I just noticed that I don’t visit the mailbox at the end of my driveway but 3 times a week on the average. I don’t get much stuff thru the mail; I pay bills online, order stuff online, UPS delivers to my door, checks are electronically deposited, and most stuff is “virtual” nowadays – movies, newspapers, radio, magazines, entertainment and education of all kinds. No wonder the USPS doesn’t have a raison d’être anymore.
I’m curious about this - Canada Post doesn’t leave packages on the steps; if it doesn’t fit in your mailbox (or in the package box at the cluster boxes) then they leave you a note and you go pick it up at the nearest post office. No cost, no hassle, just bring proof of address/ID.
The USPS doesn’t do this?
Interesting that you would assume that your experience was the norm, given the size of the country and the sheer number of facilities in question.
I’ve only ever had them do that with things that require a signature. UPS and FedEx leave things on my porch, too.
No, the USPS leaves a post card indicating that they missed you and that you need to visit the office to pick up a package. I just had to do this the other day. But I think that aceplace57 was referring to UPS and Fedex deliveries.
I loathe getting stuff via FedEx. The drivers are notorious in my neighborhood for not even attempting delivery, arriving at the door with a sticker already filled out.
Cite?
I mail hundreds of packages every year. I have a small side business selling DVDs, and I send padded envelopes with one or more DVD in each. USPS gets the ones in the same town to the recipient the next damn day! They do it for $1.96 for the package with a single DVD. FedEx would charge me $20.40 for the exact same service, or roughly ten times as much.
The post office at the end of my block is staffed with pleasant and hardworking people. In fairness, I only deal with three people who staff the front counter, and they may have stuck all the assholes in the back.
I can’t do my DVD delivery virtually. OK, I could upload them to YouTube, but it’s much more difficult to get paid for that and people prefer to have a disc.
Nearly all of my husband’s co-workers at the USPS have a college degree. And if any of them are ever caught even being rude to a customer, much less openly mocking them, they will be seriously reprimanded if not fired. He was reprimanded by his supervisor once because a customer felt that he had sarcastically lifted an eyebrow at her.
I really don’t understand the loathing some here have for the post office. Have you considered the consequences of doing away with the USPS? Watch FedEx and UPS raise their rates across the board because they don’t have the cash cow revenue delivering bulk mail. If small business can’t deliver their products, they’re gone as well.
Anyone want to venture how families will deliver their brownies and cookies to their family members serving overseas? What about the reciprocal agreements among countries delivering mail?
Does anyone really believe FedEx and UPS will benefit? Will consumers benefit?
I’ve passed that PO jillians of times. It’s right below a live music club I go to at least once a month and really close to one of my favorite sushi places and next to a parking lot that I use all the time when I go downtown. It’s also a really dumb place for a PO and there are other ones close by. It makes good sense to shut it down.
hah, hajaro.
I haven’t lived in town for years, but I knew exactly what PO you were talking about! Is Video Schmideo still there? I used to like hitting that post office with packages because parking was so simple. On the other hand, the main post office seemed to have a more knowledgeable staff.
I love USPS and think it is amazing what a great job they do for such low rates.
Luckily, none of the post offices closing are near where I live. There is a processing center closing that is about 10 miles away. I hope that doesn’t slow up my Netflix arrivals too much.
That’s the one! Video Schmideo is long gone. I remember when Arigato was right next door but now it’s way bigger and on State.
The Netflix hub for us used to be in Oxnard but it moved to Goleta last year so I get great Netflix turnaround.
The first thing is to check the return address on your Netflix envelope and figure out if you were in the local delivery area for the shipping center. If you aren’t getting next day delivery now, then you probably won’t change much.
Here is a map of the Netflix shipping centers.
http://www.moviesinhouse.com/articles/netflix-shipping-centers.html
What kind of college degree?
I dunno. I’ll ask my husband later. He has a B.S. in math and a master’s in…I think also math. (I should probably know this.) Is this important for some reason?
OK, well, embarrassingly enough for me, MrWhatsit has just informed me that I am completely full of crap, and he estimates only 1 in 10 of his co-workers have a degree. I swear to God I remember him saying that most of his co-workers had a degree one time before, but apparently that was in some alternate universe or a dream or something.
I would like to invite the rest of you to carry on with your fact-based conversation while I slink off and play computer games and pretend this didn’t happen.
All of the sorting centers in Oregon are closing, except for two in Portland. So if your Netflix distribution center is Salem, you should expect your deliveries and returns of Netflix to be delayed one to two days, unless you live in the Portland metro area.
Of course it is …
If you are trying to make the point that you need a Postal Science degree these days that’s one thing.
A (relatively)worthless liberal arts degree is quite another.
Uh…what? Postal science degree? WTF are you talking about?
Where in the country do you live where you don’t have mail service? Even UPS and FedEx require postal addresses for delivery, as far as I know.
Oh, and Rand Rover just wants government not to do this because it’s historically been cheaper than the free market alternatives, which messes with his worldview. Though I admit having it be an independent entity that isn’t directly controlled by congress would be much better, being able to both keep the price down due to no concern for profits and also get around the pesky fact that Congress does really stupid things, like reappropriating a surplus rather than saving it for the inevitable deficit.
I mean, surely he doesn’t just have something against people who live in rural communities and wants to cut them off even further from the rest of the country. Surely he doesn’t think it’s a good idea for there not to be any way for the government, whether federal, state, or local, to guarantee contact with someone. Surely he understands that a democracy can’t function if half or more of a country’s citizens are cut off from the world.
The usps is cheaper because it is paid for with tax revenue–it’s a publicly supported failing business. That doesn’t mess with my worldview, it show its merit (ie, that it is ridiculous to have a publicly supported entity performing a private function).
Your last paragraph is just standard speculation about the motives of fiscal conservatives, which deserves no.response. if you could argue on a policy level, then presumably you would, so I’ll take that paragraph as an admission that you can’t.
The USPS is not paid for with tax revenue. Not even a little bit.
Edit: Correction, $96 million of the USPS’s annual budget of around $70 billion is tax revenue.