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Tech experts, including Google, to discuss future of the USPS
11–20 of 51 posts
Re: Tech experts, including Google, to discuss future of the USPS
#12Re: Tech experts, including Google, to discuss future of the USPS
#13What is going to happen to the Postal Service? In 10-15 years, dead tree mail will be an anachronism. Mass mail campaigns will be much less effective because the current buying generation will have grown up ignoring letters. Will the post office be able to continue to function after losing 80% of it's current volume? Does this mean that we'll be trusting one or many startups to deliver important information from the…
According to their facts page[1], USPS process 6761 pieces of mail per second. They had a 2009 revenue of $68 billion. They pay $2.1 billion in salaries every two weeks.
Dead tree mail isn't dead just yet; they definitely have enough time to figure out a plan.
[1] http://www.usps.com/communications/newsroom/postalfacts.htm
Re: Tech experts, including Google, to discuss future of the USPS
#14The most sensible suggestion I've heard recently was from a co-worker who said it would make sense to not sound out postal workers to every house, but instead to keep all the mail at the Post Office. If you want your mail delivered to your door, then you can pay extra. Otherwise pick it up yourself. This would greatly cut down on the USPS expenses.
I also would love a premium service where I get one address (just like Google Voice) that I give out and then the mail is actually forwarded to my new location if/when I move. UPS provides something like this, I believe, but why not USPS?
Re: Tech experts, including Google, to discuss future of the USPS
#15Why are we trying to save USPS? It offers worse service than any of the private companies, and according to this article, it currently has a net loss of 7 billion dollars. How about we delete it, then git commit -a -m "deleted unused stuff, should improve efficiency"
Re: Tech experts, including Google, to discuss future of the USPS
#16The most sensible suggestion I've heard recently was from a co-worker who said it would make sense to not sound out postal workers to every house, but instead to keep all the mail at the Post Office. If you want your mail delivered to your door, then you can pay extra. Otherwise pick it up yourself. This would greatly cut down on the USPS expenses. I also would love a premium service where I get one address (just lik…
Would just shift cost from delivery to storage. Might be a net gain (or a net loss), but would also have deployment costs.
USPS does offer that, NCOA.
Re: Tech experts, including Google, to discuss future of the USPS
#17The most sensible suggestion I've heard recently was from a co-worker who said it would make sense to not sound out postal workers to every house, but instead to keep all the mail at the Post Office. If you want your mail delivered to your door, then you can pay extra. Otherwise pick it up yourself. This would greatly cut down on the USPS expenses. I also would love a premium service where I get one address (just lik…
Would just shift cost from delivery to storage. Might be a net gain (or a net loss), but would also have deployment costs. USPS does offer that, NCOA.
This is assuming that the amount of mail goes down. Would also naturally cut down on the amount of junk mail, since most people won't bother to go check their mail if it's always just junk.
Re: Tech experts, including Google, to discuss future of the USPS
#18What is going to happen to the Postal Service? In 10-15 years, dead tree mail will be an anachronism. Mass mail campaigns will be much less effective because the current buying generation will have grown up ignoring letters. Will the post office be able to continue to function after losing 80% of it's current volume? Does this mean that we'll be trusting one or many startups to deliver important information from the…
Mass mailers are already shifting to email (and to a lesser extent SMS and apps).
Re: Tech experts, including Google, to discuss future of the USPS
#19From talking to my grandmother, apparently people used to love the postoffice. Now, I don't know a single person in my age group (20-30 somethings) that doesn't despise the postoffice. The fact that I can't opt out of garbage being delivered to my door, by an actual person, is pretty infuriating to most.
If the post office acted like a "letter carrier" and not a package/spam carrier, I think they could do alright. Let UPS etc handle shipping actual packages, drop the spam and drop delivery to 4-5 days a week tops, they would save alot of money.
Re: Tech experts, including Google, to discuss future of the USPS
#20One fairly simple solution would be to reduce the frequency of mail delivery. Instead of Mon-Sat, we could deliver mail Mon-Wed-Fri or Tues-Thurs-Sat (different days for different zones).