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Tech experts, including Google, to discuss future of the USPS

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Tech experts, including Google, to discuss future of the USPS

#21

Post by suking »

IgorPartola wrote: post #14

The 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…

A better solution would be mailboxes all in one area for the neighborhood. Eliminate door to door.

Re: Tech experts, including Google, to discuss future of the USPS

#22

Post by IgorPartola »

suking wrote: post #21
IgorPartola wrote: post #14

The 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…

A better solution would be mailboxes all in one area for the neighborhood. Eliminate door to door.

That could be the intermediary solution. Or a neighborhood could get together and deliver from post office to the neighborhood boxes via a third-party delivery provider. I think that we cannot completely eliminate door to door. There are lots of people out there that are not able to make the trip even down the street to the community mailbox and that rely on the mail system daily. However, saying that door to door delivery is a premium service would at least help USPS not go bankrupt.

Re: Tech experts, including Google, to discuss future of the USPS

#23

Post by protomyth »

cullenking wrote: post #19

From 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. Le…

The USPS makes money on the spam/junk mail and packages, not on letters. The profit incentive for them is not the same as their customers desires.

Re: Tech experts, including Google, to discuss future of the USPS

#24

Post by jcampbell1 »

IgorPartola wrote: post #14

The 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…

The post office already can and does get this efficiency with community mailboxes. My grandmother and I both use a key to get our mail from a large mail drop. She lives in an newly constructed old person neighborhood in rural Florida, and I live in a Manhattan apartment building. My parents get their mail delivered by car to a personal mailbox. I agree with your suggestion, but how do we get existing neighborhoods to build a mail drop? Who pays for it? Who maintains the keyed mailboxes? My parents would be completely okay with having a mail drop and picking their mail up at the entrance to the neighborhood, but I don't think they are interested paying to build it.

I think we should combine some of the ideas:

If your neighborhood has community mailboxes, then you get mail every day. If you have personal mailboxes, then you get mail 3 days per week. If you want mail everyday, then organize your neighborhood to have a community mailbox.

Re: Tech experts, including Google, to discuss future of the USPS

#25

Post by cosmicray »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #20

One 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).

That doesn't reduce the mail volume. Then you would have to store the mail somewhere, and still have the same amount to sort. So on the days when they did deliver, it would take longer to sort it.

Re: Tech experts, including Google, to discuss future of the USPS

#26

Post by cosmicray »

DanI-S wrote: post #13
hooande wrote: post #2

What 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

> Dead tree mail isn't dead just yet; they definitely have enough time to figure out a plan.

Traditional printed mail (flats, letters, etc) will not go away until every person has an iPad (or equivalent) and has broadband. Many many areas of the US are still without broadband access.

Re: Tech experts, including Google, to discuss future of the USPS

#27

Post by ender7 »

Anyone complaining about USPS quality of service should really travel to other countries. From my experience in Europe and elsewhere, USPS knocks it out of the park.

One of the reasons that USPS is a national monopoly is that it provides an important piece of national infrastructure. I don't see how that is going to be replaced, as many features of federal and local government depend on systems for reliably sending citizens messages, such as censuses, legal notifications such as court summons, drafts, various aspects of voting and elections, information and notices from local governments, etc.

Most of these depend on every citizen being reachable by mail, which is in the USPS's charter, and which causes a lot of overhead. If the USPS goes away, private companies will not provide service to everyone. I have no idea how these systems will continue function (e-mail is, for various reasons, not an acceptable solution at the moment).

I would love for USPS to develop alternate forms of income in order to essentially "pay for" traditional mail delivery. I'm not sure it's in their DNA though.

Re: Tech experts, including Google, to discuss future of the USPS

#28

Post by cosmicray »

IgorPartola wrote: post #14

The 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…

> If you want your mail delivered to your door, then you can pay extra. Otherwise pick it up yourself.

The funny part of that is, that is the inverse of how it is now. The post office charges for PO Box rental [0], but delivers to your house for free. Keep in mind that most post offices do not have sufficient PO Box numbers to cover all teh points they currently deliver to.

[0] the exception being those places with insufficient density to justify street/rural delivery. In those places the customers must travel to the post office to collect their mail, and they get the PO Box for free.

Re: Tech experts, including Google, to discuss future of the USPS

#29

Post by io »

IgorPartola wrote: post #14

The 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…

You want me to pay extra for the privilege of having junk mail delivered? I can't see this being a very popular option. Sorting through the junk to make sure I catch the rare piece of important mail is a chore. I would pay extra to opt out of all mass mailings, and have the occasional piece of actual mail delivered. They'd probably only have to open my mailbox 5-6 times a month. Win-win.

Re: Tech experts, including Google, to discuss future of the USPS

#30

Post by hexis »

cosmicray wrote: post #25
yummyfajitas wrote: post #20

One 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).

That doesn't reduce the mail volume. Then you would have to store the mail somewhere, and still have the same amount to sort. So on the days when they did deliver, it would take longer to sort it.

I think one of the premises of the OP was that mail volume will be declining over time due to digital communication.
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