The US Postal Service is in dire straits. They are looking to cut delivery down from 6 days to 5 days (No weekends), cut full time workers, close locations and raise the price of sending mail. When you have a business that does want to or have to act like a real business you will get into crazy situations like they are in. FedEx and UPS have attacked their market share and all but decimated any potential that the US Postal Service might recover. What will it take for the US Postal Service to survive? Basically a miracle and an act of God because when you main focus is getting money from tax papers and you do have to worry about making a profit, things like this happen and are common place. The US Postal Service should take a page from Zappos.com and focus on what makes businesses great, customer service. But since this is a government run institution, I just wait in line with these other 20 people at the Post Office with 10 open spaces for tellers and only working to help customers. Talk to you later...
I ship packages through the USPS all the time. Because it costs less than UPS. A *lot* less. Like a third as much. I hope the USPS sticks around in my lifetime. Though losing Saturday service isn't a major issue for me.
ReplyDeleteActually, since some time back in the '80s, the USPS has been required to be entirely sufficient on postal revenue, not taxes. With bulk mailing revenues dropping off considerably over the last couple years, the USPS are looking at any reasonable solutions to decrease costs with a minimal impact on postal customers.
ReplyDeleteYou might be surprised that DHL and UPS re-label many of their less profitable ground residential packages and subcontact delivery to the USPS because it's cheaper (at least in certain areas). USPS also subs out air transport of next-day packages to FedEx (but the USPS still does delivery from FedEx to the final customer).
The USPS is far from perfect, but they are much more efficient and competent than they get credit for.
(Just 44 cents from a former USPS rural carrier)