This is some real Orwellian nonsense from the Ministry of Whatever Bullshit We Want You To Swallow. "By doing it worse we'll actually be doing it better." MmmmHmmm...

They could do away with the discounted rates currently offered for junk mail, lose that business forever, and make zero people unhappy.

I have started paying extra to use any delivery service besides USPS. They have always sucked but now they are ridiculous.

I got an email from my bank because I hadn’t activated my debit card. Checked all my cards had no idea what it was referring to. Called the bank, of course it took nearly 30 minutes to track down the card they were referring to and cancel it. Cool, problem solved. A couple weeks later guess what showed up in mailbox? The envelope had been “stuck” in their system for basically 2 months. Government pensions, fml.

I don't see how they could be much slower. More expensive, yes, but not slower.

What we see here is the Union mentality in action.

This is very similar to what Winston Churchill said, although on a smaller scale.

“I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.”

― Winston S. Churchill

We had our neighbor in Montana mail a letter to us in Florida. Simple, Right? It arrived over 3 weeks after he dropped it in the mail. Yep,,,,,3 weeks.

Seems like the obvious play is to invest in forever stamps at $0.29. The new BitCoin?

My prediction is that the Govt. will renege on its promise, and do something like require a $4 "first-class acceptance fee" to mail a letter, in addition to the forever stamp of course.

Small town near me, small post office, has two slots for outgoing mail: one for letters addressed to "in town," the other for everything else.

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:
Small town near me, small post office, has two slots for outgoing mail: one for letters addressed to "in town," the other for everything else.

Except that they most likely still send it to a distribution center for processing.

Amazon should take over the USPS...

quote:

Originally posted by BurtonRW:
For my fellow members of the bar... if First Class mail officially gets a five day window to arrive, will the state and federal court systems be similarly amending the mailbox rule?

Just a thought.

-Rob

Given its government, you really think they've thought that far ahead? Let the cluster begin....

I sent a package recently by Priority mail and it took two weeks. Don't recall where to but I was in the continental US. I ordered a knife from a guy in Wazirabad Pakistan last Thursday and got it Tuesday via DHL. That's pretty much a good picture of our postal disservice. Until recently I mailed checks to pay my bills. One is to a town 45 minutes from me and it took a month to get there. I hate USPS.

quote:

Originally posted by JoseyWales2:

quote:

Originally posted by nhtagmember:
Tucson is a particularly fun place to mail a letter.

Suppose I want to mail a letter to my neighbor - 300 feet away.

I put it in my mail box. Its picked up, taken to a station here in town. Rather than sort by zip code and recognize that its a local letter, the USPS in its infinitesimally small wisdom decides thats too much trouble.

So they ship it by truck to Phoenix, where it goes to yet another sorting facility where they recognize the zip code as being a Tucson code, so they package it up and truckm it back to Tucson - probably to the same facility that sent it to Phoenix.

The its sorted and delivered across the street.

Average time

4 days

and you wonder why they're broke and inefficient

Same thing happened in my smallish hometown. The local PO doesn't sort any local mail anymore. If a letter is mailed to an address in town, it's first shipped 100 miles away to a processing center, then it's shipped 100 miles back to the same PO, where it then goes out for delivery. No joke.
Yeah, that sounds efficient.

You realize when they used to do this, a (probably union) clerk had to physically sort each and every piece of mail that came into that office? Not only that, but you have to wait until all carriers are back to even start, so dispatch has to wait for them to finish. Now imagine a large office.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
Amazon should take over the USPS...

Hell no. Amazon can kiss my grits. No biased political organization for any public infrastructure. Last thing I need is for them to start filtering my mail - what i receive and what i can send.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
Amazon should take over the USPS...

Amazon shut down for three days because of snow... They dumped 5 times what they normally do on my office during this time, when the truck actually arrived.
At Christmas they dropped a truck load of package at my office, the wrong office. Driver refused to put them back on his truck, mid day truck came, he refused to take it too. It had to be sent to the plant to route it to the right office, they didn't pay for that. But I bet they blamed the PO on those packages being "late".
We had two giant pallets of Amazon Packages that were bad addresses, Amazon wouldn't let our people into their facility to take them back, nor would they pick them up. All this for junk mail.
Anything that is small, they don't have to mess with, anything that is large and heavy, they don't have to mess with, that's typically what they dump on the PO. They could at least learn how to properly box heavy items.
Not to mention the simple fact that Amazon ships things they sell, that's it. You can't take that sweater you made for Timmy, and take it to the local Amazon office in middle of nowhere Utah and ship it to Timmy in whatevercity, New jersey.

Priority mail parcels fly on Fedex Aircraft, but only if Fedex has enough room on that aircraft.

quote:

Originally posted by BurtonRW:
For my fellow members of the bar... if First Class mail officially gets a five day window to arrive, will the state and federal court systems be similarly amending the mailbox rule?

Just a thought.

-Rob

Everything is efiled in my state if you are a member of the bar. I imagine they will change the rule but only for pro se parties.

Maybe they should charge more for Chinese and other foreign mail. I find it amazing that you can ship stuff from china cheaper than you can locally , and it is delivered by the post. Also far cheaper than to mail something to there.
I think I read that we make a loss on every delivery from china

quote:

Originally posted by roarindan:
yesterday my rural carrier had to leave his USPS van in front of my mailbox, and walk down my driveway because he had a box too big for the mailbox. He said " they won't allow us to back up anymore".

I had video of one doing a K-turn in my driveway. Unfortunately, I deleted it.

So what government or quasi government agency out performs any private sector competitor?

I know I'm old and decrepit, but I remember when I was a kid, the PO (pre-USPS) would deliver mail twice a day, not just once. And, if you put a letter to someone in the same city in the morning mail, they usually, if not always, got it that same afternoon. Oh yeah, stamps were 3 cents. How far we have fallen!

quote:

Originally posted by architect:
I know I'm old and decrepit, but I remember when I was a kid, the PO (pre-USPS) would deliver mail twice a day, not just once. And, if you put a letter to someone in the same city in the morning mail, they usually, if not always, got it that same afternoon. Oh yeah, stamps were 3 cents. How far we have fallen!

I remember those days too. We had zones, no zip codes. In my city the only ones I can remember getting two deliveries in a day were the business routes. However, mail volume was much less and there was far more wasted time than there is today. Some people think the Post Office should be run more efficiently, like a business. I can't imagine any business that would allow their employees to take out and deliver a handful of mail on a second trip having to use close to the same amount of time as the first trip. Things are broke today because of Congress. Our government doesn't give a shit about the Postal Service except to use it as their piggy bank.