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Discussion Save the Post Office

13Gigatons

13Gigatons

Diamond Member
The Post Office is actually in good shape if you remove the $161 billion in unfunded future obligations.

Congress in 2006 forced the Post Office to pre-fund 75 years post-retirement healthcare costs over a 10 year period. Something that no company can actually do. This was done to kill off the Post Office by dumb politicians.

The Post Office actual debt is $13.2 Billion (2018)....down from $15 Billion in 2017.

The Post Office can't raise it's prices without Congress approval and they don't live off of taxes either.

The Post Office is forced to deliver to 100% of homes....they can't cherry pick like Fedex and UPS.

Fedex & UPS still use the Post Office to make final deliveries to areas they don't serve.

The Post Office has 600,000 employees.

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I personally like the Post Office and don't want to pay $5 to send a first class letter. They also ship packages at lower rates.
 
The government won't let the USPS fail, because it's simply too big and too critical for US infrastructure to do so. It doesn't need "saving"... they'll get bailed out or will be allowed to raise prices before they have to start shutting down major processing facilities. Actually, I'd imagine that Trump would actually be OK with the USPS raising rates, since that hurts Amazon's profit margins by increasing their shipping costs.

But, hey... buying "Forever" stamps is never a bad idea. They'll always hold their value!
 
I think the USPS and mail delivery as an expected superposition of the US Federal government needs to move to a once per week delivery service. You accept it, or go with the competition. When I look at the measures the wife and I have taken over the years to combat piss-poor delivery service by the USPS, we now get actual mail that means something to us maybe once every couple of weeks. This is usually the result of a lone entity that refused to provide paperless options, such as our mortgage holder. Hell, they won't even let us use our USPS post office box and require the residential address.

I also think the USPS as a delivery system is abused by some businesses for the expressed activity of sales advertising. Bulk Mail is used because it is so cheap. I can go ten days in a row and only get flyers for pizza, etc., etc., etc. and that costs the USPS to drive by my home every day to deliver nothing but bulk mail going directly into the recycle bin. I say get rid of Bulk Mail and increase its costs by 5X and see what happens. I bet most people would be OK with mail being delivered every other day instead of daily, too, but the option just isn't put up for public comment.
 
BarkingGhostar said:
I think the USPS and mail delivery as an expected superposition of the US Federal government needs to move to a once per week delivery service. You accept it, or go with the competition. When I look at the measures the wife and I have taken over the years to combat piss-poor delivery service by the USPS, we now get actual mail that means something to us maybe once every couple of weeks. This is usually the result of a lone entity that refused to provide paperless options, such as our mortgage holder. Hell, they won't even let us use our USPS post office box and require the residential address.

I also think the USPS as a delivery system is abused by some businesses for the expressed activity of sales advertising. Bulk Mail is used because it is so cheap. I can go ten days in a row and only get flyers for pizza, etc., etc., etc. and that costs the USPS to drive by my home every day to deliver nothing but bulk mail going directly into the recycle bin. I say get rid of Bulk Mail and increase its costs by 5X and see what happens. I bet most people would be OK with mail being delivered every other day instead of daily, too, but the option just isn't put up for public comment.
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Sadly people have opinions like this...if something is unnecessary for them they feel it should not exist or should be reduced. For me the very opposite. I would like mail twice per day at 7am and 7pm.
 
13Gigatons said:
Sadly people have opinions like this...if something is unnecessary for them they feel it should not exist or should be reduced. For me the very opposite. I would like mail twice per day at 7am and 7pm.
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so what kind of mail do you receive? i only care about the packages, once a week for letters is fine with me i usually pay all my bills months in advance.
 
13Gigatons said:
The Post Office is forced to deliver to 100% of homes....they can't cherry pick like Fedex and UPS.
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Untrue! They don't deliver to my home. They deliver to a post office near my home, or to boxes on the street near my home (but not on my property), but they don't deliver to my home proper. Oddly, Fedex and UPS do deliver to my home.
 
I ordered a couple of books of "American Flag" Forever Stamps. I guess I didn't realize that they take "Forever" to get to you, hence the name. 😛

Ordered last week, they were shipped out of Kansas City, MO, and seemingly, they got lost in KS, MO, according to the tracking. "In transit, in the postal system." For days. Yay me.

Trying to avoid the Pandemic and the Stupids, I should probably have just bought some at the grocery store when I went today.

Heaven Forbid, that the USPS do something LOGICAL, like send a couple of books of stamps from our local P.O. with the mail carrier, and he/they could just leave it in my mailbox. 🙁

TL;DR: Why does it take more than a couple of days, to order stamps on the USPS website, and get them delivered by the local mail carrier? Should be no-brainer!
 
Why does the USPS need to deliver 6-days a week? Lets scale this back to 4-5 days a week and save some serious cash.

Did the USPS resolve their issue with delivering Chinese/foreign packages for ~1-cent?
 
13Gigatons said:
Sadly people have opinions like this...if something is unnecessary for them they feel it should not exist or should be reduced. For me the very opposite. I would like mail twice per day at 7am and 7pm.
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Well, maybe you get good service from the USPS but I sure as hell don't and haven't for the 19 years I've been living in the same address. There has been only one reliable agent and she gave up with the annex and moved. She couldn't even tolerate the bad work ethics of that sorting office and the mail carriers therein. Why would I want to support that? Why the fuck would you? Again, you must have good srvice. But I'd rather have less frequent poor deliveries than more.
 
UPS and FedEx make the trek up my tiring driveway to drop off, USPS doesn't. Any box that won't fit in my mailbox I have to go pickup.

That being said, I still use USPS as my go to carrier.
 
Never had any problems with USPS, UPS, or FedEx around here. I bake a batch of cookies for my postman every Christmas, and everyone at the local USPS office is very nice.

They all either leave packages on my front porch or down by the garage.
 
VirtualLarry said:
Heaven Forbid, that the USPS do something LOGICAL, like send a couple of books of stamps from our local P.O. with the mail carrier, and he/they could just leave it in my mailbox. 🙁

TL;DR: Why does it take more than a couple of days, to order stamps on the USPS website, and get them delivered by the local mail carrier? Should be no-brainer!
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Are you sure they don't? I'm sure everyplace is different but i can. They actually gave me a stamp P.O. envelope to use to reorder stamps if i need to. But i also feel safe leaving $$ in in too.

edit-
Put a note in your mailbox asking if they will deliver to you.
I'm in a rural area so that might be the reason too.
 
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When the Harper regime was in power here they were trying to kill off Canada Post. Thankfully that stopped once Trudeau came in. Some people did lose local mail delivery over it though as I don't know if they rolled back the changes. Basically they wanted to get rid of home mail delivery. That was probably the first step. Thing is Canada Post is actually more or less self reliant. It's a crown corporation but it does not really rely on taxes.
 
Spacehead said:
edit-
Put a note in your mailbox asking if they will deliver to you.
I'm in a rural area so that might be the reason too.
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Yeah, my friend and I both ordered some books of stamps on usps.com, then he got a big orange envelope from his "rural carrier", saying that if he needed "X" (stamps, stamped envelopes, postcards, etc.), to just leave the money in the envelope and leave it in his mailbox.

I didn't get one of those.

Both of our USPS.com orders, were coming out of their K.C., MO distribution center. Hopefully I'll get mine today.

Edit: Wow, really fancy. Prority Mail envelope (well, it's the Post Office, shouldn't "cost" them anything, really, extra to mail it Priority I guess), with an invoice sheet, a cardboard stiffener, and two small books of 20 stamps ea. Which would have fit easily in a letter-sized envelope, and probable would have been easier to just send them from the local P.O. with our letter carrier, to put into my mailbox. Sigh. Complete overkill by the USPS.
 
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MtnMan said:
I did not say the post office would fail, but if it comes down to that, Trump WILL let it fail.
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Your opinion is that Trump would allow the USPS to fail.
My opinion is that Trump would not allow the USPS to fail.

Do you see the problem here? Opinions are like yada yada ...
 
Sgt. York said:
Your opinion is that Trump would allow the USPS to fail.
My opinion is that Trump would not allow the USPS to fail.

Do you see the problem here? Opinions are like yada yada ...
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Well screw on your MAGA hat real tight and watch.
 
Sgt. York said:
You are making an assumption based on zero data.
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No, it's based on Trump, and his desperation to be re-elected at any cost. He is a ruthless man with no redeeming qualities.

On new years day, would you have ever guessed that when Trump was told of a possible pandemic he would call it a democratic hoax to get him out of office, then go play golf?
 
MtnMan said:
No, it's based on Trump, and his desperation to be re-elected at any cost. He is a ruthless man with no redeeming qualities.

On new years day, would you have ever guessed that when Trump was told of a possible pandemic he would call it a democratic hoax to get him out of office, then go play golf?
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Not everything is about Trump - for most of us. Thankfully, most of us don't harbor as much hate as you do. If I stub my toe I don't blame Trump. Can you say the same?
 
they'll probably need to get rid of the pensions to fix the problem

employees are going to be screwed, but that's going to happen a lot with pensions everywhere
 
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