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The U.S. Postal Service wants small businesses to send more direct mail, a.k.a. junk mail, to help the beleaguered agency expand its revenue stream by hundreds of millions of dollars. In a campaign called "Every Door Direct Mail," the Postal Service is touting a year-old online tool to help small businesses micro-target direct mail. The Web tool allows firms to tap customers by neighborhood or zip code without names or addresses. The Postal Service reported a $5.1 billion loss for the year ended Sept. 30. The loss was caused by an ongoing decline in its core revenue driver, regular letters...

Let's say you own a store with a good clientele, but sales have been slipping in recent years. A new store with new products has faster service at lower prices and is open 24/7. You're losing money. What do you do?

Two of the past four months I have not received my Visa bill in the mail. A week and a half ago I called Visa and they said they would send out a copy of my statement to me. It still isn't here. So today I called my local Post Office and told this story to the guy that answered the phone. "Not us," he said. When I asked him how he knew this, he asked me if I was receiving other things that were mailed to me. When I told him that I had no way of knowing who...

IT'S GROUNDHOG DAY at the US Postal Service: time once again for the familiar laments about how the agency's financial losses are surging, how demand for its services is plummeting, and how officials have no choice but to close local facilities, raise the price of stamps, and reduce delivery standards. Last week the Postal Service announced plans to cut $3 billion in costs by slowing down first-class mail service and eliminating about half of the country's 461 mail-processing centers. That would mean an end to next-day delivery of first-class mail. Although that might not seem like much of a threat...

The U.S. Postal Service on Monday will announce a cost-savings proposal that would no longer deliver first-class mail on the next day. The financially troubled agency will present to its overseers a proposal to change its national standard for first-class mail to two-to-five days from one-to-three, according to interviews with several mail industry officials who received a presentation by the agency this week. "This isn't a change we're happy about," said Art Sackler, executive director of the National Postal Policy Council, a trade group for large mailers. "But if they don't cut somewhere and substantially, they're going to run out...

NEWTOWN, Conn --(Ammoland.com)- A federal judge in Denver has allowed a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Postal Service’s ban on guns in post offices to go forward, the Denver Post reports. A Colorado couple filed the lawsuit last year, saying the ban violates their Second Amendment rights. Avon residents Debbie and Tab Bonidy filed the lawsuit last year, saying the ban violates their Second Amendment rights. The Bonidys say they carry handguns for self-defense and both hold concealed-carry permits, and they do not receive mail service at their remote home. They say the ban, which prohibits carrying guns both in post...

UPDATE 11/4/11 @ 1:45 p.m. RANSON, W.Va. (AP) - Authorities say they have found no sign of a reported explosion inside a small-town post office in West Virginia and no sign that white powder sprayed out. The scare prompted officials to quarantine 15 postal workers Friday, though none showed signs of illness. Click here to find out more! Ronald Fletcher, a firefighter with Citizens Fire Company, is the designated spokesman for the case at the U.S. Post Office in Ranson. Fletcher says workers reported a package had exploded in a storage locker about 7:45 a.m. But the package in question...

Stressing that the United States Postal Service will run out of money to deliver mail by next summer, a bipartisan group of senators unveiled a proposal to help rescue the postal service. “We are not crying wolf here,” Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said today. “The postal service literally will not survive unless comprehensive, legislative and administrative reforms are undertaken.” Along with Collins, Sens. Tom Carper, D-Del., Scott Brown, R-Mass., and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., revealed their plan, actually a melding of two plans, today at a news conference. It calls for a fundamental restructuring of the postal service, including cost-saving changes...

WASHINGTON (AP) — It'll cost a penny more to mail a letter next year. The cash-strapped U.S. Postal Service announced Tuesday that it will increase postage rates on Jan. 22, including a 1-cent increase in the cost of first-class mail, to 45 cents.

Many consumers are irked by the catalogs, credit-card pitches and other "junk mail" they receive. But the U.S. Postal Service loves it—and wants to deliver more. The agency, beset by historic losses and a plummet in first-class mail, is running promotions, easing rules and planning television and radio ads to encourage more businesses to send pitches by standard mail, the official term for bulk mailings used by marketers to prospect for customers. "What we want to do is to make standard mail more interesting for customers so we can grow the total volume," Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said in an...

"A refrigerator has never been hacked. An on-line virus has never attacked a cork board." -- from United States Postal Service TV commercial urging people to use mail. Right. And a buggy whip has never had a broken transmission--so why don't we junk our cars? Really, that was the kind of pathetic logic on display in the USPS TV commercial that aired during today's Fox News Sunday. View the video here.

There are few formal street names or house numbers in Kabul - so just how does a postman deliver the mail? For the postmen of Kabul, navigating the maze of the city is a daunting task. It is a city of more than four million people and one in which hundreds of homes and streets are being developed every year. There are few street names and house numbers, and the Central Post Office has yet to introduce a full postal code system. There is often little information to work with So how does a letter find its way to the...

WASHINGTON — Who would you put on a stamp? Charlie Sheen? Lady Gaga? Yourself? Hoping to boost sagging revenue, the U.S. Postal Service on Monday abandoned its longstanding rule that stamps cannot feature people who are still alive and is asking the public for suggestions.

SIOUX CITY, Iowa - Some workers at a Sioux City mail processing center could be paid even if they don't work after the facility closes. The U.S. Postal Service is closing the center on Friday and transferring the work to Sioux Falls, S.D. Spokesman Richard Watkins said that about 100 workers have taken other mail jobs and 40 others are on standby status. Those standby workers will have to take other postal service jobs before their contract expires in 2015. In the meantime, Watkins said, they could be asked to report to the Sioux City post office and sit in...

Obama's Postal Service plan would cut Saturday mail By Emily Stephenson 15 mins ago WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration's plan to rescue the U.S. Postal Service would allow the agency to end Saturday mail delivery and sell non-postal products, according to documents released on Monday. The plan, introduced alongside a deficit-reduction package, also would restructure a massive annual payment to prefund retiree health benefits and refund $6.9 billion the mail carrier says it overpaid into a federal retirement fund. The White House says its plan would save the Postal Service more than $20 billion in the next few years....

The US Postal Service unveiled Thursday a drastic downsizing scheme for the embattled public company, including cutting 35,000 jobs, as it seeks to avoid collapse amid a "new reality" in the economy. "Faced with a massive nationwide infrastructure that is no longer financially sustainable," the USPS said it was proposing sweeping changes aimed at saving the organization up to $3 billion a year. Among the proposals being studied were cutting more than half of its processing facilities, limiting service, and eliminating as many as 35,000 jobs, the company said in a statement.

The Obama administration said on Tuesday that it would seek to save the deficit-plagued Postal Service from an embarrassing default by proposing to give it an extra three months to make a $5.5 billion payment due on Sept. 30 to finance retirees’ future health coverage. Speaking at a Senate hearing, John Berry, director of the federal Office of Personnel Management, also said the administration would soon put forward a plan to stabilize the postal service, which faces a deficit of nearly $10 billion this fiscal year and had warned that it could run out of money entirely this winter. “We...

The US Postal Service could fully meet its financial obligations, extinguish debt and have substantial cash flow if Congress rectifies the organization's possible overfunding of its pension and retiree healthcare funds, the USPS' Office of Inspector General (OIG) said in a summary report. The OIG has issued four reports in the past year on the Postal Service's possible overfunding of its pension funds and retiree healthcare fund. One report found that the USPS has overpaid the Civil Service Retirement System by about $75 billion since 1972 because of an outdated calculation method. Another report found that if the Postal Service...

WGN Postal service may shut down for winter WGN News 3:03 PM CDT, September 5, 2011 Without emergency funding the postal service may have to shut down for the winter. The U.S Postal Service faces a $9 billion dollar deficit. The New York Times reports the agency doesn't have enough money to pay its bills and a $5.5 billion dollar payment is due this month. Possible cost cutting measures include eliminating Saturday delivery, closing up to 3700 post offices and laying off 120,000 workers. A congressional hearing on the matter is set for Tuesday.

The postal service says it's running out of cash and may not be able to make a $5.5 billion pension payment this month. In fact, the postmaster general says things are so tight, the postal service may have to shut down this winter unless congress takes emergency action to stabilize its finances.