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Should door to door mail delivery end?

What do you think of the new Post Office proposal?

  • Total voters
    51
  • Poll closed .
Mason66 said:
Again presumptuous.
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How so?

Store anything you want on a flash drive and print it at the library if and when you want it.
 
Lursa said:
How so?

Store anything you want on a flash drive and print it at the library if and when you want it.
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So you think a copy of a bill will hold any weight in a legal case?
 
Mason66 said:
So you think a copy of a bill will hold any weight in a legal case?
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Yes, because the electronic copy will still exist if needed (unless you delete it). I have used a copy of a bill and a copy of my electronic bank statement in court. SUccessfully.

Not only that, laws adapt to technology and culture. That's how digital signatures came into existence and ended up (after legal debate) ended up being acceptable legally.
 
Mason66 said:
If mail is stopped how would people receive their bills and pay them afterwards?
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Personally, I prefer to receive and pay bills online but there are drawbacks, such as when we recently had a prolonged power failure due to an ice storm and I recently had a computer go kaput. But there used to be lots of mail carrier strikes too, when they had a monopoly - not so much these days.

And don't forget, at least here in Canada, a large number of companies who monthly invoice customers are now charging a monthly fee, usually a buck or two, to mail out a bill rather than deliver it electronically.

Electronic billing and banking are a couple of the technology advancements that this old man accepts and welcomes, although I do enjoy saying hello to the cute young lady who walks the postal beat in my area every day.
 
Like some others, I have concerns particularly about the elderly and more so in rural areas. America is a lot more spread out than Europe, and our country can be very, very country. Seniors may still be competent to live alone, but may be unable to drive, and while asking me to walk a mile is no problem, it could be a problem even for a physical competent senior, or a moderately disabled person.

I would propose some kind of hybrid. I think that model is probably fine for cities, but until something better is worked out, maybe not for the more rural areas. As TT pointed out, perhaps we could go to tri-weekly deliveries, especially to areas that are too rural for this to be feasible for everyone. But even in cities, we want to make sure drop-off points are pretty abundant, because a lot of smaller-scale America cities don't have very good transit (i.e., using the current postal offices as the drop-off points would be much too spread apart even in most moderate-sized cities).
 
ttwtt78640 said:
The best solution, IMHO, would be to keep raising user fees (postage rates) to cover the actual cost of service. The nonsense that using general revenue to subsidize the USPS is OK because it transfers the burden of payment to "the rich" is foolish. The best way to reduce costs is to reduce service days to 3 days per week and have fewer carriers which serve alternating routes. For example a single carrier could serve delivery area A on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and sere area delivery area B on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday - just as garbage/recycle collection services do now.
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Good idea. Most companies send their invoices to consumers two weeks before they're due to be paid, so getting the mail very other day isn't going to matter. Whatever happened to the idea of discontinuing service on Saturday. That should save a lot of money if that's an overtime day.
 
Ikari said:
Home delivery should remain. Post office doesn't need to turn a profit, it needs to exist.
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True it can be argued it is important to national interest for it to remain and doesn't need to turn a profit. That being said they should try their best to limit the finical lost of the tax payers.
 
cpgrad08 said:
True it can be argued it is important to national interest for it to remain and doesn't need to turn a profit. That being said they should try their best to limit the finical lost of the tax payers.
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What is the national interest for it to remain? (not referring to the profit part)
 
Lursa said:
What is the national interest for it to remain? (not referring to the profit part)
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I personally don't see one, but if it's go to continue to exist then it should be as efficient as it can be.
 
Mason66 said:
Well that is great for you but it is presumptuous to think everybody in the country does the same thing.

I want a hard copy of the bill and payment. I don't trust electronic files as they are easily lost.
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Everyone in the country needs to move on and keep up with the modern world. And you can print electronic files, right?
 
Mail?

I think I have posted one letter in the last 12 months or so.

This isn't 1990...mail is dead.

Electronic mail and private couriers are all the mail almost anyone should need in America.

I guarantee you that most Americans get far more junk mail then important mail these days.
 
I still support home delivery as many elderly or disabled people would have a much harder time if we did away with it however, I believe the USPS could greatly cut its costs with a simple change. Remove on house mail boxes and put them all at the curb. The town I live in which is approx 26K people still have a majority (guess 75%) of their residential boxes located on the home, meaning on foot delivery, which is not very labor or cost effective. New homes here are required to have boxes at the curb so that mail can be delivered from the street (vehicle) but when the change when into affect all on home boxes were grandfathered in. On home boxes are not necessary and not efficient. I think a lot could be saved by simply moving all on home boxes across the nation to the curb. Give people a year to move their box to the curb.
 
I see mentioned a lot in this thread that people need to keep up with the times that electronic services should replace the current mail system. This sounds great but may not work for all people. In my case for example it would make things much more difficult. I live on a very very limited budget and the utilities here charge a surcharge of $3-5 if you pay your bill electronically, add that up among my utilities and it would cost as much as one of my cheaper utilities. Some people such as myself could not afford that.
 
DA60 said:
Mail?

I think I have posted one letter in the last 12 months or so.

This isn't 1990...mail is dead.

Electronic mail and private couriers are all the mail almost anyone should need in America.

I guarantee you that most Americans get far more junk mail then important mail these days.
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How do you send a certified letter through email to prove the recipient got it?
 
Baralis said:
I see mentioned a lot in this thread that people need to keep up with the times that electronic services should replace the current mail system. This sounds great but may not work for all people. In my case for example it would make things much more difficult. I live on a very very limited budget and the utilities here charge a surcharge of $3-5 if you pay your bill electronically, add that up among my utilities and it would cost as much as one of my cheaper utilities. Some people such as myself could not afford that.
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I guess the people on this thread think you are SOL.
 
Lursa said:
What is the national interest for it to remain? (not referring to the profit part)
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You can't have a genuine (representational) democracy without the ability to send and receive voter information booklets, absentee ballots, books, newspapers, magazines, and campaign material to everyone, even people living in (unprofitable for private delivery services) rural areas.
 
Baralis said:
I see mentioned a lot in this thread that people need to keep up with the times that electronic services should replace the current mail system. This sounds great but may not work for all people. In my case for example it would make things much more difficult. I live on a very very limited budget and the utilities here charge a surcharge of $3-5 if you pay your bill electronically, add that up among my utilities and it would cost as much as one of my cheaper utilities. Some people such as myself could not afford that.
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In a lot of places, there are free bill pay sites online that will pay virtually any bill for free, no surcharges at all. You ought to look into that.
 
Hard Truth said:
You can't have a genuine (representational) democracy without the ability to send and receive voter information booklets, absentee ballots, books, newspapers, magazines, and campaign material to everyone, even people living in (unprofitable for private delivery services) rural areas.
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E-mail goes everywhere.
 
Mason66 said:
How do you send a certified letter through email to prove the recipient got it?
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You can get return receipts on e-mail.
 
postalprotest469x253.jpg


.....USPS is historically the biggest employer of veterans. USPS applicants take civil service aptitude tests, and veterans get five points added to their test scores. Disabled veterans get 10 points. Over 108,000 former service men and women are current USPS employees, about a fifth of the workforce. But the average USPS employee is now over 53 years of age, and workers aren't being replaced as they retire......USPS hiring freeze hurts veterans, postal workers say » peoplesworld
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:thinking
 
Cephus said:
You can get return receipts on e-mail.
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as well as confirmed deliveries, in case the recipient chose not to open the email
 
Cephus said:
E-mail goes everywhere.
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Too many people still don't have a computer, know how to use it, or even want one. Also, few people like to read long documents off a computer screen.
 
Hard Truth said:
Too many people still don't have a computer, know how to use it, or even want one. Also, few people like to read long documents off a computer screen.
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That's life. Here's the time to get one. That's like saying not everyone owns a car so we have to keep providing for the horse and buggy. Time marches on. Those who refuse to keep up can go extinct.
 
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