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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 .
OH REALLY???
I can put a 46 cent stamp on a letter and put it in a local mailbox here in Colorado. About three days later my sister in New Hampshire has it delivered to her door ...
UPS or Fed X can give me the same service for about $16.00.
Tell me how that is better?

While I struggle with the interwebz, my wife however can tap out an Email complete with attached photos to all my family and in mere seconds they all receive the 'letter'.

She can do some sort of electronic bill pay for our credit cards... our local bill are done EOM by driving into the county seat and 'visiting' the electric company and catching up with the nice lady at the window, computer bill in a mail slot and of course the ladies at the COOP for our feed/fuel bill, always a stop at the grocery store...

I can see businesses sending SOME correspondence by snail mail, but even that can be sent as a printable attachment. I live out in the country every day but Sunday they pay a fella good money to haul ads to me and a few others out here, I'm 8.5 miles from town, and by no means the farthest away. I drive a mile round trip to get the ads. I drive down 3 times a week, I wouldn't mind him doing the same.

When we first moved out to the country the Rural Route couldn't be extended to our house- too far from the neighbors. I was not happy. These days I really don't have a real need for the USPS, most businesses I want to know are having sales send me Email alerts.
 
Don't need broadband to pay a bill online. Regular dialup will suffice.

Funny thing about out here... SW Bell would charge us over $1,000.00 to run a phone line to the edge of our property and the rest of the line was for us to install. So we never had a land line. we had an early bag phone with ground plane antennae- by the minute rates with a monthly charge (our teen aged daughter was NOT impressed with 5 minutes phone calls a few times a week.)

Now through broad band we have hi speed computer AND a microcell for 3G cell phones from AT&T. Throw in Direct TV, broadcast major networks and we are wireless. I know city folks can be blase about advancements but for us it is like lasers in the jungle.... :peace
 
Also, broadband is not available everywhere.

Who cares about broadband? You don't need broadband to get your e-mail. So long as you have a phone, you can get e-mail.
 
Who cares about broadband? You don't need broadband to get your e-mail. So long as you have a phone, you can get e-mail.
Let them eat cake.

People in rural areas without broadband who lose their mail service won't be able to get their netflix DVDs, magazines, newspapers, catalogs, voter information packets, packages etc. because the commercial delivery services will not find it profitable to deliver to such areas and a telephone modem is too slow. The postal service is required to deliver to everyone and that requirement makes it a tool for effective democracy. If the rest of us ever experience lengthy power outages or loss of broadband due to sabotage, war or disaster we will be glad to have a backup system.
 
The story is our US Post Office is loosing tons of money - the reasons are a bit complex but suffice to say they have been running in the red for quite some time and something has to give. A recent bill H.R. 4670, Secure Delivery for America Act of 2014 -- was approved by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee recently. This bill basically removes at home delivery and creates a centralized delivery mailbox (outdoors or indoors) where people will need to travel to pick up their daily mail, USPS packages, etc. The saving is estimated (yeah right - sorry but government identifying savings is like NASA stumbling on a "faster than the speed of light warp drive") to be $2 Billion per year.


Like that plan? Hate that plan? or Don't care... choose one and don't forget to give a blurb reply about your answer.

When I first read this it sounds like home delivery would be gone altogether, but really is just getting rid of the mailman walking around door to door in some areas where people have mail slots on their doors. It would have no effect on curbside delivery where the mailman drives around mailbox to mailbox. And I would guess in many cases people could put a mailbox out near the street than on the door. Or at worse case they would have to travel a very short distance to a centrally located bank of mailboxes. So I would think this isn't a big problem for many people.
 
When I first read this it sounds like home delivery would be gone altogether, but really is just getting rid of the mailman walking around door to door in some areas where people have mail slots on their doors. It would have no effect on curbside delivery where the mailman drives around mailbox to mailbox. And I would guess in many cases people could put a mailbox out near the street than on the door. Or at worse case they would have to travel a very short distance to a centrally located bank of mailboxes. So I would think this isn't a big problem for many people.

You are right. That's how the thread started out, but it ended up being a "keep it or dump it" conversation re: the entire USPS.
 
First of all you've got your price WAY off:
View attachment 67166917
Second of all, the only reason the USPS can charge $.46 is because they're subsidized, hence the LOSSES.

Actually the USPS has not recieved tax payers since 1980 with the minor exception of disabled and overseas voters.


From wiki:

The USPS has not directly received taxpayer-dollars since the early 1980s with the minor exception of subsidies for costs associated with the disabled and overseas voters.[5]


Since the 2006 all-time peak mail volume,[6] after which Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act,[7] (which mandated $5.5 billion per year to be paid into an account to fund earned employee retirement benefits, which is already a requirement that every US business with a pension follows.[8]), revenue dropped sharply due to recession-influenced[9] declining mail volume,[10] prompting the postal service to look to other sources of revenue while cutting costs to reduce its budget deficit.[11] The USPS lost US$ 5 billion in 2013, and its revenue was US$ 66 billion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Service
 
What happens when the minimum number of "viable" postal delivery hubs is inevitably raised? Local deliveries in rural areas will stop, you'll have to collect the mail with the groceries in the nearest town, then the nearest city....
 
Actually the USPS has not recieved tax payers since 1980 with the minor exception of disabled and overseas voters.


From wiki:


United States Postal Service - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I've been reading about this for years. Here is a succinct overview and while I have read more than one story reflecting this information, if someone has something to counter this, please post it up.
Here are the facts:

In 2006, Congress passed legislation that required USPS to pre-fund – within 10 years – most retiree healthcare benefits for the next 75 years. It was an accounting gimmick adopted to comply with short-term budget scoring rules that applied to legislation at the time. The resulting annual payments have cost the Postal Service $31 billion, accounting for more than 80 percent of its red ink since 2007.
The Postal Service is the only U.S. institution – private or public – that is required by law to set aside money for future retiree health benefits. Some private sector businesses choose to do so, but at much lower levels than the congressional mandate for USPS. The Postal Service already has set aside $45 billion for future retiree health benefits – more than any other organization in America and enough to pay for decades of future retiree healthcare. In addition, Postal Service pension funds are overfunded by tens of billions of dollars.

As a direct result of the pre-funding mandate, the Postal Service has reached its debt limit. In 2005, before pre-funding, USPS was debt free. Today, it holds $15 billion in debt – all of which is traceable to the congressional accounting gimmick.

- See more at: Debunking the Postal Service
 
I've been reading about this for years. Here is a succinct overview and while I have read more than one story reflecting this information, if someone has something to counter this, please post it up.

Thanks for posting that.
A lot of people do not realize that congress required the USPS to pre fund retirement health care and that is a big part of the reason the USPS is currently in debt.

I bet a lot of people do not know that USPS delivers a lot of Fed Ex packages.

In fact when I expecting a Fed Ex package and wanted to track it I called Fed Ex they told me they delivered it my post office the night before and I should get it the next day.

From this article :

FedEx Uses USPS for 30.4% of Ground Shipments

Written by Alan Robinson on December 15, 2011


30.4% of FedEx Ground shipments are delivered by the United States Postal Service.
8.4% of FedEx Ground revenue is generated by shipments delivered by the Postal Service

...
FedEx SmartPost Shipments delivered by the Postal Service Grew by 17.0%

FedEx Uses USPS for 30.4% of Ground Shipments | Courier Express and Postal Observer
 
For most people in the USA door to door mail delivery is an expensive luxury that they could live without.

Except for the lazy housebound or old people who don't have a choice.
 
Let them eat cake.

People in rural areas without broadband who lose their mail service won't be able to get their netflix DVDs, magazines, newspapers, catalogs, voter information packets, packages etc. because the commercial delivery services will not find it profitable to deliver to such areas and a telephone modem is too slow. The postal service is required to deliver to everyone and that requirement makes it a tool for effective democracy. If the rest of us ever experience lengthy power outages or loss of broadband due to sabotage, war or disaster we will be glad to have a backup system.

Again, you can do all of that through regular dial-up. E-mail existed long before broadband did. Try again.
 
I cannot return my absentee ballot by e - mail.

But it should be just as easy to implement an absentee balloting system that way.
 
The Post Office has been operationally profitable since October, 2012. In fiscal 2013 it had an operating profit of $623 million. In the first quarter of 2014 it showed a profit of $765 million. Letter volume has made a modest comeback as the economy has gotten a little better but there has been tremendous growth in parcel delivery, up over 14% last quarter. The internet has hurt first class mail volume but online shopping has more than offset the lost revenue. What's killing the PO is the 5.6 billion it has to pre fund every year. That plus the billions in excess it has been forced to pay into its civil service and FERS retirement accounts. Take away the forced pre funding of retiree health benefits and there would be no problems.
 
I would rather see the USPS raise rates.
 
The Post Office has been operationally profitable since October, 2012. In fiscal 2013 it had an operating profit of $623 million. In the first quarter of 2014 it showed a profit of $765 million. Letter volume has made a modest comeback as the economy has gotten a little better but there has been tremendous growth in parcel delivery, up over 14% last quarter. The internet has hurt first class mail volume but online shopping has more than offset the lost revenue. What's killing the PO is the 5.6 billion it has to pre fund every year. That plus the billions in excess it has been forced to pay into its civil service and FERS retirement accounts. Take away the forced pre funding of retiree health benefits and there would be no problems.

This thread has some of the most egregious displays of ignorance I have seen in a long time. The part highlighted in red is the primary issue facing the USPS, and it's not a secret, yet I find it appalling that so few people are aware of it.
 
Let them eat cake.

People in rural areas without broadband who lose their mail service won't be able to get their netflix DVDs, magazines, newspapers, catalogs, voter information packets, packages etc. because the commercial delivery services will not find it profitable to deliver to such areas and a telephone modem is too slow. The postal service is required to deliver to everyone and that requirement makes it a tool for effective democracy. If the rest of us ever experience lengthy power outages or loss of broadband due to sabotage, war or disaster we will be glad to have a backup system.

Im pretty sure I will be fine without getting the mail or internet for a few weeks to forever.
 
There is also wireless, including satelite.

Satellite internet is extremely expensive. I am locked down with AT&T in my neighborhood and we looked into it, and not only is it extremely expensive, it limits your usage. Seems like it was a several hundred dollar start-up fee, plus a hundred a month for 6g, and the service itself was a lot slower than we were used to. We ended up staying with AT&T.
 
Satellite internet is extremely expensive. I am locked down with AT&T in my neighborhood and we looked into it, and not only is it extremely expensive, it limits your usage. Seems like it was a several hundred dollar start-up fee, plus a hundred a month for 6g, and the service itself was a lot slower than we were used to. We ended up staying with AT&T.

Oh, but you don't understand. Because it's available, that is enough.

According to some.
 
Oh, but you don't understand. Because it's available, that is enough.

According to some.

Well, the fact that it is available is good, but this is the thing. With stuff like satellite internet, if you want everybody to have it, it'll have to be government subsidized, because limited income people cannot afford it. Once you do that, you are having more government involved, and that didn't work out so well for the USPS.

I think the best idea for the USPS, to be able to keep it, as well as stop the bloodletting, is to completely stop door-to-door delivery, and cut back to maybe 3 or 4 days a week. Most mail is junk anyway, and I would have no problem waiting for a few days to get more junk mail. Do like a Monday, Wednesday and Friday delivery. That should help. If that's not enough, increase the cost of postage. Who still mails stuff anyway? Honestly, everybody whines when the cost of a stamp goes up 3 cents, but how often are stamps used anyway? The only time I ever use stamps is for Christmas cards.
 
Well, the fact that it is available is good, but this is the thing. With stuff like satellite internet, if you want everybody to have it, it'll have to be government subsidized, because limited income people cannot afford it. Once you do that, you are having more government involved, and that didn't work out so well for the USPS.

I think the best idea for the USPS, to be able to keep it, as well as stop the bloodletting, is to completely stop door-to-door delivery, and cut back to maybe 3 or 4 days a week. Most mail is junk anyway, and I would have no problem waiting for a few days to get more junk mail. Do like a Monday, Wednesday and Friday delivery. That should help. If that's not enough, increase the cost of postage. Who still mails stuff anyway? Honestly, everybody whines when the cost of a stamp goes up 3 cents, but how often are stamps used anyway? The only time I ever use stamps is for Christmas cards.

No no no. It doesn't have to be subsidized. As long some kind of connection is "available", that good enough. I have my connection, so I have no empathy for others. As someone else said, let them eat cake.
 
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