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“There is no longer enough mail to sustain six days of delivery.”

usps.com

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Re: “There is no longer enough mail to sustain six days of delivery.”

#161

Post by billswift »

lionhearted wrote: post #144
jonknee wrote: post #9

> Ten years ago, the average household received five pieces of mail every day. Today, it receives four pieces and by 2020, that number will fall to three. ... And it would receive much less than that if the USPS wasn't mostly a delivery network for spam.

> ... And it would receive much less than that if the USPS wasn't mostly a delivery network for spam. A few years ago, I lived in Boston and traveled a lot of short trips for work. When I'd get back, my mailbox would always be crammed full of junk, crushing my mail. One day, I ran into my postman, and I said, "Hey there, I travel a lot, I'm not gone long, but my mail gets crushed. Can I just leave a sticky note here…

The shipper is the paying customer here, not the person who receives the mail. How would you like it if the post office decided they didn't want to deliver something you mailed out? Or maybe you want them to start collecting money in exchange for not delivering mail? But only some mail - how are they supposed to know which you (and everybody else) want delivered? Can you imagine how expensive keeping a detailed list of what not to deliver to what address would be?

Re: “There is no longer enough mail to sustain six days of delivery.”

#163

Post by billswift »

tsally wrote: post #41
cwan wrote: post #2

While I don't doubt volumes have fallen as a result of things like email, the US postal service also hasn't done itself any favors. You read anecdotes like this, and it's a wonder that volumes haven't plummeted even faster: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/04/things-a...

Every time the US postal service comes up in discussion, someone invariably mentions how life would be so much better if the service was privatized. I think this argument represents a fundamental misunderstanding of public services; the post office is perhaps the canonical example of an extremely important service that only can exist in the public sector. As others have mentioned already ( http://news.ycombinator.com…

>a particular service is essential to a civilized society the service belongs in the public sector

Like health care, manufacturing, transportation, agriculture, indeed everything? Welcome to the World Soviet, comrade!

Re: “There is no longer enough mail to sustain six days of delivery.”

#164

Post by bestes »

shade wrote: post #116
mrj wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they supported closed captioning, that would be more of an option for all of us.

Seriously. If Netflix instant streaming and the iTunes TV store supported closed-captioning, I'd seriously consider canceling my cable TV and going with those. Unfortunately, I'm starting to think the only thing that's going to get consistent CC support in online video is a mandate from the federal government -- that was what it took in the early 90s to get caption decoders included in every TV 13" or larger.

This is one of the few cases where I think making a law would be a good thing. It sucks that things like closed-captioning have to be forced, but it seems they rarely happen naturally. Maybe because everyone knows the law is coming, so why bother (because you will have to change your scheme)?

Re: “There is no longer enough mail to sustain six days of delivery.”

#165

Post by Kaizyn »

dmhouse wrote: post #140
cookiecaper wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure they just pay the Post Office to put ads in every PO Box there.

Would there not have been an address on the mail?

US Postal makes money delivering marketing materials from local businesses (supermarkets and the like) to P.O. Boxes. They also offer no way to let you opt out of this.

Re: “There is no longer enough mail to sustain six days of delivery.”

#166

Post by SapphireSun »

solutionyogi wrote: post #117
btipling wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USPS by law has to be profitable. It is not funded by taxes. (Although when there is a budget shortfall the government helps pay its bills.)

Law does not make reality. If it did, Obama can tomorrow sign a law saying that Government will reduce spending by 50% while providing more services. Obviously, the real life(TM) will safely ignore the law. And I don't see a difference between whether USPS is directly funded by taxpayer dollars OR taxpayer are on the hook for unpaid USPS bills.

Maybe people get fired if it goes into debt?

Re: “There is no longer enough mail to sustain six days of delivery.”

#167

Post by SapphireSun »

hnal943 wrote: post #124
tsally wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the essential service is mail delivery under a dollar to anywhere in the United States. That is a fundamentally different service than what is provided by Fedex or UPS.

Simply because it's different doesn't mean it's essential. Is there an inalienable right to mail delivery whose rate structure ignores distance? Why doesn't the same right protect people from paying a premium for mailing heavy objects?

Think of how revolutionary the internet is. The post office is the old version of the internet.

Re: “There is no longer enough mail to sustain six days of delivery.”

#168

Post by garply »

dustingetz wrote: post #73

"Ten years ago, the average household received five pieces of mail every day. Today, it receives four pieces and by 2020, that number will fall to three." It ain't linear, buddy.

Why not? I could see mail sending / receiving to be highly correlated with age, which is linear.

Re: “There is no longer enough mail to sustain six days of delivery.”

#169

Post by petercooper »

metachor wrote: post #126
petercooper wrote: post #17

Awesome. I never saw why the mail system should work longer than the normal working week anyway. Hopefully the UK will go the same way sometime soon. The threat of having mail turn up on a Saturday (that you might need to wait in for) isn't worth it.

And this is opposed to the threat of having mail that needs to be signed-for turn up at your house only on a weekday while you are at work. Currently I can tell USPS to just deliver it again when I know I will be home (on Saturday).

And this is opposed to the threat of having mail that needs to be signed-for turn up at your house only on a weekday while you are at work.

Surely this is a universal and solved problem though? Most couriers (e.g. for most larger/heavier items you'd buy online) will not deliver on Saturday unless you pay quite a bit extra, so weekday-only delivery is already an institution of sorts.

That aside, maybe your issue is, secretly, USPS's primary motivation. If they don't have a Saturday service at all, people like you can't request Saturday delivery and will need to go pick up your packages from the depot. That'll save them a lot of time and money.

Re: “There is no longer enough mail to sustain six days of delivery.”

#170

Post by hga »

cookiecaper wrote: post #123
aasarava wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. The late 90s really presented an opportunity to the USPS, in that the postal service could have launched an ISP service to profit off the mail that was beginning to be sent online. Today, most of the companies that send me bills or statements encourage me to get e-statements instead of paper statements, which saves the companies money -- money that used to go to USPS. If the postal service had innovated and c…

It's dubious to rely on a company's electronic records for your statements imo. They can delete or change anything they want. They can easily make an accusation that your e-mailed statement was forged. It'd be harder to make the same accusation on mailed statements, especially since most use paper with special watermarks or letterheads. I still get paper statements because it makes things less scary!

And I've never ever gotten such an offer that also includes a discount to recognize their savings and the problems you point out.

Well, come to think of it my account with Consumer Cellular is 100% paperless, that's probably their default and I'd probably have to pay to get paper from them.

(They're a great AT&T reseller for people who spend very little time using their cell phones.)

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