Rant on - No more post office

[Nandy]

Re: Rant on - No more post office

These are the hours for my local post office. I say close it. Any other business with too many locations fails.

Post Office? Location - MOUNT WOLF
94 S 4TH ST
MOUNT WOLF, PA 17347-9998

Business Hours
Mon-Fri
8:00am-11:45am
1:15pm-4:30pm

Sat
8:00am-10:00am

Sun
Closed

As for converting Bubba to a PO box, that's some real crap there.

Same here except they dont open saturdays and I seem to get mail every other day at the house... A lot of times I get someones mail and the address are not anywhere close. Makes me wonder who is getting my mail...

 

[ezmobee]

Re: Rant on - No more post office

Same here except they dont open saturdays and I seem to get mail every other day at the house... A lot of times I get someones mail and the address are not anywhere close. Makes me wonder who is getting my mail...

I get mail all the time for someone on a completely different street whose name friggin' RHYMES with mine! (Hykes & Sykes). That's just pathetic.

 

[MTboatguy]

Re: Rant on - No more post office

Right along with what you wrote about Bubba..

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/05/b...y-solvent-and-relevant.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

 

[Scorpion8]

Re: Rant on - No more post office

I explain how much of a problem that is because LOTS of companies refuse to send anything to a PO Box.

Suck it, bud! You live Outside. They are also closing many Post Offices up here too, including quite a few on island communities with no road service. When your mail comes by floatplane, and they cancel having a Post Office..... I've had to deal with the "Sorry, we don't ship to PO Boxes...." for 16 years. And many places even won't ship USPS, they only use (e.g.) UPS Ground. Well, when there IS no road in or out of town, there is NO ground service. I just looked up a Uniden 12V wall-wart transformer (the kind you get with your cell phone) to power up my scanner. $19 for the wall-wart. $63 for UPS Ground service. Yea, I don't think so.

Drive your 17 miles. At least you can.

 

[Fishing Dude too]

Re: Rant on - No more post office

Sad part is to many small towns this will be a death sentance. I mailed Christmas cards from Rudolph, Ohio for many years for the post mark, now they want to close it totally have had special box for post mark and limited number that could be sent at one time. Now will mail some from there but not all.

 

[ngt]

Re: Rant on - No more post office

as I'm reading this, and watching the news, they start talking the P.O. asking congress for help. Saying they can't make some 5+ million dollar payment for their employees health care and they've never been so close to just having to "close". The P.O. closing all together is scary!! I have a P.O. within a mile, another within 2 miles, and another in a super market within 3 miles. All are still open, but I guess not for long. I was wondering why I didn't get any mail this Saturday. The news said cut backs by the P.O. This seriously blows! Everyone loves the internet, but it sure is killing some off big companies.

 

[bruceb58]

Re: Rant on - No more post office

USPS biggest problem is the labor contracts(READ UNION) and the super expensive health care and retirement that goes with it.

I rarely mail anything these days. I use online billpay as much as possible so there are literally no bills to send out. Of course, what I do and millions of others do is what is killing the USPS. Also, when was the last time you received a mail order catalog?

 

[lakelover]

Re: Rant on - No more post office

Not sure how this fits in but last week I got three days of junk mail only in a row where I just stopped by the recycling bin and dropped everything in. Physical SPAM I guess.

 

[southkogs]

Re: Rant on - No more post office

Interesting timing on this thread - news stories running all day on how the USPS is "it" deep. It seems to be an urgent situation. I think the numbers that I heard today is something like a UPS or FedEx has a labor cost of 30% of gross sales while the USPS has a labor cost of 80% of gross sales (and their sales have been getting more and more "gross").

Interestingly, in the marketing world the most effective thing a company can do to self-promote is direct mail (bulk mail is still THAT effective). And the USPS has actually been surviving (sort-of) on that class-A pre-sort mail for a number of years now. Personal correspondence, and more and more billing too, is done mainly electronically. It'll be interesting to see what happens - either the USPS is going to have to bump rates WAY up on that pre-sort, or adjust labor to accommodate the work load that's keeping it alive.

 

[jtmarten]

Re: Rant on - No more post office

I explain how much of a problem that is because LOTS of companies refuse to send anything to a PO Box. (My credit card company won't allow the use of a PO Box. Niether will my cell phone company.) Reply, "Gee, that could be a problem, we don't have an answer".


GRRrrr.................

Answer: Ship everything FedEx

Just another nail in their inevitable coffin.

If the USPS does move in this direction, many companies will have to make policy changes regarding PO boxes.

 

[bruceb58]

Re: Rant on - No more post office

My credit card company won't allow the use of a PO Box. Niether will my cell phone company.) Reply, "Gee, that could be a problem, we don't have an answer".

I can't even remember the last time I received a paper credit card bill or a cell phone bill. I have everything set up for paperless. I do receive non-bill communication from them however.

Seems to me that there could be some provisions for rural areas that a letter with an address could automatically be routed to a PO Box. This would alleviate the problem with businesses that require no PO Boxes.

 

[greenbush future]

Re: Rant on - No more post office

Most will be resistant to change, but in the long run, it is much more efficient to run paperless, stamp-less, and mail-less. The $ I save not using the USPS on bills alone, not to mention the convenience of just logging in and taking care of it far outweigh the old school methods. The USPS has a huge infrastructure set up, with mail boxes and carriers, sorting and the rest, they just need to reinvent themselves to take advantage of that. Change is good, just need to iron out the way it happens.

 

[SS MAYFLOAT]

Re: Rant on - No more post office

One of the problems I see is with our senior citizens that do not have computers and do not wish to get one.

I haven't gone to paying online and not sure I want to after what has happened to me just a few weeks ago. Yesterday I got called to the office about a charge on the company credit card. I did order some butt splices online from a company in Nevada. Got the invoice along with the ordered pieces. Three days later a charge was put on my company card from a trading company that is connected to China. This was the only time I had used the card for an online charge. This is the reason I do not trust the internet for personal transactions. With the USPS, at least tampering with the mail is a federal offense. I'm not so sure for the internet.

 

[jkust]

Re: Rant on - No more post office

I have lots of thoughts here but the one I can post is that nobody forces someone to live in a rural area. I suppose it isn't fair but neither is life. There are several countries that have done similar mitigations. Some countries, the post office will scan and email your mail to you. It doesn't solve the need for wet ink originals but even in my business the need and requirement has greatly diminished over the last 10 years.

 

[kahuna123]

Re: Rant on - No more post office

Labor cost for the USPS %80 of revenue. Labor cost for Fed Ex %30 of revenue. Go figure. But thats ok it looks like a bail out is on the way.

 

[RogersJetboat454]

Re: Rant on - No more post office

Labor cost for the USPS %80 of revenue. Labor cost for Fed Ex %30 of revenue. Go figure. But thats ok it looks like a bail out is on the way.

This was discussed earlier in the post. The post office was set up with a break-even mentality. A stamp, and what ever is paid for postage to ship packages, etc, is supposed to just cover the expenses to ship. Not to generate a big profit to make the share holders happy.

I have the unique position of being on the other side of the fence here. My father has been a letter carrier since 1984. He delivers in a moderately sized city, and true to the motto of the post office he is out in any sort of weather, and sometimes till 7PM in the evening during the Christmas season. He is the type of guy that will talk to you about any sort of thing, and has many customers on his route that have become good friends to the point of him being invited over to dinner, or them being invited to his house.
To hear that the post office may shut down bothers me a bit. If dad, who is a single income (divorced) were to loose his job, would he be able to pay his mortgage? Would he find work doing something else in a tough economy? Dunno.

I don't think UPS or FedEx has the infrastructure, or man power to deliver things to practically every house every day, nor would the going rate for them to deliver an envelope across country be a measly 44?. Obviously this is a situation in which the post office needs to trim the fat and re-organize. Two anecdotal things come to mind. The first is my father mentioning to me a while back that a distribution center or something of the like was closed, yet about a dozen of the management was still showing up to work there every day, sitting around and staring at each other while drinking Coffee. Obviously situations like that need to change. The other thing that should change is city's/towns with multiple post offices. My home town has two. One is the main office down town that handles the mail for the town. The other is a little satellite location with it's own zip code, that was set up god knows when to handle all the mail generated by the Danvers State Hospital, which closed it's doors back in 1992.

 

[1980Coronado]

Re: Rant on - No more post office

I'm sure we will soon be seeing this in my area too. I find it interesting that private companies like Fed Ex and UPS are profitable and the USPS isn't......I say let the market decide an get the bureaucrats out of it. Government cannot fix that which it broke in the first place. The world no longer needs buggy whips, so should we subsidize buggy whip manufacturers? It's not going to happen overnight, but some entrepreneur will come up with a solution...but not until the government competition is gone. Maybe they'll solve the junk mail problem while they're at it.......I'll bet I get less than 10 pieces of actual mail each month...mostly bills that we can't pay on-line yet. I think the biggest obstacle is the rural areas that are still behind technologically with few options for internet access. I live in a rural area and the only reason I still have a land line is for internet access via DSL.

 

[GA_Boater]

Re: Rant on - No more post office

One of the problems I see is with our senior citizens that do not have computers and do not wish to get one.

That, my friend, is generalization to the extreme. I am a senior and very computer literate, as are all my older friends and relatives. We invented this stuff, don't forget. I pay all my bills except two online (because both charge outrageous fees for online bill pay, both utilities) and have never had a problem. In fact my wife does about 90% of our shopping online (groceries are tough) and I can't remember the last time we even went to a mall. Black Friday is a snap!

For those having problems with PO box delivery, simply indicate a different delivery address, your physical address instead of mailing address. It works every time. I don't know what to do for those living in areas with no FedEx, UPS or USPS delivery.

As far as the PO going out of business, it's not going to happen. It will have to change it's ways and C o n g r e s s will have to approve cost cutting measures so they can continue to MAIL their self-serving newsletters for free telling us what a good job they are doing. Oops, sliding towards political commentary, sorry. :redface::facepalm:

 

[lakelover]

Re: Rant on - No more post office

That, my friend, is generalization to the extreme....

You make a lot of good points, but in her job as a nurse, my wife sees that the vast majority of her senior patients, and many others, cannot afford computers. It's not that they are computer illiterate, the just don't have the money to buy them. That's who has a big reliance on the P.O.

 

[GA_Boater]

Re: Rant on - No more post office

You make a lot of good points, but in her job as a nurse, my wife sees that the vast majority of her senior patients, and many others, cannot afford computers. It's not that they are computer illiterate, the just don't have the money to buy them. That's who has a big reliance on the P.O.

Agreed LL. But that is more an economic problem than age related. A significant portion of our population is below the poverty level, young and old both. And that is one good reason for maintaining the USPS system. because it does serve young and old, rich and poor. Besides an E-card at Christmas just plain sucks. LOL