Goodnight, Sweet Prince

Quote :

"U.S. post has $2.2 billion loss, warns of Sept insolvency http://tinyurl.com/5roun76 "

5/10/2011 11:10:29 PM

good news for pigeons

5/10/2011 11:11:44 PM

"show me where the constitution says the federal government should be delivering mail!"

5/10/2011 11:12:00 PM

moar like


Good night, sweet prince.

5/10/2011 11:13:08 PM

lol, much better

5/10/2011 11:15:28 PM

Like most government run agencies, when it comes time for this one to go the biggest concern will be what about all of the employees who have spent their career working toward guaranteed pensions and retirement benefits....not is the service they provide actually essential or being carried out efficiently.

It is a legitimate concern for those people, it would be BS to just lay them off after they kept a job most of their life planning on the benefits. The other side of it is people get screwed all of the time in the private sector....

I think the USPS and all of its assets should be auctioned off to private companies. The financial institutions need to come together and create a standard system for companies to send secure bills and accept payments online. (maybe with some government prodding) Managing and Paying bills online is a clusterfuck now.

If people still want to get invoices and notifications by printed mail they should be paying the actual cost of that service.

5/10/2011 11:24:16 PM

bailout

5/10/2011 11:26:06 PM

^^they usually have a cutoff. but that also screws a lot of people. really sucks for the guy that has worked there 19 years and 10 months when the cutoff to get a pension is 20 years.

5/10/2011 11:33:55 PM

bankruptcy->restructure union agreements->reopen 3 days later->report a profit next quarter without changing prices

USPS doesn't do 90% of the mailing these days anyway - just the delivery. Mail Innovations (owned by UPS) handles all their bulk mailing - which is shipped from origin (like your banks statement printing place) to zip destination on UPS trucks, planes, and people. It's only the last mile that the USPS gets involved.

Packages and small volume mailing is the only thing they do anymore, and they're terrible at packages and mediocre at best on the letters.

5/10/2011 11:40:57 PM

I'm pretty sure this is a fall out from all credit card companies, utilities, and government converting to e-statements and saving a shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitload of paper and postage costs.


As far as I know, Fed Ex and UPS are still in the game by not doing single letter mail.

If USPS fails, they'll have to pick up the slack.


On the other hand, the USPS could use a better, more efficient president. Get rid of door-to-door mail and put one box at the end of the street. That'll save a boatload of labor costs right there.

All the labels they give out for free... charge for em. Hey.. it costs them money, too.

Do a better job at getting rid of lines. I'm tired of waiting 1 hour to ship a fucking package. More people will come if you eliminate the wait time.

[Edited on May 10, 2011 at 11:45 PM. Reason : .]

5/10/2011 11:43:51 PM

I spend $10-100 daily with the USPS and they wont even come to my door to pick up my packages.

But all the processing is done online and I drop the packages at the counter, no waiting in lines like you lowly citizens.

5/11/2011 7:51:51 AM

LET IT CRASH AND BURN

government sucks at running successful business; let someone who knows what they're doing handle this. sucks for the usps employees, but welcome to the real world of true job and benefits insecurity.

5/11/2011 7:53:25 AM

Quote :

"I think the USPS and all of its assets should be auctioned off to private companies."

the USPS is a private company

well, sort of

5/11/2011 7:54:52 AM

Lets see if UPS can send a letter across the country in 2 days for the price of a stamp

5/11/2011 9:24:35 AM

^ of course it can't...currently, anyway

if you were to take the USPS out of the equation and a company like fedex or UPS were awarded a (year-long? two?) contract to handle home mail service, the rates likely wouldn't be much higher...obviously they'd have to go up (i mean, the USPS is bankrupt, so $0.44 just ain't gonna cut it), but i have more faith in fedex/UPS because their company's reputation (and contract) would be on the line...the USPS doesn't care because as it stands right now, it doesn't matter if anyone likes them or not

5/11/2011 9:31:00 AM

Well I think the price of sending a letter is the downfall of USPS. They are trying to do so much, distribute so much in so little time that they can't possibly make any money off of it. If it costs someone $1 or $2 to send a letter, that will effectively eliminate anyone from sending casual letters, catalogs, newsletters, paper bills, etc - it just wouldn't be cost effective. The company simply just would not have an option for that form of communication. That would leave certified mail as the only reason to have these giant fleets of mail delivering vehicles.

5/11/2011 9:36:20 AM

i was expecting a picture of ups or fedex

5/11/2011 9:48:24 AM

We going to see a bunch of disgruntled postal workers shooting up shit now??

5/11/2011 9:58:34 AM

my opinion (based on nothing but speculation, assumptions, and what seems to just make "sense") is for the USPS to become nothing more than a local delivery service

essentially, fedex/UPS manages the backbone delivery to more localized hubs, after which the USPS handles the local delivery

they already do this with smartpost or whatever it is that (fedex?) uses for their special discount-rate delivery service...i think it might make sense to make that a permanent business model

5/11/2011 10:05:45 AM

Maybe whoever takes it over will make their tracking work. Most times I just want a blue box I can drop my post card in.

5/11/2011 10:11:52 AM

they're not allowed to cut service and they're not allowed to substantially raise rate. costs will grow faster than revenue for the foreseeable future. no amount of restructuring will change that.

5/11/2011 10:14:26 AM

yeah, their tracking has always sucked donkey balls...though it's gotten better, if not "good," in the past year or so

the local delivery infrastructure is there...the fact that UPS, fedex, and the USPS all make the same general rounds is a waste of resources and time

if nothing else, using the USPS to deliver smaller packages and letters on a local level, while allowing one of the other two to handle only medium-to-large packages would improve efficiency (in my head, anyway)

5/11/2011 10:15:11 AM

They really need to cut jobs. I live ~15 miles from the closest city/town and on the main road to get there I will pass 4 post offices, none bigger than about a 20' x 20' building. Each one of these post offices has a fulltime postmaster and at least 2 part time employees.

There is absolutely no need for that amount of rural post offices any more. Until they man up and cut needless jobs they will not come anywhere near breaking even.

5/11/2011 10:24:29 AM

you should write them and let them know of your insightful suggestions to layoff employees

5/11/2011 10:28:31 AM

#imjustsayin

5/11/2011 10:30:35 AM

Oh noes!! How will I now get my credit card offers and random junk flyers delivered to me???

5/11/2011 10:37:55 AM

I sent a letter priority from New Bern to Newport the other day because I thought it would be handled more efficiently than regular first class (25mi). I realize there are designated hubs and such, but this just seems ridiculous.

New Bern (4/29) > Fayetteville (4/29) > Asheville (5/2) > Newport (5/4)

5/11/2011 10:39:07 AM

Quote :

"We going to see a bunch of disgruntled postal workers shooting up shit now??"

OH WAIT

5/11/2011 10:41:41 AM

here's what REALLY happened: message_topic.aspx?topic=606059

5/11/2011 10:48:27 AM

lol

5/11/2011 10:59:23 AM