra cashier" tool during black Friday, maybe it's useful, but the place was empty and the registers were running.
You know what? That sounds like a very successful test of using iThings for point of sale. Not that the iThing was successful, but I bet your experience helped the retailer understand that those devices sucked for the task. At least temporarily.
POS providers are under constant pressure to "put mobile POS systems in my store" or "the Apple store uses iPods, why can't we?" Apparently every marketer associates being cool with the use of iPhones. They parade a profound lack of knowledge of human interface design, usability, workflow, and productivity as some kind of badge of honor, like "we're breaking through traditions and making our cashiers cool." Then when someone finally runs a real-world test and proves that cashiers will slow down by a factor of five; they have no place for shopping bags, hangers, flat surfaces for folding sweaters, or receipt printers; the sleds triple the bulk and weight of the devices; and the customers are pissed off at the long waits and longer lines, the marketer puts his tail between his legs and slinks back into his cubicle, having failed at the task of bringing "cool iThings" into the stores. The marketing executives blame the failure on the project management, on the project team, or on anything that went wrong, but never seem to learn the failure stems from the limitations of the human interfaces required to actually sell stuff.
Twelve months later, the next fresh face in charge of marketing repeats the cycle. It never ends.
Now get off my lawn.
John