Posted on 05/09/2009 1:16:49 PM PDT by Patriot777
"As the price to mail a letter is set to increase on Monday, mail volume at the U.S. Postal Service continues to drop. To counter the tough times, the government-run service operating 579 post offices across the state will continue to reconfigure its work force and its ability to compete for customers. Brian Watson, 37, of Lowell, said he's getting ready to make the jump from putting his bills in a mailbox to completing the transaction online because of the cost to use the postal system."
(Excerpt) Read more at nwanews.com ...
The post office fails to realize that their problems began when the made the size limits for priority mail 1cf. All other services have a size limit of 3 cubic feet before oversize charges begin. The post office in their wisdom decided 1cf was big enough.
They tried to force everyone to use parcel post, if you have ever used parcel post you know it is not dependable. When they made the change they almost put our company out of business. We had packages that took 38 days to arrive which is completely unacceptable.
So what did we do? We switched the vast majority of all our shipping to UPS. We ship 300-500 packages a week. That business that used to go to USPS is now going with UPS. Multiply that out by thousands of businesses and you will find the very reason the post office is losing money.
They want to blame in on the economy, however the real reason is mismanagement. They posted a 5.1 billion loss the very next year, and this was before the “worse” economy since the great depression.
I think you need to move over to DU and not go telling FReepers what they "need" to do. As it happens I frequently mail disks in a 5x8 envelope with a piece of paperboard in there as a stiffener. The cost of this tripled with one of the recent penny increases. I really do not care whether my stuff doesn't go through the automated machinery. Maybe we could just through away all the automated machinery, cut the forced two minute conversations about whether I want to send my non-standard envelope by registered mail, whether I want delivery confirmation, whether I want to purchase any stamps, etc., and fire half of the postal workers starting with the ones who cannot speak English. (Or at my Post Office, the Box Mail attendant who is deaf and cannot hear the buzzer mounted next to the box mail window.)
ML/NJ
Hmmm....
The post office in my town has a deaf old man, an oriental who doesn’t speak English well and a Lesbian with an attitude behind the counter. There are usually only two windows open most of the time and the line is out the door and down the block most of the times. And it seems like every time i turn around, the post office is doing a ‘price restructure’.
I get mail for other ppl at least twice a week. People in my town have hand delivered mail to me that went in their box. I have had credit card bills arrive either the day before or the day after they were due on more occasions that I care to count.
Yep... I use online bill paying.
Tell you what, buy disk mailers that have the proper aspect ratio. You'll find that the costs go way down.
The lesson is that if you don't care if the mailpiece goes through the automation machinery then you'll have to pay the manual distribution rates ~ and let me tell you, it costs a whale of a lot more to sort mail by hand than with those machines.
Our town of just under 6000 got rid of the stamp dispensing machines around 2002 or so. The advantage, and it took some adjusting to- is we can and do buy postage stamps at the grocery stores while shopping. Of course we can still get out of the car, walk up the mandatory steps (beautiful old building built back in the 1930s or so-)and stand in line. The plus side is our postal people are for the most part outstanding.
Unlike when my son was in Guatamala. You mailed nothing beyond letters because the postmster kept any and all packages. You could have it if you were willing to pay enough and if the postmaster did not want it worse than you did.
No, you see that's the way it works in the Communist countries. The government tells you how to do things and you do them that way, or else.
You beloved Postal "Service," would be out of business if they allowed competition. We always hear that we cannot allow competition because no business would deliver the mail to the Aleutian Islands because of the cost involved. Well, it costs them a lot less to deliver my disk to NYC than it does to deliver anything to the Aleutian Islands. They had been doing it for years at the the regular (inflated) first class rate.
As for your special mailers, I have them. They are "non-standard" and stiff too; and they cost about a buck a piece. My envelopes cost me about a nickel each. Only a government drone would make the suggestions that you have made to me.
ML/NJ
I wonder if the democrats have thought of this one yet: the USPS takes over control of all email within the US and charges x cents per email sent. Attachments would cost more. Of course we would need to rent our email inboxes from the government for some annual fee (although they would probably be “free” and paid from our taxes). After a few years of this they would realize their 100,000’s of postal workers aren’t actually doing anything and would start delivering the emails daily (not on Sundays though) to our physical mailboxes on CDs.
You sound like a good liberal artist I heard lecture. As she was forced away from the fine arts school that had nurtured and supported her for 8 years, she learned she had to make a living working.
She had a masters degree in fine arts and was a very accomplished wood worker. Unfortunately she didn’t like to make things that didn’t comply with her artistic ideals. He thing was” a dialogue with lines and dots” Everything she made from wood was decorated with lead pencil lines and dots. There was a dot and then a line connecting it to another dot and so on.
She decided she would make framed mirrors. The wood frames were painted with flat paint and then covered with the lines and dots, thus expressing the unique dialogue. She learned to her dismay that she had to do the shipping and packing. She also learned that boxes for the purpose were not available in the random sizes of her completed work. To buy the available packaging, she must standardize her frame sizes and thus surrender the freedom of artistic line and dot dialogue.
At the time of the lecture, she was but weeks away from being kicked out of the academic nest and still had no idea about where she was going or what she was going to do. She could not get over the fact she had to either use available standard packing materials or spend the time and money to develop and fabricate her own. She was an artist and packing was mundane activity for riff raff. She had a masters degree!!!
And you sound like someone who has difficulty with the English language, or logic, or both. I'm not making those envelopes that cost me a nickel, or wishing they were a different size. I buy a hundred at a time at one of those office supply stores that dot the landscape because they suit my purpose.
ML/NJ
First you demand lower cost, then refuse the advice of an expert who tells you how to get it. What’s wrong with the GOP these days again?
I'm sorry I cannot join you in a rejection of modernism ~ so, back into your cave.
Oh Great Postal "Service" Apologist, pray tell us: When did this standardization ever result in lower costs? The price of mailing the most garden variety first class mail has only gone up during my lifetime. I guess your boys just forgot to pass all the great savings along to us poor schlubs forced to use this "service" that constantly reduces service. (Hello? Anyone else remember when there were two daily deliveries of mail?)
ML/NJ
The only thing I ever mail are formal invitations or thank you notes. I couldn’t tell you what the price of a stamp is.
Standardization of radio wave technology has made it possible to place phone calls around the world.
Standardization of mail has enabled everyone to be able to afford to use it, and presently USPS is the world's largest AND most efficient postal operation.
You either buy into the concept of standardization and its benefits to productivity and utility or you retire to a cave.
Go to usps.com and order stamps online. USPS will deliver your stamps to your door, with delivery confirmation
I see you continue to avoid answering the questions I pose and raising completely unrelated topics. Flim-flam Florio used to do this here in NJ. I still want to know where my cost savings are.
ML/NJ
Time to consider the practices of John H. Reagan, the Confederate Postmaster General. Reagan promoted efficiency in the office and reduced costs. He ran the only post office in history to turn a profit.
$0.94 to mail a postcard to anywhere outside the US, what will be come Monday?
It was only $0.37 to mail postcards to the US from the Caribbean.
Remember the penny postcard?
Back in the ‘80s, I took the exam for mail carrier. Before we even started the test, minorities were credited with free exam points because they weren’t white. Right off the bat, they had an advantage over whitey. After that, I understood why our mailman couldn’t speak English, and apparently couldn’t read it, either, as there was always some kind of mix-up with our deliveries.
Of course he could run things at a profit!~
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