Geeeesus people. I know that the email tax is a crock. Do I have to put a :rolleyes: after every sarcastic statement?
Well, I live in New York, so I’m used to it!
Well, since the noted shortfall this year is US$199,000,000 (I never know where to put the ‘US’) I’d say it’s not going to be salaries of those high in the food chain. Um, unless I should have dumped publishing to become a postal exec. They’ve got marketers, right?
And speaking as a direct mail/marketing guy…
This can only benefit me. Most of the promotional pieces my folks put out are aimed at the trade market. That means I need them to arrive Monday through Friday. Saturday delivery just screws us. Blech!
But, if you really want some advice here it is. I get cheap rates (as a direct mailer) because of a few reasons. First, I’ll drop more than US$100,000 in postage this year (and that makes me a medium to small mailer). Second, all the mail I send it sorted by zip and carrier route. This saves the USPS having to do it themselves. Combine the large volume I send out with the fact that my peeps do the job of the USPS for them and BANG! I get a discount. The public at large does neither of these things when sending letters or packages and consequently costs the USPS more per piece than my mailings do.
Finally, if you’re really interested in not seeing rates increase and keeping Saturday delivery then increase the volume of mail. The rates go up and service goes down when they become financially unfeasible. If there’s no money to be made (or even broke even) then it’s not in the interests of the USPS to continue to provide the service or that price level.
Seriously, I can see a time when snail mail (other than bulk mail for marketing purposes) is obsolete and the USPS won’t even be accepting packages. And I don’t think it’s all that far off.
Watch the skies!
Another non-U.S. Doper checking in to say you’re spoiled. I’ve never had Saturday mail. It used to suck before direct deposit. If my cheque wasn’t in the mailbox on Friday, I had to wait until Monday. Still, I’m not sure what is so important that I absolutely had to have it delivered to me on Saturday. Of course, I’m used to Monday-Friday delivery.
"Seriously, I can see a time when snail mail (other than bulk mail for marketing purposes) is obsolete . . . "
—Yet another reason I plan to be dead and gone within a decade.
Adam Yax:
Geeeesus Adam. You weren’t the one who brought it up. (Check AlbertRose a couple posts above your first.)
Aw c’mon Eve. As stated in a thread from quite a while ago you are Virginia’s finest honey, now. Don’t go sayin’ anythin’ drastic here.
Hey, I’m the one who gets credit for the 5 cents for e-mail thing! Man, am I embarrassed. Good thing I called it a rumor.
Lemme guess, Eve - you’ve been bitter ever since Western Union stopped delivering telgrams, right?
Seriously, if you think about it, mail comes in three varieties these days: (1) letters, which by definition don’t convey time-sensitive information anymore, (2) bills, and (3) junk. I don’t think anyone will be exactly put out by waiting an extra day to receive any of the foregoing.
Also, I don’t think I’d blame e-mail for the demise of the letter, although it certainly isn’t helping. The real blame is cheap phone service. Now, most people can make a 3-5 minute phone call anywhere in the US for less than a postage stamp. It’s sure a lot easier and faster than typing out an e-mail - and off the scale compared with writing a letter in longhand.
Even international calls are much cheaper; calling the UK is now just about the same price as calling my old office two miles away in New Jersey (I live in NYC; the local calling area ends at the state line). For immigrants it’s a great boon - when someone’s sick they can find out right away, rather than waiting weeks for a letter.
Of course, we’ll soon see the end of the epistolary novel, and the Letters of SuchnSuch. We’ll live.
Oh, and where we’re really spoiled is in the price of our stamps. We can send 1 oz (28 grams) for 34 cents anywhere in the country, even Alaska and Hawaii, even Death Valley - hell, even West Virginia! In Japan, where the distances were much shorter, in 1990 you could only send 15 grams for Y70 (about 55 cents at today’s rates). I suspect it’s more now. Of course, you got service 365 days (newspapers closed on holidays, but the postal service didn’t), but it never really impressed me since I was never getting mail that Just Couldn’t Wait.
i don’t get any mail that just can’t wait, but i do send some. i tend to have to pay bills at the very last minute, and some of the places that i pay bills to are open on saturday (the electric company is, for example.) i may stop mailing bills and start paying over the phone if they do this.
i do have a question. if a letter would have arrived on saturday, they won’t get it until monday, right? well, if it’s sent over the weekend and would have arrived on monday anyway, will it still get there on monday, or will it be delayed a day because of the post office being closed on saturday? i probably ought to already know that, but i don’t.
From my limited experience in mailing stuff from New York’s main post office(it’s open 24/7/365), I’d say yeah, it’ll be delayed a day. Letter sent on Sundays behaved as if they’d been mailed early Monday.
Ditto UPS items dropped off on Saturdays (UPS only delivers 5 days). Behaved as if mailed the next delivery day.
I’d use the pay-by-phone service. You might also be able to pay over the net.
Hmmm… I don’t think this is true. At least, it wasn’t how it was when my dad was working in the USPS. Of course, things may have changed since then, (and I’d love to hear from a person currently working at a P.O. about this.) My dad told me that people are sorting mail EVERY day. Sure, the USPS is “closed” on Sunday, they don’t have their offices open to the public, and they don’t pick up mail. But some people are working there over the weekend (at least in the “main” offices, like where my dad worked sorting the mail.) If you mail something on Saturday, and it is supposed to take two days to get there, it’ll get there on Monday. If you mail something on Monday, it’ll get there on Wednesday. And so on. Different story for UPS. If you don’t get it in before the weekend, it just sits there until Monday.
I do take note of when my mail is sent, and when it arrives (and vice-versa). Whenever I mail something, I tell the person when it will arrive, and usually I am not wrong. (I do a lot of eBay stuff, so I keep track.) I concede that some post offices are busy (or flakey) and delivery will take longer. (My dad told horror stories about some of the screw-ups.) But for the most part, delivery times are rather predictable, IMO.
I’m with you 110% on this, Eve. No mail on Saturday would be a major blow! My dad would be mortified. I sure am.
Something that hasn’t been mentioned is that the Postal Service has union contracts with all the employees, spelling out the amount of hours they must provide. They can’t cut hours on delivery employees, so how much money can they save???
In Canada, we’ve gone without it for decades. You get used to it.
Cessandra. The mail that is a day behind Friday will get there the next delivery day, whether that be Saturday or Monday.
Paying bills via Internet is the easiest, IMHO. Takes 5 minutes, and you can wait until the last minute if that is more convenient for you. Paying by telephone is probably the second easiest. I find running to the postal outlet and purchasing stacks of $0.47 stamps to mail cheques the least convenient way to pay bills. Why would I want to drive to the nearest postal outlet when I can pay the bills sitting in my chair at home?
“In Canada, we’ve gone without it for decades. You get used to it.”
. . . [Eve restrains herself from making the obvious wisecrack about Canada, because Quebec is really quite nice] . . .
oh, i don’t do anything from home if i can help it. home is for sleep. and watching tv. and playing around. i usually send my bills from work with all of the other mail i’m sending out everyday. making a phone call means doing it on my lunch break. but i guess i’ll have to.
Phew! That was close!
So: Been to Quebec, haven’t we?
Assuming this isn’t a joke, I don’t think it will happen. The reason mail is so sparse on Saturdays is because most of it has been taken care of Monday through Friday. Eliminating Saturday delivery would put more pressure on the USPS workers to get everything delivered in a timely manner (don’t laugh). Deliveries would be held up longer than they already are. The workers would become more tense, and so would citizens. I can see fistfights between residents and delivery workers if this does go through.
Also, I didn’t read the thread word for word, but I noticed that someone classified domestic mail as mostly personal letters, bills, and junk. Not so: there’s also magazines. It’s great to open the mailbox on Saturday and find a bright shiny copy of whatever, and know that I can read it right away.
Furthermore, there are also checks! Mr. Rilch, Friend, and myself all depend often on checks sent through the mail: me for my temp jobs, Friend for his art jobs, and Mr. Rilch for his film jobs. Direct deposit is great, but since we’re all basically free-lancers, we don’t have that option. There’s been many a time when the Saturday delivery was our last hope.
Has anyone noticed that the mail often is delivered a little later on Mondays? Well, I have noticed this for years. I got the impression (and I think I got it from my postal worker dad) that it’s because all the mail has been stacking up over the weekend. (Sunday, basically.) So they take a little longer to get things out on Monday - they have two days of mail (the stuff that was sorted Sunday, and Monday) to deliver on Monday.
If the eleminate Saturday mail, things will really be backed up on Monday! I think Rilchiam has it right. I don’t think it’ll happen. Well, it BETTER not happen!