USPS: "We can't" culture at its finest. How to restore mail service?

[BaronHK]

The US Post Office is not what it used to be!

That's what happens when they sledgehammer the mail sorting machines and close down the mail processing centers and turn "three day guarantee" into "You have to mail the rent check on the 20th to make sure it gets there by the 1st."

A lot of it is just what you expect when you let a business man that competes with USPS become the Postmaster.

Congress will probably just sell it off at some point, at a loss, but first they want to make us pay to upgrade the mail delivery fleet so that whoever gets it takes that. That's why they're upgrading all the Grumman LLV all of a sudden, I think. That was supposed be done twice already. The replacements for the replacements should have arrived.

9 mpg, 0-60 eventually, and no air conditioner. Just what you'd expect out of GM in the 80s.

 

[Triple_Se7en]

It appears as-if the government wants Americans to do more online mailing....... or better yet, do it 100% of the time, when dealing with the same bills and mailings every month. The new Sheriff wants to reduce USPS size, so don't expect physical 'in your face' Services to get any better. If anything, they will get worse and you will want to switch to online mails even sooner.

Packages are another story. The Sheriff may eventually privatize that portion of the USPS business and get completely out of it.

 

[PandaBear]

We can at a higher cost and lowered service quality. To be honest we probably don't need to deliver to every address in the US with 3 day first class mail Mon-Sat. If we relax the quality to every 2-3 days for regular first class mail we can deliver better quality to the rest of the system without raising postage too high.

Package wise they did pretty good for the price, I have no complain other than the same one as everyone else: stolen packages.

 

[opus1]

...I do have to echo Astro's question, why not just get a PO box. Annoying to run to town but if the road is just that unsafe, then ditch the box. One less thing to deal with in winter (digging out the mailbox). Been a while since I had a box but I recall the hours being more generous than for the desk.

Like may things in life, it depends. Where I live, the PO Lobbies are almost all 24x7 access so a box is always accessible. I'm currently dealing with a situation where I had to rent a box in the town Mom lives and it's not a 24x7 lobby - in fact, the lobby isn't always open during the hours posted on the door saying that it's open.

And they're not cheap to rent.

 

[y_p_w]

We can at a higher cost and lowered service quality. To be honest we probably don't need to deliver to every address in the US with 3 day first class mail Mon-Sat. If we relax the quality to every 2-3 days for regular first class mail we can deliver better quality to the rest of the system without raising postage too high.

Package wise they did pretty good for the price, I have no complain other than the same one as everyone else: stolen packages.

A disproportionate amount of money is spent on providing rural service and keeping rural post offices open. It's not that hard to understand. FedEx and UPS charge extra to delivery to rural addresses. And it's not necessarily just the distance traveled, but that they won't necessarily be able to delivery to as many addresses on a route.

Not sure how Amazon does it. I heard that for rural deliveries they'll often use USPS for last mile, and a lot of people have complained about delivery time being really high. But there's talk about a push for Amazon to take more rural delivery routes. My understanding is that Amazon and other ecommerce keeps USPS afloat to some degree. They may also consolidate different shipments to rural locations as to minimize the number of trips needed with their shipping contractors that move bulk shipments. A lot of the USPS usage by Amazon is for "last mile" where the shipping contractor just sends it to the USPS where it's less expensive for USPS to do the last mile rather than have an army of Amazon delivery drivers servicing rural areas.

 

[PandaBear]

...Not sure how Amazon does it...

I can only tell you a bit of what I know. They know your address vs other people's address and when they don't want to sell you something because they don't make money on your route, they don't target your in their advertising and listing.

Not everyone sees the same stock number when something is in low / no supply. They show different inventory level to different customers and that reduces their cost and increase their profits.

I do know there are lots of complain from Alaskan Prime members not getting what they ordered on time from Prime, and they prefer USPS instead.

 

[TimeFlies]

I'm not in the States, but Western Canada.
I live well outside of town limits, and well off the highway to.
Canada post, I would rank at 1 out of 10 here, and my mail is dropped at a box nowhere near my home, not even on my long road, but way far away.
Amazon is amazing though, and is at my house usually 3 or 4 days a week, often stuff arrives ahead of schedule, but very rarely are they late. Doesn't matter who the driver is, they are always polite, friendly, and even my dog loves them.
I can't think of 1 time in the last 1000 items that I got from Amazon, where I would rate the driver lower than a 9.5 out of 10, usually 10 out of 10. Occasionally a product isn't right, but that isn't the drivers fault.
If Canada post closed their doors, that would be a great thing, and make room for a good company to step in and replace them. As for Amazon though, they rock!

 

[Owen Lucas]

Meh, auction off the USPS facilities to a private equity firm. At least we won't be using taxpayer funds anymore for all this malfeasance and incompetence.

The problem with this is the cost of a letter could very well 10X. I don't think the economy could take such a hit though, mail should be cheap. I don't care if it is subsidized. DOGE is saving so much $$$ that the there appears to be more than enough to help out the USPS if need be.

Can the employees use some customer service training and maybe some delivery optimization? Sure.

 

[Hohn]

The problem with this is the cost of a letter could very well 10X. I don't think the economy could take such a hit though, mail should be cheap. I don't care if it is subsidized. DOGE is saving so much $$$ that the there appears to be more than enough to help out the USPS if need be.

Can the employees use some customer service training and maybe some delivery optimization? Sure.

Mail is too cheap, that’s why they can afford to send me piles of junk I didn’t ask for.

 

[Owen Lucas]

Mail is too cheap, that’s why they can afford to send me piles of junk I didn’t ask for.

USPS opt out, maybe this can help.

https://faq.usps.com/s/article/Refuse-unwanted-mail-and-remove-name-from-mailing-lists

 

[paulo57509]

We have those cluster boxes in the neighborhood. They leave a key to the parcel box in your mail box when there's a parcel for you.

The key doesn't open the parcel box.

Left a note for the mail carrier; no response.

I go to the post office; they want me to bring them the parcel box key.

I bring them the key. They ask me for my address. My address is handled by the annex and they want me to take the parcel box key across town.

No, I'm not doing that. It's not my job.

 

[SwampSurvivor]

We had a recent fight with the post office about this. The postmaster's solution was to return all of our mail to sender (for over a month) and to refuse delivery to our address indefinitely.

We stopped receiving mail early December. There was no snow on the ground.

Multiple calls, etc returned no result. The mail carrier would open our box every day but never put anything in.

Finally after we got 18'' of snow overnight they send someone out and say the box isn't clear.

OK - but was the reason why we stopped getting mail earlier in December? They had no reason.

 

[Pablo]

And was going to post FedEx had passed up USPS in chicanery.

 

[Owen Lucas]

We had a recent fight with the post office about this. The postmaster's solution was to return all of our mail to sender (for over a month) and to refuse delivery to our address indefinitely.

We stopped receiving mail early December. There was no snow on the ground.

Multiple calls, etc returned no result. The mail carrier would open our box every day but never put anything in.

Finally after we got 18'' of snow overnight they send someone out and say the box isn't clear.

OK - but was the reason why we stopped getting mail earlier in December? They had no reason.

One must give their mail carrier at least a $50 Christmas card. Got to keep the LLV driver happy, working for the USPS ain't easy and demoralizing from what I hear.

And when you have a problem, you must approach them like the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld, very carefully, or NO MAIL FOR YOU!!!

 

[PWMDMD]

I swore off Blackstone but have a couple tests that I already purchased. I normally would assume this was BS's issue but going on two weeks for First Class mail to reach Indiana from Massachusetts?