OT: Future of the USPS

We've all heard the media's "talking head" opinion in the impending USPS "crisis", but I wanted to see what my fellow printers thought. It could be disastrous for envelope manufacturers, and of course direct mail shops. What's your thoughts?

I'll start out by saying it can't be allowed to fail, it's in the constitution. I do think it's time for a major overhaul. They can stop Saturday delivery for businesses, but for residential it's hit or miss. Saturday post office hours should be extended for picking up packages for residential customers if Saturday delivery is stopped all together. They need to close small municipal post offices in favor of "drug store branches", like how it used to be. They should increase first class stamped postage, but not bulk metered mail. If anything they should lower machinable mail a little bit to encourage more mailings.

 

I think they are trying to fail

For standard rate / bulk mail, as volume goes down, price goes up, volume goes down, price goes up. But their route is still the same delivery distance even as less stops are made along the way, so same fuel, etc. Their costs go up, prices go up, volume goes down, price goes up more, volume goes down more... I think they are pricing themselves and downsizing themselves out of business.

Also the delivery times and reliability of bulk / standard rate mail are getting worse or at least not getting better.

More flexible media rate; faster standard rate; better standard mail rates to encourage volume - these things could make the business work again.

 

Its always amazed me how an organization that does not care about its customers, can survive. You are not a customer to USPS you are a bother on a good day. Why would I want to pay for crummy service, and poor attitudes. This organization has had the infrastructure to move packages for a long time, they just chose to never use it, now its caught up... too bad.

 

Yes, I couldn't agree more HPC.

It's frustrating because there isn't another option to deliver a letter size or magazine item right now. So the USPS putting themselves out of business is also hurting my business.

I think they were worried about email and web putting them out of business. I'm sure that would make a dent.
But it seems to me the delivery time and atmosphere at the post office has cost them more business. My customers who like a tactile product that they can hold in their hands can't get their mail on time any more as it's gotten slower and slower.
It used to be the post office was a friendly place with a nice atmosphere to get your mail and news. Now it's like an impersonal machine that has thinks it's going out of business... and if you think that, you're usually right
Machine sorting seems to damage more pieces now than in the past.
For cards that want to be hand stamped, sometimes you can't even get the stamps any more. How does that make any sense? How hard is it to print plenty of each new stamp before you increase the rate?!? Rather than having stamps at the post office a month after and expecting people to use 1 cent stamps. Oh, on that note, you can't even get the right stamps for each weight plateau, so you have to use two different stamps.
It seems on the stamp side they are more interested in selling non-postage stamps for collecting only, and don't have any selection or even availability sometimes of stamps actually used for postage! And many of the nice ones, when actually available, are only on sheets with lots of non-stamp background to "find the stamp somewhere in there" and not available on rolls, so difficult to use.

 

Its interesting that in the past few months the USPS has been running television ads aimed at business owners, with the message that customers like paper bills, while at the same time making it harder and more expensive for those business owners to mail that paper bill.