We’re told that the U.S. Postal Service is taking another step down the road to extinction: not only will they raise the price of a first-class stamp to 45 cents, they’ll no longer even try to deliver first-class mail in a timely way.
But never fear: all that junk mail they chuff into your mailbox for you to haul straight to the recycling bin will get to you on time!
{sigh} I’d like to say this is a real loss to America. And over time, the slow degradation of the USPS certainly has been a loss. I can remember when I used to wait with bated breath for the postman to show up. Now I just groan every afternoon at the prospect of having to retrieve and throw out another big wad of trash.
Does anybody other than junk mailers still do business with the USPS on purpose? I have only one client who persists in sending hard-copy checks. Not that I don’t appreciate the payment ( 🙂 ), but it’s a a bit of a nuisance, forcing me to waste time either scanning the check to e-deposit it or traipsing across the city to drop it off at the credit union.
Granted, I still get paper statements from the credit union, AMEX, and MasterCard. But none of those is necessary. I check my credit union statements online a lot more often than once a month, and if the credit-card issuers sent me statements by e-mail, I would bestir myself to hassle with their online sites to check charges. Truth to tell, there’s really no need to have that data printed out and mailed to me.
Now, I do love getting The Economist, Sunset, and The New York Review of Books in the mail. There are some circumstances in which little glowing letters on a screen just do not substitute for the real thing. But…as a practical matter, these days I get most of my news online. You’ll note that today’s news flash came from Bloomberg’s website, which I read three hours before the Times showed up with the same story on the front page of its business section.
The big, genuine regret here will be the loss of our postal carriers. Having these cheerful and friendly workers tooling through the neighborhood adds to the quality of our lives, at least in big cities…it’s one of the few pleasant traditions that have survived the gritty dystopianism we’ve seen over the past 50 years. Me, I haven’t been inside a post office in years—the service is so slow and the overworked staff are so unhappy, I’ll pay a little more to ship a package through UPS or FedEx. But when the day comes for the postal service to close down, I sure will miss the mail carriers.
Image: Rosarinagazo. The Postal Carrier, sculpture by Erminio Blotta y Pedro Cresta, Palacio de Correos, Rosario, Argentina. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
I use the USPS to ship the books I sell on Amazon. My local post office is staffed by an incredibly nice and incredibly helpful lady who will give me my mail early if it’s ready by the time I drop my packages off. I’m actually thinking about getting her a Christmas gift, since I’ve sent over a thousand packages through that post office this year.
That is a lovely thought. Wow! A thousand packages…you must live at the P.O.!
Wait…didn’t somebody already write that story? 😉
Probably. 🙂
I actually started selling books on Amazon not only because it’s profitable, but also because they’re so easy to ship. I can print out postage from my computer at home and get envelopes cheaply online, so all I have to do is pack the books, tape on the postage, and drop them off at the post office. They take care of the rest.
If the postal service goes away, I will be very sad.
Well, I hate to say it, but if more people had used the post office instead of FedEx and UPS, revenues would have been higher, and maybe we wouldn’t be looking at severe of cuts as you’re pointing out. I guess you get out what you put into it.
Yes. It’s too bad. But UPS will track a package, so if it goes astray you can find it faster and you have a better chance of finding it. And I’ve never encountered a rude employee at a UPS office or at any business contracting to UPS, whereas I’ve met up with enough unpleasant USPS front-office workers that I’ve developed a flinch reflex about going into a post office. Interminable lines and unhappy workers good customer service do not make.
FedEx and UPS charge more for shipping — or at least, they did at the time I quit doing business with USPS. Maybe that’s part of the issue: possibly the postal service simply isn’t charging enough to cover expenses and hire enough people to do the work without overstressing them.
I recently received goods from the United States via USPS and it took less than a week to arrive here to Ireland. I was impressed. On The odd occasion that I receive a paper cheque I use the Irish National Postal service to ‘post’ it into my bank or credit union rather than go in there personally.
@ Ash: Wow, would that be wonderful!
The last time I mailed checks to my credit union, totaling around $1,000, they LOST the damn things!
After a month, by which time it began to appear the checks had been lost by USPS, the credit union finally found them…literally on the day I was going to call my clients and tell them to stop payment and reissue their payments.
“The big, genuine regret here will be the loss of our postal carriers. Having these cheerful and friendly workers tooling through the neighborhood adds to the quality of our lives, at least in big cities…it’s one of the few pleasant traditions that have survived the gritty dystopianism we’ve seen over the past 50 years.
Ummmm I am kind curious how cheerful and friendly they would be if you start taking away their pensions and benefits that are subsidized by the tax payer pumping money into the broken system?
I don’t know. The postal workers here are so incompetent that I patronize the grocery with a non-usps staff. They make fewer errors, in spite of lower salary and no benefits.
The postal workers LIED about passport applications (said they only did it on whatever day we weren’t there)–had to call and complain about that.
Then they were in ERROR on overnight mail.
Then they neglected to hold my mail–two out of 3 requests.
Then they take too long because they initiate chats w/ customers–no matter how long the line is.
UGH.
About those paper statements from credit cards – why not go electronic? I use electronic statements for ours, and you can set up the accounts to send you an email notice of upcoming statement release, view your statements online, get emails regarding upcoming payment due dates, go online at any point to schedule your next payment, get a confirmation email about payments received/posted to your account, etc. Much more reliable, I’ve found, than the paper statements.
That said, I’ve rarely had a problem with USPS or the carriers/clerks, and I’ve lived in a number of cities & towns across the country over the past decades. Our local PO now can have interminable lines, but we can get around that by using the automated postage machine in the lobby & not only is less expensive but actually faster than going to a UPS or FedEx storefront. We use the fixed-price Priority Mail boxes a LOT for sending things to family & friends – major cost savings when we’re shipping citrus cross-country.
Our local carriers also participate in the annual Christmas parade, marching with their wheeled delivery bags, which they decorate and perch young kids (or the random dog) in.