Just how hard up is the USPS?

Factual Questions
1

A story on the news the other day was lamenting how badly e-mail has crippled the postal service, they’ve lost money for the second year in a row, stamps may go up again, and our mail may go to an every-other-day delivery schedule.

What with the who now? I don’t understand how they could be hit this hard. Do that many people use e-mail exclusively for actual correspondance? I use it most often in lieu of phone calls. I still use the mail for letters, birthday/Xmas/thank you cards. What about wedding invites? Valentines? What about packages? I’d think any drop in use from e-mail would be more than offset by eBay sellers that use the USPS (as opposed to UPS, etc) for shipping packages. What about the 10+ pounds a week of flyers and junk mail I’m always getting? What about magazines? What about bills? (Yes, you can pay some bills online, but what about independant contractors, etc?) What about during the UPS strike a couple of years ago? Didn’t they get a shot in the arm and maybe some new business then for picking up the slack? Why is it every time I go to the Post Office, there is a line a mile long and it takes an hour? BECAUSE SO MANY PEOPLE ARE USING THE POST OFFICE! Not only that, they are using the post office to mail packages, and they’re buying all the extra crap there at the post office (boxes/packing/labels/etc.) instead of buying it at OfficeMax and packing it at home.

I’m not especially opposed to the price of basic postage going up, it could probably stand to be a little higher, but how much money are they really losing, and what can it be contributed to? If they are losing enough to make such doom and gloom forecasts such as a cut in delivery days, there must be some major bleeding somewhere. I’m thinking there must be something else the Postal Service did that made them a lot of money that I’m not thinking of. I guess you could say “well hardly anyone collects stamps anymore, they use them all” but I wouldn’t think that would’ve been such a big cash cow for them anyway, seeing as how in the heyday of stamp collecting stamps cost a fraction of what they do now.

Help me out, I must be missing something really obvious.

2

Here’s an interesting article on the subject: USPS Finances: Are we on the Road from Universal to Invisible?

One of the (many) points mentioned is that gas was rather more expensive than expected last year, and the USPS uses a lot of gas.

3

My supervisors would sure like me to think we are damn near bankrupt!
Part of the problem is the drop in first class mail. Yes, you are getting lots of ads and catalogs, but they deliver at a lower rate. The increase in parcels helps, but they take up more room for the dollars they bring in. A 2 pound or less package flies priority mail for about $3.50 Thats about the same price as 10 first class letters, but lots more space.
And maybe the $200,000,000.+ they paid in bonuses to managers and supervisors has something to do with it. They sure didn’t give the rank and file anything this Christmas…

4

So why are there such huge lines in your Post Office? Here in my little town of less than 2,500 people, we don’t have to wait more than ten, fifteen minutes max! Of course we only employ 25 postal employees to service our area, so we shouldn’t have to wait as long as the rest of you.

I don’t mean to be unkind, but where do they hire these postal workers from? They apppear to be the slowest moving, most dense people you’d ever like to meet anywhere.

Judging from the sloth I witness in our small Post Office, I have to wonder that they seem to be as effective as they are about getting the mail to it’s intended location in a timely manner.

5

I have started two seperate threads desperately trying to get some help just to get my mail deliverd.

I have gotten yellow slips. Come to the P.O. get your package. I got there wait a half and hour and the package isn’t there. And no one can tell me.

I have written letters, called, waited for a carrier that half the time doesn’t show. NEVER A RESPONSE. I live in Chicago, Logan Square, and our mail is hideous.

Maybe this has something to do with it.

6

If the PO threatens that they may have to go to Every Other Day delivery and then give in on that and just raise their postage charges, everyone won’t make quite the fuss they might have done if they’d just gone for the increase in first class postage in the first place.

7

Markxxx, that’s just a very, very bad PO. The one on California, 60647, right? It’s the worst in the city, I swear. It’s always slow and crowded and the mail is delivered at a snail’s pace. Everyone I know that lives there has the same complaints. Your mail deliverer is on vacation? Then you don’t get mail. For however long he/she’s gone. Period. And don’t get me started on the rain-sleet-snow-gloom-of-night bull.

8

I actually just asked the Better Half about this latest “Oh, no, we’re in the red!” USPS press release. Somebody had a GQ thread last month on how the USPS makes its money and gets its funding, and while cruising Google for that, it seemed like every news release I found for the last 10 years dealing with USPS finances was either “we’re in the black!” or “we’re in the red!”, sometimes for the same fiscal year.

The B.H. says it’s all just creative bookkeeping, politics, etc. The Post Office is always scrambling for political leverage, the same as everybody else, and sometimes it’s better to be rich, and sometimes it’s better to be poor.

The simple answer, Bare, as to why postal clerks are so slow is that they aren’t getting paid to be fast. :smiley: They’re just getting paid to stand there for X number of hours per day and hand out packages.

Mark, all I can think of to suggest is that you get together with some of your neighbors (at least 5 other people–these have to be people who have the same postal branch, okay?), go down to the Post Office branch, and have a meeting with one of the Supervisors. An official meeting, in his office, not a “stand around in the workroom and shoot the breeze” meeting.

If your mail service doesn’t improve after a month, then take the same 5 people, plus at least 5 more, and arrange a meeting with the Postmaster.

If your mail service still doesn’t improve after another month, take those 10 people, plus 5 more, and have one more very polite meeting with the Postmaster, during which you drop thinly veiled threats to consult with the media outlet of your choice. The Tribune is good, TV is better.

9

Thanks for that link, Smack. If what the article says is true, then the USPS is guilty of running up their credit cards and not being able to pay, then trying to get a loan on top of it. Heh heh. It’s all a teetering house of cards that may fall any minute! Mail 'em if you got 'em!

In our post office most of the hassle is because of the customers, not the workers. I’ve never seen so many clueless, disorganized people (aside from WalMart, of course.) I don’t have any hassle with my delivery guy anymore since he’s quit spilling food in my magazines while he reads them on his lunch hour (haha) but I do occasionally get something unusually late. (I got my March Reader’s Digest two days after the April issue, along with a sale flyer advertising a sale that ended 3 weeks prior. Oh well, not like it was a bill or anything.)