Anybody really care about slower Snail Mail?

The Post Office announced yesterday that next-day mail may soon be a thing of the past. Here are a few clips from a Reuters article titled "U.S. Postal Service seeks to end next-day mail":
The cash-strapped U.S. Postal Service on Monday moved forward with plans to end next-day delivery of letters, postcards and other First Class mail. In a notice filed with its regulator, it also sought approval to close more than half of its 461 processing facilities that have been critical for next-day delivery.
...
U.S. Postal Service (USPS), which does not receive any tax payer money and relies solely on the sale of postage and other products to fund its operations, sees reducing its network of post offices and processing plants as crucial as consumers increasingly pay bills online and correspond by email.

"The fact of the matter is our network is too big. We've got more capacity in our network than we can afford," David Williams, USPS vice president for network operations, told reporters on Monday.

"More importantly, we've got to set our network up so that when volume continues to drop, our network is nimble and flexible enough to respond to those volume losses."
I am glad that the USPS is making these adjustments. Delayed delivery does not concern me at all with one exception - Netflix. Once these changes are implemented I will most likely either cancel my Netflix account or try the streaming service again. Other than that I cannot even imagine how the changes will affect me. Maybe I will have to drive further the one or two times a year I visit the post office? Will the changes affect you? Do you care about the changes?


2 comments:

  1. Hi Bob,

    I doubt the cut backs will affect me too much, but there are millions in rural America who will be hit very hard. In many small communities, people actually go to the local post office daily to pick up their mail because there is no home delivery. If their post offices are closed, where and how far will they have to go to get their mail? And then there are those who can't drive, such as many elderly folks whom have given up the car keys, but still live reasonably independently in their own homes. And many of those same folks don't have a computer or dependable internet service available to them.

    A big part of the reason the post office is in dire straits is the same thing that makes us cringe whenever we have to fill our gas tanks. However the postal service can't automaticly increase postage costs to cover fuel price increases like the air lines or other delivery companies like FedEx, DHL, or UPS can. We may not be supporting the post office with tax money, but our government still tells it how much it can charge for delivering our mail. Can you imagine our government telling Apple how much it can change for an IPad? or HP for a computer? Yet it tells a non-taxpayer funded service what it can charge for delivering a product we all still want. Talk about the worst of both worlds...........:(

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  2. @CR - Great points! I would be in favor of congressional changes that would help the Post Office out by allowing them to jack up rates on mail. I think that the reasons for a lot of the govt control is that mail delivery is the only legal way that people get things like tax bills and the like. Wonder how many of those small town offices will be closed and I wonder what the plan is for those places? Should be intersting to see how it gets rolled out.

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