Stop Saturday delivery, but open the post offices for the full day, rather than only until noon.
No Saturday delivery and close down Saturday Post Offices? Fine by me.
Allow the Post Office to die? No way. The price for sending parcels and documents will skyrocket. We don’t use FedEx, UPS or any other commercial carrier. The Post Office consistently delivers faster, better, cheaper than any commercial carrier. YMMV.
I wouldn’t care if they stopped saturday delivery,my mail doesn’t usually arrive until 9 PM anyway.
Saturdays seems silly. Why would we want two days in a row of no mail? If they must close for a day it should be sometime mid-week like Wednesday or something. That way it staggers the days without mail a bit more evenly.
I care, because my paycheck comes in the mail Saturdays. My bank is open over the weekend, so I’d rather not have to wait until Monday to get it, and then probably until Tuesday to deposit it given I’m unlikely to go out again after getting home from work. I could easily do without a weekday delivery once a week, though.
I didn’t vote since I don’t live in the US. I am not aware of a single other country that has Saturday mail delivery. When I lived in Switzerland in 1967, there were 11 deliveries a week (including one on Saturdays), but when I lived there again in 1970, they were down to five. I don’t think they have had Saturday delivery in Canada in the 42 years I have lived here.
Americans seem uniquely conservative (and I don’t mean in the political sense, although that might be also true). As far as I am aware, they are the only country that prints all its bills in the same color and the same size and has far fewer anti-counterfeiting measures than most. They refuse to get rid of the penny (although Canada joins them there), although most people won’t bend down to pick one up. They refuse to use the dollar coin although the dollar bill is worth far less than the quarter of my youth (when Canada went to a dollar coin, they simply took all the paper bills out of circulation and simillarly for the $2). They will not switch to metric. And then there is health care.
It is.
It’s getting better.
I do…they’re everywhere!
Yeah, I’m at a loss as to why we generally reject the dollar coin.
What are we, France? 
Don’t get me started. 
We don’t want to admit that dollars have become chump change. Coins aren’t for paying for stuff with; they’re for getting back in change. They’re the leftovers, the fractional money, the stuff after the decimal point. At least, that’s my theory.
To keep things on topic: the one place I’ve seen that actually uses dollar coins are the stamp vending machines at the post office.
I agree. The post office is the perfect example of something that is absolutely ridiculous for the government to do. It’s just odd–like if the government just randomly bottled and sold salsa or something.
The postal service may have been a good thing back in the good ol’ bad ol’ days when it was the only way to communicate across distance, but today it has got to go.
We need to get the federal government out of the mail delivery business, and let the independent companies compete for business.
I disagree. It makes perfect sense to me, if you think of the USPS as a public utility, like a city’s power or water or public buses.
I voted “Mail service should remain as it is, even if rates must go up,” because I think that’s the way it should be. But naturally, nothing they do is going to affect me one way or the other.
Independent companies aren’t going to want to deliver to the middle of nowhere unless it pays them very well. The USPS charges the cost of a standard stamp to go anywhere in the US.
The USPS is referenced in the Constitution under Section 8:
To get rid of the USPS, would it not require an amendment?
If so, there ain’t no way in hell it is going to be abolished in our lifetimes.
All of these made me answer “keep it the way it is, even if it costs more.”
When my grandmother was alive, my mother refilled a lot of her medications online and they were sent USPS. Yes, most of the time mom was able to refill them in time, but sometimes there was the “crap, are they going to get there before the old prescription runs out?” Lack of Saturday delivery for people like that could mean that things that arrive on Friday morning (after mail runs are sorted and sent out) could sit until Monday, leaving a three-day gap.
And, often when I order things online, I get no choice on what shipping method to use. Nothing I order is life-threatening, but it would be slightly annoying to have to wait three days for a book or something.
And the idea of ending delivery entirely but keeping the post offices open ignores the fact that some people don’t have cars, or access to public transportation. There are NO buses or taxis in my hometown, making poor people or the elderly incapable of receiving mail through the USPS. That argument strikes me as a back-door argument to privatize mail delivery, and I’m just not down for that.
Forget this USPS crap - I want Victorian London mail. I want to post a letter in the morning at my office and have my wife get it at lunch and send me a reply before I leave for the day. I want to be able to address it “Red Headed Man with Cute Doggie, Cornwall” and have it get there. Promptly. I want it to work with astounding speed and accuracy and do it all invisibly.
Just because Congress has the power doesn’t mean it has to use it.
With the exception of parcels, I have only very occasional use for the post office. I’m on the receiving end of an important piece of mail perhaps 3 or 4 times a year. I can’t remember the last time I sent something via USPS.
Frankly, it a chore for me to go to the mailbox every day just to transfer its contents into the trash can. Letter and bulk rates are insanely cheap and need to go up as far as I’m concerned. That will take a huge bite out of all the worthless flyers and unsolicited crap that chokes my mailbox. Brick & mortar offices should only be open on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
I’m not sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for a piece of mail to arrive.
I haven’t checked the mail since last Friday. In the unlikely event that there is something of value inside, it will still be there when I finally get around to making my way up there to empty it, which will probably this coming weekend. If I remember. Or maybe next week. The mail waits for me, not vice-versa.
USPS is already too unreliable to be used as a health support system. Packages get lost, things get delivered to the wrong mailbox, etc. Critically necessary medicine refills should be ordered while you still have at least a 30 day supply on hand, and arrive via special delivery.
I still get some checks (mainly gifts) and a LOT of packages via the USPS. My in-laws don’t have a computer, so snail mail is the only way to get things to us.
I actually send items in the mail quite often. I’m thinking about the last few items I sent. They seem to mostly be related to medical issues. Things like answers to a questionaire a doctor wanted filled out. Then there was a check I mailed to a friend to pay for a ticket to a hockey game. I didn’t have any plans to meet up with him before the game, so that was the simplest thing.
That may be so, but my insurance company (and probably many others) gives a big discount if you order prescription drugs through their mail order service.