http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9RE82NG0.htm
I’m pretty bummed about this. It means I won’t be able to turn Netflix movies over twice a week. I’ll have to think about dropping Netflix and use Redbox for all of my movie needs. I actually have a Redbox within walking distance of my house.
Hmm. I hadn’t even thought about this with relation to Netflix. I was all conent to just mail off my condo fees and credit card payment a little earlier, but the impact on my Netflix has me really bummed.
Darn. This means that all my junk mail is going to take a day longer! Bummer!!!
Frankly, I’ve always assumed that any first-class letters I send (which are now 95% bill payments, for those bills which I’m not yet paying online) would take 2-3 days to get there.
I already was paying all my bills by mail.
I had my Netflix set up so they would get my movies on Monday, when the new releases became available. They would mail them to me Monday. I would get them on Tuesday and watch them. I’d mail them back on Wednesday. Netflix would get them on Thursday and mail me my next available choices, which I would get on Friday. I’d mail them back on Saturday and be set up for next week.
With the end of next day delivery, my new releases will show up on Wednesday, so I can’t mail them back fast enough. It is cheaper to use Redbox, where I can reserve the movie and walk over and pick it up immediately.
37 days ago a friend mailed me a birthday card. She mailed it from Singapore.
Now it looks like it’ll never arrive.
The USPS didn’t guarantee next day delivery for First Class mail. I’m not sure anything actually changes. The same volume of mail will exist. Slowing it down will result in an eventual massive accumulation of undelivered mail. I assume they’re just cutting the work force, and high volume periods will see slower delivery, and maybe trucks and planes go out less often to stay full.
If we want first class mail, we should be willing to pay for it. $0.45 is not going to do it. Without the USPS, it will cost at least 10 times that much. We ought to start paying $1 for a letter, or expect to end up paying $5.
Definitely a deal-breaker for Netflix. When they split up streaming and DVDs, I went with streaming-only with the intention of eventually adding DVDs back in. But now I’m not so inclined, since this will effectively double the turnaround time.
For everything else, meh. Like others have said - who uses snail mail for anything important/time-sensitive anyway? And if it’s really important, you can still pay more to overnight it.
Doesn’t bother me any. As a practical matter if the USPS had to reduce its pickups to two-to-three times a week and slow its delivery time to five business days or so that wouldn’t bother me either.
I receive most of my bills via USPS but pay most of them electronically.
I feel sorry for them but their basic business model is becoming obsolete.
If it were only a question of ending Saturday delivery it wouldn’t make much difference–if they were going to maintain the same level of sorting and processing operations. But even as things are now, I can’t depend on a letter reaching its destination overnight, even within California. Earlier this year I mailed something up to Fresno and it took about seven days.
How long is that going to take now? Three weeks? A month?
Eh. I guess my post office is way ahead of the curve; our first class mail never ever arrives in a timely manner. For a glaring example, they helped facilitate a 7-9 day turn over for Netflix DVDs the first couple of months we had it. We only learned this when we cut that down to 3-4 days by experimenting and mailing them back in a different town…so, some people get their mail only a day or two after it’s sent? Neat.
This wouldn’t bother me so much if the reason was actually that they didn’t have the money, or if the customers were just refusing hikes in postage. But this is congressional intervention. They made enough money until it was taken away, and they can’t increase postage without congressional approval. It’s just a (granted. much lesser) version of the debt ceiling thing to me.
Then again, I can’t blame them too much. It seems like such a small issue that just getting a few people involved in it would help. I know there are more pressing concerns, but I wonder if, say, Occupy were to have pushed and gotten a victory, they would then be seen as a more powerful political force.
I’m surprised to hear the US Postal Service is having so much trouble… I was under the impression that mail volumes and revenue were up (or at least steady) globally, thanks to people buying so much stuff online nowadays.
I forgot to mention one thing earlier: just because you don’t normally get same or next day service doesn’t mean you won’t be affected. Those of you who already have three to five day turnarounds can see those become even longer. Our local post office cut next day service for local mail a little while back, and everything else got slower, too.
Almost all of my Netflix DVDs arrive the next day. The Netflix local Shipping center is at the main post office for my county. From what read, NetFlix delivers directly to local USPS processing centers to maximize speed. From what I read, most people get second day or better delivery from Netflix.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/06/postal-services-woes-add-new-twist-to-netflix-saga/
This article implies that Netflix will still manage next day delivery for some of it’s customers.
This map shows the only Netflix shipping center in New Hampshire is in Manchester. If you don’t live in southern New Hampshire, then you might be screwed.
http://www.moviesinhouse.com/articles/netflix-shipping-centers.html
What sucks is this is easily fixable. The reason the Post Office has money trouble is Republicans in 2006 required it to fund its pension for the next 75 years in 10 years. All of their income is going to this and it is completely unreasonable (which was the design. The requirement was a “poison pill”). Undo this, and the Post Office will be fine.
ETA: I figure I should add a cite. It’s mentioned in this ABC News Article.
Are you kidding me? The DVDs were coming from in-state?? Wow, I cannot believe that given how many times it took a week to get a new DVD given we’re talking about less than 75 miles from Manchester to here. I’m afraid our post office is the suxor even more than I ever imagined. No wonder people hope that if they start shutting down post offices ours is one of them. We’d probably get mail faster if it came from next big town nearby.
That seems rather peculiar. I checked and any in-state first class mail in New Hampshire should be delivered in 2 days. You should be able to verify the processing center by looking at the address on the return envelope. You can also check the transit time by comparing with e-mail from Netflix. I also make sure I align the bar-code on the sleeve with the window in the envelope.