Postal Service ends year $1.7B in the red (Stamp price to be raised to $0.37....GRRRRRRR...)

USA Today ^ | 12/4/2001 | N/A

[RooRoobird14]

WASHINGTON (AP)

[RooRoobird14]

Grrrr.........I am SO SICK of these CLYMERS having a monopoly on letter mail!!!!! Every year service gets worse, every year they keep raising their prices.

[RooRoobird14]

BTT

[DeaconBenjamin]

The Priority Mail 2 pound rate is proposed to go up 46 percent.

[JohnGalt]

But somehow they have enough money to buy those friggin Segway scooters...

[Zack Nguyen]

I don't suppose that they could cut spending anywhere? Oh well, I suppose I should be grateful that I can slap a $.37 stamp on a letter, and be reasonably assured that it will go anywhere in the world.

But having spent a great deal of time at the post office, I can't help but think that some of that deficit comes from poor efficiency and bad service.

[curmudgeonII]

Thirtyseven cents for a stamp?
I guess that's one cent for delivery and 36 cents for storage.

[Orangedog]

Gee, why don't they try raising the bulk mail postage rate and leave the people who need the mail for things like bills alone?! What would the poor junk-mailers do if they had to fork over more to clog up my mail box with trash 6 days week? They wouldn't stop sending the junk mail, but maybe there would be a little less of it.

I agree with your sentiment......BGRRRRRRRRR!

[johniegrad]

The postal service is becoming increasingly irrelevant. Electronic bills, e-mail, credit card transactions, private industry package delivery, all are contributing to its demise. If one decides to avoid it, almost everything can be done without the postal service. I suspect this will become worse year after year.

[1Old Pro]

Cut everyones pay, layoff people, and LOWER stamp rates so as to COMPETE with the competition.

[The Vast Right Wing]

Privatize.

[discostu]

What irritates me is that they now think they're supposed to be in the black. Up until the junk mail boom of the early 90s the post office was NEVER in the black, not once in the history of America. It's a government institution they're supposed to lose money. I blame all that stupid balanced budget talk, it's ruined everything in the government. USPS does a good job, they get the mail delivered on time and effectively, at one point it was the only part of the federal government that people interacted with regularly. But these days they're just not thinking straight.

I think we need a big letter writing campaign reminding congress that it's AOK for the USPS to be in the red and they should just fix the red in the federal budget instead of raising rates or reducing service.

[KC Burke]

They used to make the contention that the bulk rate mail, mailed at low rates, carried the bulk of the overhead. Now, with the processing-security issues and costs directly related to piece count, this is no longer the case. Bulk mail should get a higher percentage of the handling costs.

[billbears]

Went into a post office today and it was a perfect of example of government work. Four people, three talking behind the counter and one helping a customer with a line of 6 customers waiting. After about 5 minutes someone behind me said something, one of the three talkers replied Sir we're at lunch now someone should be up shortly. Took 15 minutes just to weigh a letter to make sure I had enough postage

[RedBloodedAmerican]

Boy, I can't wait until they trade in their delivery trucks for the "IT".

What a money savings move that will be. I am sure stamps will drop in price to....oh, say.....$0.19 ?

[demsux]

Next federal program to start bleeding money....AIRLINE SECURITY. These new FEDERAL employees will do just as good a job as those at the post office (/sarcasm).

[1Old Pro]

Went into a post office today and it was a perfect of example of government work. Four people, three talking behind the counter and one helping a customer with a line of 6 customers waiting.

We can laugh, but this is exactly what I see almost everytime I enter the post office. It's UNION/GOVERNMENT employee's that are about as inefficient as a work force can be.

[SamAdams76]

E-mail has got to be killing the Postal Service. Other than bills, I haven't sent snail mail in years. Of course the Postal Service wouldn't be in such poor shape if they were privatized. A private company would cut manpower in half and would probably deliver a letter for 20 cents and still make a profit.

[Jumper]

Two questions here.

One - if our stamps pay the wages and operating costs should linkage to salary and income be made.

Two - these folks get paid by the US Government as General Service (GS) employees - maybe they need to turned out to the private sector; maybe their 401K which is currently TSP should be abolished.

This is some sort of a hoax to tell the tax payers that they must pay more for stamps because the postal service is in the red.... Apparently there is no coralation between profits and saleries, therefore, government services such as this might well be contracted out as most of the Stateside Fed jobs are being abolished....

[dstarr]

I also wonder why they think they need to produce these TV ads that certainly aren't cheap. They should wake up and do what everyone else does when the funds run low. Cut out everything that is wasteful or unnecessary until they get back on an even keel.

[Tumbleweed_Connection]

The postal service is becoming increasingly irrelevant.

Absolutely not! It's always service and people wil always pay for it.

If these postal morons would consider some of the airport personal things would start happening. Let's send some postal people to the airports for real training.