So the USPS is apparently running these ads that make subtle jabs at the whole concept of electronic mail as if they are trying to convince people to start hand-writing letters again:
Look, I love the USPS, and I know that their financial situation is bleak right now but there are a lot of ways they can change up their business and still stick around for a long time to come without us having to revert to living like the 1920s. Would it really be the end of the world if they cut back their delivery service from 6 days per week to 3-5 days a week? I know I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it (though some people would lose their jobs, which sucks but it’s life).
Another big thing is parcels - as letter mail has fallen in popularity, surely the amount of parcels getting shipped around has shot way up thanks to the Internet. It certainly has for me. If they had to do away with their flat-rate boxes and start charging a bit more for those long-haul deliveries, I’d understand. Truly, I would. They’re so much cheaper than UPS and FedEx that they could stand to raise their prices in certain areas considerably and they’d still be the best deal in town.
So basically what I’m saying is: Post Office, do what you need to do to stay afloat. It’s going to hurt and it’s going to piss some people off no matter what, but if you really think you’re going to get people to stop using e-mail or even to reduce their usage of electronic communications in any way whatsoever, you’re just being silly and wasting money you really can’t afford to spend on these TV ads.
I get more ‘mail’ than ever, but it’s mostly packages, and mostly not through the Postal Service. Maybe if they tried to bank on this, particularly by vastly improving their (pathetic) package tracking and courting big companies, they’d be enjoying the heyday of the online shopping age instead of whining.
Don’t have a link right now, but the government controls what the USPS’s mandate is, what services they’re allowed to provide. (My husband is a letter carrier; I hear about the issues a lot.) I’m sure they’d love to expand their services, were they allowed to do so.
I never implied that we don’t or shouldn’t rely on them - as I said I think they’re fantastic. I’m saying that times have changed and USPS needs to get with it. And I’m saying this because I care, like a concerned parent to a troubled child.
They do have to change, but don’t blame them, since many if not all of the changes needed need to be approved by a federally-appointed governors board.
You are right about package tracking AFAIK. But in the actual delivery, they are better, maybe that’s just because all my adult life I’ve lived in apartments where the USPS could place packages in the mail pods rather than on the front steps. Maybe the competing package delivery folks would be as good if they were allowed to take advantage of the mail pods rather than placing bogus “we were here, you weren’t!” stickers on the doors of everyone (even if they were home.)
Yeah, that’s my big gripe with UPS. And if you’ve ever lived in a gated apartment complex, forget about it. They won’t even try to deliver (although a few times they were lucky enough that somebody was going in or out and could let them in the gate). But USPS always seems to get a key.
The post office in Chicago is pretty bad, they’d do a lot better if they hired someone with some actual customer service skills, instead of a room full of people, not waiting on you, looking confused and like they absolutely detest their jobs.
It must be Chicago, because every place else I lived the post office was OK
What about the informational infrastructure that was created to serve the needs of the Post Office? When someone builds a new house, how do they know what address numbers to put on it? I read somewhere that the USPS was responsible for the original geographic database of streets and addresses that Mapquest and similar services use. Who will maintain those if the Post Office goes away.
It seems to me that a lot of what UPS and FedEx do is only possible because the USPS did it first. If that goes away, who will pick up the slack?
Speculating here, and I don’t know much about the postal system:
Doesn’t junk mail typically get mailed under a different class than whatever it is when I mail my mom a birthday card?
Why not up the postage on junk mail? Your typical resident would love getting less, and the USPS could probably find a sweet spot where the increased revenues would make up for the loss in junk mail volume.
That might work depending on the shape of the supply-demand curve for junk mail (the senders vs the postal service, that is, not the recipients ;))
An increase in postage rates might cause the demand for junk mail to fall so far that revenue will decline in absolute terms. Plus, a lot of the overhead is built in already since the postal service is already driving trucks to all locations daily, (and you need federal permission to delivery fewer times or lay off massive amount of people,) so it would be difficult to decrease your fixed costs. (Transportation and sorting costs would go down a bit of course.)
I hope the USPS sticks around - it’s usually the cheapest way to get things shipped to me when I buy from US companies online. It’s like $10 for USPS versus $30 for any courier company.
How is this even possible?
While I use electronic communications as much as I can, there are still lots of companies / agencies that only communicate through the mail. This includes the IRS and the AZDOT, health insurance, and things like jury duty.
Where did I say anything about mailboxes? I’m saying they would never deliver packages because they couldn’t get in the gate to the apartment complex, and even when they did get in they didn’t bother to knock (though I’d be home) and would just slap a “Missed you” sticker on the door.
