Perhaps first class mail volume has declined by say, 50% due to COVID. Would that in itself not suggest it was time to cut labor costs?
Sure, IFF they were being used. Upthread I posted a quote from a Union rep who admitted that some of those moved machines were not in use…
In my area they just removed the drive up mail boxes outside the post office. There is a dedicated lane just for the mailboxes so it’s not like they are helping reduce traffic. One now must park and go inside the post office to mail a letter. The lot isn’t large and during Covid it seems ridiculous to remove the drive up boxes. On “Nextdoor” people are very upset. They also removed several neighborhood boxes. I haven’t heard if they removed the boxes from the other main post office.
I mailed a payment from my home (CO) to PA on monday by leaving it in my home box and the mailman doesn’t come until 5 pm or so. I figured it would be a week. My daughter called me today because she couldn’t figure out why her student loan had an extra payment on it (Thanks Mom). So it got there and the payment posted by Friday.
In Colorado mail won’t be getting from the Western Slope to the front range this week, not because of a postal slow down but because of forest fires. Just another fun 2020 disaster.
Many blue mailboxes were removed after 9/11 for safety reasons. In Denver they removed almost all the ones downtown for the 2008 democratic convention and they were never replaced. I haven’t seen one in a residential neighborhood in years.
Our drive up boxes have been locked (when the post office is closed) for years. Mail theft was a big problem. The neighborhood boxes were removed a decade ago. At least we still get delivery to our curbside mailbox. All the newer developments have those community boxes at the end of the street. The post office has been reducing its work in these ways for years.
The photos of all the mailboxes being locked or carted away are so upsetting. To support the PO I might go on line and buy some PO toys for granddaughter (and impending grandson).
Oh, and as for the missing Amazon package, now the automated message says I have to wait til end of day today before they will do anything. Grrr.
Some thought my comment about hypothetically raising US first class mail cost to $1 was too extreme, use of USPS would drop, etc, etc.
When you think about it, 55 cents to mail a letter to ANY of the 50 states is an incredible bargain. $1 sounds like a lot of money, but think about what a dollar buys today–not a whole lot. Those of us who remember 5 cent and 10 cents postage also need to remember what a loaf of bread or gallon of gas cost back then as well!
I looked up first class letter rates in Canada, for example. A first class letter costs 1.07$ Canadian to mail, 92 cents if stamps are bought in a booklet. That’s about 80 cents US. OK, so make first class postage 75 cents, or 80 cents, whatever–still a bargain.
As I said, USPS is stuck between a rock and hard place. They can’t charge what would be appropriate w/o outside approval, yet they are told to make their own way in the economy.
A year ago priority mail boxes to the USVI would take three days. Early this spring when flights were shutting down due to the pandemic an extra day was necessary. Now flat rate priority boxes are taking a week or more, even with flights having increased.
I have been frustrated by our mailman for months. On the whole he is fine. However, he does one thing that drives me crazy. We get our small town weekly newspaper usually on Wednesday. We live in town, so it is free. We also get the Wall Street Journal delivered daily. For a while we weren’t getting the local paper. When I asked him about it one Thursday, he claimed that he delivered a paper to us the day before. I told him, “no, you delivered the Wall Street Journal, not the local paper”. He insisted that he did deliver it. This went on for weeks. I mentioned it to the sub when I saw her. I went and talked to the Postmaster and he said that he would speak to our carrier.
When nothing changed, I finally went to the newspaper office. They went ballistic. They pay to have the paper delivered to all households in town. To make sure that I got one, I decided to subscribe for 6 months. It was $18.00, so no big deal. Well, now I get two. We shall see how long that happens. It is what I should get for 6 months. When the subscription ends, I will see what happens. Will I go from 2 papers to 1 or none?
Last Weds I posted that no mail had been delivered yet that week despite receiving “Informed Delivery” emails each day showing scans of what was supposed to be delivered that day. That went on all week with no mail deliveries at all, but to my surprise, they came late yesterday (Sunday) around 6-ish and delivered the mail for the entire week.
Wouldn’t any Sunday deliveries be considered overtime?
It depends on what days that carrier is scheduled to work. Mail is delivered 6 days per week, but a carrier is only scheduled for 5 days. A friend’s husband was the ‘6th day carrier’ so he filled in for 5 who had one day off. He’d had those same 5 routes for years so knew all the people in those routes too.
Someone might work Wed to Sunday, or only work 12 days on weekends and it wouldn’t be overtime.
Well over the years, it has seemed like the mail hasn’t been what it once was. Most things arrive with no issues. Occasionally I’ve sent packages via Priority mail which I use almost exclusively and they haven’t arrived in 2-3 days.
The Amazon type mail delivered by the USPS has been terrible. Boxes thrown on the street (which isn’t a problem except if you live on a main street or in a rural area) and just left anywhere.
Mail boxes have been disappearing for years!! I know because I am a person who used to use them frequently. There are almost none left. I think the post office got sick of having to pick up daily so they just removed them. In cities I have also seen the locks and various devices so people won’t throw things inside that don’t belong ( like fireworks). Local post offices usually have a box outside/nearby though even in pretty small towns. The ones on main streets have mainly been removed over the years. And the ones in neighborhoods have been gone a long long time.
My Dad gets his medicine via US Mail. Never an issue. But then again, I think it might be specially marked.
Well good news- whoever had our package dropped at their house Saturday put it in our mailbox today. Thank you, nice neighbors.
"Nationally, the number of collection boxes declined by more than 12,000 in the past 5 years. Some customers have complained the U.S. Postal Service has gone too far and removed too many collection boxes in neighborhoods. They’ve also questioned whether this effort is saving USPS money in the long run.
It’s a tough balancing act for the Postal Service. Some collection boxes are barely used and are expensive to maintain. On the other hand, mail collection boxes are a visible representation of the Postal Service to the American public, and their disappearance has been noted. They also are reliable, secure, and convenient receptacles for mail."
This is from an article in 2016 (before the election) and before the current administration or post office officials were in office.
We actually got like the normal amount of mail today…hope this continues.
with all these problems,…what is election day going to be like with mail in ballots
I do not receive a lot of mail, except junk mail, as I do most of my day to day, online. That said, I sent a package to an address about 10 miles from my home, a week later it has not arrived and tracking is not showing.
The feature article in the Denver Post yesterday was about Colorado’s vote-by-mail, which we’ve used for years.
It was very interesting that they have as many signatures of yours as they can to compare - DL, when you registered to vote, any other time you signed to vote. They try to match it to one, and realize people’s signature change a little of the years. They also have a system for following up if your ballot is ejected, like if you forgot to sign the envelop, if your spouse signed yours and you signed theirs (we have to sign the envelop), if you printed, etc. They don’t have that many out of the millions of votes cast. They have bipartisan teams of election judges. they try to count every vote.
Very interesting.
And they encouraged using the ballot boxes and not the mail. (I think we might have been one of the 4 states that didn’t get the letter from the post office about delays.
Some of the states NEEDED to get that letter. In Mississippi, a voter can requested an absentee ballot up to ONE day before the election. Of course that ballot is not going to reach the voter in time by mail, and certainly not going to get back on time if mailed. The states need to look at their timelines and see if they work for getting ballots out and back. No one can expect the post office to get mail out in one day, even if in state, and leave enough time for return.
HOORAY! My “2 day” package CO ==> TN mailed 7/16 arrived, 32 days later. When checking online, it kept doing odd cycling “Departing Denver”. We submitted a query, and the “Resolved” response that came back confirmed Lost. We then submitted a Search, with photos of items (they were sentimentally important). Not sure what made it finally make it out of Denver for real. Address was OK, and there was just a small dent at one corner.
I was due a package on July 24, that never arrived. Online tracking stopped on July 20. I put in a lost package request on July 31 with USPS as the company was not responding to emails. On my 4th email to the company (Starks) with the subject line-dispute with credit card company, I got a reply! They went ahead and sent new masks to me, which I finally received.
Today, 3 weeks later, I get an email from USPS with the subject line-Your request has been resolved. Open the email and this is what I see:
Thank you for taking the time to notify us of your experience. Your USPS® Service Request has been marked as resolved. Your package seems lost in transit. Please contact the sender at your earliest convenience.
It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that one out!
USPS will be the least of the problems.
Voter rolls that haven’t been maintained for years, and election boards that haven’t had to deal with a large number of absentee ballots will be the problem, and there will be big ones.
Local election boards used to be able to ignore absentee ballots if they wouldn’t affect the election. If Candidate A gets 10,000 votes and Candidate B gets 7000 votes at the ballot box, and there are 1000 absentee votes, it doesn’t matter who the absentee voters voted for.
If Candidate A gets 2000 votes and candidate B gets 1500 votes at the ballot box, and there are 14000 absentee votes it is a different story, and one that states and counties might not be prepared for.
We haven’t been having mail issues here, I’ve never had mail issues. I don’t order from Amazon if I can help it, but send things Priority mail now and then and they always arrive, maybe sometimes 3 days instead of 2.