<p>[Amazon</a> Media Room: Press Releases](<a href=“http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1874602&highlight]Amazon”>http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1874602&highlight)</p>
<p>Will wonders ( in NY and LA ) never cease?</p>
<p>Hmmm. Wonder what the ramifications of this will be…
I think I’m in the coverage area (will know for sure when we next put in an order).</p>
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<p>Post Office will have to pay double-time, and the employees will be even more grumpy because now they are forced to work on Sundays.</p>
<p>I for one hope that this is the start of new ideas at the good old USPS to get them back in the black.</p>
<p>^ That’s what I was thinking. The workers at my post office are trying so hard! None are grumpy. Desperate times call for desperate measures!</p>
<p>I wonder what Newman would think?</p>
<p>We saw a USPS truck out on Sunday and were confused what was going on. Some guesses I’ve heard as to why the USPS is interested in this is they’d like to strike deals with other large e-tailers for a Sunday delivery service.</p>
<p>It will be interesting to see if they can make a profit on this. I don’t know. They’ll have to be shipping their freight on UPS and FedEx…not cheap. Not sure how this is going to turn out.</p>
<p>I seem to remember something about them setting up local storage. Sure is a busness busness model to watch.</p>
<p>I like to brag that I was one of their early adopters. They used to send me birthday and Christmas presents, I’m thinking mid 90’s.</p>
<p>Busdriver11, do you realize that most of the mail that’s delivered cross-country by the USPS is shipped by private carriers? Mostly the the major airlines, as I recall. So at least USPS can hopefully broker for the lowest cost to get its cargo shipped.</p>
<p>Yay…so does that mean that when we order things on Thurs/Fri we’ll get them on Sunday?</p>
<p>Anyone hear the Diane Rehm show today? There’s another side to this.</p>
<p>Do tell…I can’t find it!</p>
<p>From Huffpo</p>
<p><a href=“HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost”>HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost;
<p>CNN</p>
<p><a href=“http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/11/12/amazons-deal-with-the-usps-for-sunday-deliveries-is-weird-heres-why/[/url]”>http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/11/12/amazons-deal-with-the-usps-for-sunday-deliveries-is-weird-heres-why/</a></p>
<p>NYT</p>
<p><a href=“Postal Service to Make Sunday Deliveries for Amazon - The New York Times”>Postal Service to Make Sunday Deliveries for Amazon - The New York Times;
<p>Found it!</p>
<p><a href=“http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2013-11-12/amazon-us-postal-service-and-push-expand-same-day-delivery/transcript[/url]”>http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2013-11-12/amazon-us-postal-service-and-push-expand-same-day-delivery/transcript</a></p>
<p>I assume another reason is the growing importance at USPS of express mail/package delivery, which means they have an infrastructure for that kind of delivery as opposed to carriers with bags and trucks covering a route.</p>
<p>“Busdriver11, do you realize that most of the mail that’s delivered cross-country by the USPS is shipped by private carriers? Mostly the major airlines, as I recall. So at least USPS can hopefully broker for the lowest cost to get its cargo shipped.”</p>
<p>Actually, Lake Washington, you’re wrong. That’s old news. Things have changed over the years, particularly after 9/11, when there was strong concern about carrying postal freight on passenger carriers. FedEx carries most of the postal volume, by a longshot. In fact, I think about 60% of FedEx’s freight is from the postal contract, which was recently resigned. The numbers from 2011 at least, show that FedEx was the top carrier of postal freight, at about 1.5 billion dollars. After that come carriers such as Kalitta, Northrup Grumman, UPS, Pat Salmon, and carriers that you’ve probably never heard of. The highest on the list of passenger carriers is United, at only 101 million. Things have changed. They just signed a massive contract with FedEx for 10.5 billion dollars, it’s going to be tough to shop around.</p>
<p>Plus…do you really want them to go back to random air carriers? Remember the days when it used to take 1-2 weeks to ship something from coast to coast? Now you might get a letter in two-three days, and not think anything of it. That’s because it’s being shipped daytime, with FedEx. Expensive, but it actually gets there.</p>
<p>Similar for truck carrying of packages, etc. </p>
<p>I think people want to believe the PO is a massively dysfunctional organization. But it isn’t. It loses money because a) Congress refuses to let it cut post offices in rural areas, b) reduce money-losing routes (again in rural areas), c) makes it keep Saturday delivery and d) makes it pay up front each year the future estimated value of retiree health benefits (until fully funded), though no private company does that. </p>
<p>But in terms of operations, the PO is rather amazing: they take in vast quantities of mail of different sizes and weights with labels written by hand, distribute it with few errors all over the place, and then physically deliver it within days of sending. They have developed technology for reading labels by computer and by hand because our system allows us to use whatever label we want, to write out addresses however we want (in crappy longhand, etc.). Most of the mail failures we experience are sorting issues at the actual PO in the neighborhood - where the bundle may be off by a few house numbers - or when the carrier makes a mistake. These basic problems tend to occur more as they’ve shifted to part-time people to cover for how they’ve made routes longer and longer to save costs. Yesterday, for example, a part-timer was delivering the end of our carrier’s route in the dark with a flashlight on his head … but his bag hadn’t been bundled, just layered, so he had to flip through it at each door to make sure he gave all the mail for that address and no more. </p>
<p>We complain about mail versus colonial times but think about the volume of material today, with all that bulk mail and all those packages, etc.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s dysfunctional, just huge, and “run by the government”, and with unions involved, so I figure it’s hard to respond quickly and sensitively to the various situations it must respond to . </p>
<p>My local p.o. is amazing, in how it can problem solve things based on knowing the community. I have freaked out about expensive packages shipped with the wrong address, but my local carrier always get’s it here, and knows it’s okay to leave it on the steps if he needs to. Still; I can see how their role has changed dramatically, and I don’t want red tape to make it hard for them to survive.</p>
<p>Hey!! Why only NY and CA??</p>
<p>And my local PO sucks!! Tons of late, lost and misdelivered mail. Forget vacation stops. They are totally incapable of handling that correctly.</p>
<p>I think that there are some folks that would prefer working Sundays to Saturdays. If you’ve got young kids, their events are often on Saturdays. </p>
<p>Will the Sunday deliveries be during a shorter time period? like Noon to 5pm?</p>
<p>Jym, not NY and CA; It’s LA and “New York metropolitan areas”. That is a much denser population.</p>
<p>“If you’ve got young kids, their events are often on Saturdays.”</p>
<p>And Saturday is more special than Sunday to a bunch of folks in NYC. I rent space from a guy who takes off for all Jewish “Holidays” ( High Holy days?), then makes it up on Sundays.</p>
<p>If it a part of a real restructuring of the USPS, it should be good. This said, adding days of service seems to go the wrong way as it will not do anything to the cash bleeding. The USPS should look at Germany as a model of restructuring and abandon the idea that every little bit town has to be serviced by a post office. Most of the services could be housed in private locations, and many locations closed. The only difference will be that there ought to be a LOT fewer employees. </p>
<p>On the other hand, I am afraid that this is NOT good news for the Prime Account holders, as it seems to be part of lowering the quality of the delivery. AFAIK the USPS has a tracking system that predates the dinosaurs and will never come close to FedEx. It is already a PITA when the orders are sent via the Brownies at UPS. In addition, the local deliveries seem to work with companies such as Oncor. </p>
<p>This seems to be cost-saving measure that will not help … the consumer. Enlisting the quasi or full government employees is a bonehead idea. There is a certain “health” website that could benefit from being outsourced to Amazon. Not the other way around. </p>
<p>I surely will never use or order anything via that USPS service. I hope it fails quickly and I hope Amazon leaves the service at it is.</p>