Call for Help: Postal chief says agency crashing

[babylonsister]

Call for Help: Postal chief says agency crashing


WASHINGTON (AP) -- Postmaster General John Potter said Wednesday the financially strapped U.S. Postal Service will run out of money this year without help from Congress.

The only lingering question, Potter told a House subcommittee, is which bills will get paid and which will not. He did say ensuring the payment of workers' salaries comes first. But Potter also said other bills may have to wait.

Potter's appearance came as the agency, which has lived on a reputation of serving through wind, rain and all sorts of obstacles, seeks permission to reduce mail delivery to five days a week. It also wants to change the way retiree health benefits are amassed to save money.

"We are facing losses of historic proportion," he said. "Our situation is critical."

The Postal Service was $2.8 billion in the red last year and is facing even larger losses this year due to a sharp decline in mail volume in the weak economy. Potter broached the possibility of cutting mail delivery from six days to five in January, but the idea has not been warmly received in Congress.

more...

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/P/POSTAL_WOES?SITE=CONGRA&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

[msongs]

1. raise the rates on the unwanted useless trash and garbage you deliver Mr. postmaster nt

[RaleighNCDUer]

8. And another suggestion: instead of LEASING your fleet of tens of

thousands of vehicles - which means you NEVER finish paying for them - purchase them and make sure they are well maintained so they can keep running for a long, long time so you get full value for your money.

Also, STOP USING FED-EX to get the USPS packages across country overnight. If you can't figure how to do overnight delivery yourself, you DON'T turn to the competition. Figure it out, or don't offer the service. "Let's offer overnight service at a lower rate than Fed-Ex, then pay Fed-Ex to make the delivery. THAT'L show 'em." WTF?

[iamthebandfanman]

2. i ONLY use the USPS

i try very hard to support our system..
we can not let it fail

[L0oniX]

3. Maybe they should stop giving the postal chief millions in bonuses.

[GreenPartyVoter]

4. My dad was a mailman for years. He often said the upper management did a very

poor job of running things.

[FightingIrish]

5. The current Postamaster General took over in June, 2001

He's had eight years to work that Bush administration magic.

[ForrestGump]

6. Maybe he did.

Could be the problem...

[Ilsa]

7. I use the USPS for everything personal, but I use FedEx

for rare shipments to my supplier.

[buzzycrumbhunger]

9. Maybe they should fail

I always advocated Priority Mail when people send me crap because it comes quickly enough (though they certainly dropped that 3 lb for $3 in 3 days or less promise pretty quickly. . .) and my postman is always really considerate about leaving it in a safe place (I sleep days).

Apparently, this is not the norm.

When my daughter was recently up in MA for a few months, I had to ship her a bunch of crap, most notably her Christmas presents. Cost me $20 each for two small boxes (they didn't have a full range of sizes in stock), but I figured I had to do this because I was cutting it close. Christmas came and went and they never arrived. We started calling postmasters on both ends (not an easy trick because they don't list the phone numbers there--too busy to want to answer the phone, I guess). Eventually, we were told that the packages weren't delivered because they were not addressed correctly. Then the story was that they tried to deliver them, but there was no name on the mailbox. Then the story was that they'd left a slip to come in and pick them up, but no one has picked up the mail since they lived there. (These latter comments were obvious lies as they'd been getting bills for four months and UPS had delivered several packages just fine.)

In the end, the packages were returned to me two months later with a stamp saying they'd been incorrectly addressed. I motored down to my PO to bitch and the PM got pissy with me. He called the other PM in MA and repeated the above stories, then told me since my return address had no name on it (just a return address), they automatically consider it possible "terrorist material" and aren't obligated to deliver at all. Not only would he not send the packages back and deliver as I had paid for, I wouldn't get my money back--but I was welcome to spend another fucking $40 to send them again.

In her time up there, virtually every package sent to or from there met with the same weird fate. Her BF tried shipping a computer down for her and it sat in his local PO for two months, where he was finally told to come pick it up because the mailing address was not legible and it couldn't be delivered. It was perfectly legible, but the box was destroyed because something heavier had been chucked on top of it. Apparently repeatedly. I don't believe the package ever left the PO of origin and they simply have a routine of not dealing with things they don't want to.

Add to this the fact that our PO has six windows and even during the height of tourist and holiday seasons, they never have more than two of them open, I have gladly turned to more efficient and reliable ways of communication. I pay my bills online. I email whenever possible. I only ship via UPS/FedEx (both of whom I have separate issues with, but apparently less serious than the USPS).

For the most part, 90% of my snail mail received is unwelcome junk. The fact that this is perpetuated and gets the lowest postage rates of all whilst the rest of us see yearly increases is clearly the reason the USPS is failing. If they're wringing their hands wondering what their problem is, it's probably overdue for a complete do-over.