The US Postal Service

[IronMonster]

I ship a lot of stuff, much of it with USPS. By a lot I mean probably an average of 10 boxes a week. I shipped 6 today alone. I hate my mailman, I hate my post office and I pretty much hate that there is nothing I can do about it.

So today I had 6 packages to ship. I printed all the labels last night, boxed everything up this morning and had a pickup scheduled for my normal mail time. 4 PM roles around and no mailman so I go check my mail and its already been delivered. I call my local post office 20+ times, busy every time. I try calling the national number, they simply give me the local number I already have that is always busy. This is probably the 5th or 6th time in the last year that he has failed to show up for a scheduled pickup. So I have to close up shop early and make a mad dash to town to try and get the stuff in today's mail.

Just a few days ago I was shipping out a part to a fellow from here, Just a small flat rate box. I just take it out and put it in the mailbox for the mailman to take. He takes it out of the box, puts the mail behind it and puts it back in the box.

When I get a package that requires a signature he will put a notice in the mail box and make me go to the post office to pick it up. Even though I am always at the shop when he comes. He simply does not want to walk the 100 feet from the mailbox to the shop door

I feel like if I complain it would only get worse.

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[308]

I have never met a happy postal worker. What I do appreciate is the way they all take off for lunch and leave one employee at the counter to "serve" their customers who rush over at lunch to mail their items.

 

[ZA_Survivalist]

When any entity is subsidized by the government they answer to no one and their work ethic blatantly shows. Worst of all some (like the DMV) we have no choice but to go through.. Which should be illegal.
Glad for parcels there are other
(albiet more expensive) options.. Which unfortunatly sometimes hand off items right back to the source of our frustration..

My mailman just flings mail into random slots and sometimes he gets it right, other times its not even close.. Sometimes its lost forever..

If the USPS was a private business they would have been bankrupt 100-fold
(if not more) by now.

 

[IronMonster]

That is my whole beef, A private business would never run this way. There is no excuses for not being able to reach the post office by phone. I really think they simply take it off the hook because they have no interest in answering it.

 

[jbett98]

Until this new year, the London Royal Mail delivered twice a day to your residence.
I could mail you a letter in the morning and you could respond with a return letter the same day.
What great service!
My apartments in SW Portland are on an overflow route and we rarely see the same postman twice.
Talk about misplaced mail, how hard is it to place mail in 11 clearly marked mailboxes.
I watched as one lady proceeded to back over the whole 11 gang mailbox with her truck, then pull forward, get out and put the mail into the boxes while they're laying on the ground, then attempt to drive-away.

 

[Kruel J]

Funny I just read this. I was JUST looking at my USPS Priority tracking number that has said "Out For Delivery" all day today and yet......no package. Regular mail, but no box.

 

[BAMCIS]

I hear you Iron. I hate the post office with a passion. Them and DMV. The one I hate the most at the moment is probably the one I have to do business with at the moment.

I'm surprised I haven't been kicked out of the River Road post office yet. Not to long ago I had the unfortunate occasion to have to go there. The line stretched out the door and believe me, they weren't rushing either. They never have any sense of urgency. When they closed one of the two open windows I couldn't take it.

I said in a loud and firm voice, "Take a look around dude! How can you not see this line? Now is not the time to take a break! If you have to go potty or something get a replacement, but don't close the friggen window!"

I get the deer in the headlights look from the two flunkies and I added, "It's no wonder going to the dentist and getting a root canal ranks higher than a simple trip to the post office." (I may have made that up, or embellished a little. But it was a damned little.)

Those in line gave me a round of applause and this little old lady told me she wished she would have said the same thing.

I really hope the post office finally goes bankrupt and congress puts it out of our misery. Let it be privatized. I know I'm really wishing with that, but it's a nice thought.

 

[CoastRange57]

I also ship a lot by USPS. Probably 10 to 20 various packages a week. Our post office has street parking, and the line can be 20 deep at times. I print all my own postage, and walk past every one to drop my packages. This highly pisses of some of the people standing in line.

As with most post offices, most of the employees have a horrible attitude. There are two however who are very personable people. One is a young kid, and one an older Vietnam vet. He is a cancer survivor, and still puts in a solid 8 hour day. He and I share some medical issues, and have become good friends. He is bringing his new Bushmaster out soon to get some rounds in.

The USPS is highly inefficient, but from a business cost standpoint, I think their shipping costs are a bargain, since I pay shipping on my products to stay competitive.

I hope you guys are not carrying into the post offices, they have those signs at the door about carrying firearms in there...right ???

 

[BrentN]

USPS is bankrupt. And it's not going away. Donohoe last year was asking for tens of billions of dollars to bail them out of current and future debt, while the GAO indicated the USPS is 100 billion in the red. This has morphed into a pseudo-welfare system for the 1/2 million USPS employees. Efficiency, accountability, service, nowhere to be found.
I called my local office once, to request that my "box" in the community mail boxes be moved to a higher level, or fix the seal, as my mail gets soaked when it rains (not that it rains much around here..). The person I spoke with had trouble forming a whole sentence, and ultimately was not able to even tell me if USPS owned the boxes or maintained them. Be glad, iron, that you only got the busy signal and didn't have to suffer such a lesson in futility.
In the last two years they have managed to lose my new visa card and a box of checks. My neighbors and I joke about being put on their payroll, as we end up re-sorting a lot of mail.
I'll give them credit for managing to get a whole pair of jeans into that little mail box that I ordered online. It took me a good 10 minutes to get those outta there!

 

[clearconscience]

Typical govt worker. A bunch of overpaid, over entitled cry babies that expect the world and give customer service worse than the zit faced 17 year old kid at mcdonalds.

 

[Provincial]

I feel very fortunate. Our small (15,000) town Post Office has a staff of workers who are polite, motivated, and concerned about the needs of the customers. If something is lost, it happens before it gets to the local PO.

They can't do much to overcome the shortcomings of the USPS organizational system. The problems I have with the USPS center around those shortcomings.

 

[Lilhigbee]

While I have to agree with the tone of this thread in the big picture, for my little corner of SE Portland I have really good mail service. Just Monday the mail lady brought a large, heavy, awkward "Signature Required" package to my door. She and her subs. are always friendly and helpful. Rarely do we have anyone else's mail in our box and I presume they rarely have ours. I have used the Post Offices at 102nd and Stark, Gresham, Wilsonville and Canby and almost always had acceptable service, occasionally excellent service. Most service delays I have experienced are from people without a clue. They bring in "something" to ship. No box, no packing materials, no idea about much of anything. The poor Postal clerk tries to give them the short answer and get them out of the way but these people will have none of that. They want to know about EVERY shipping option. Are you really going to Next Day Air Aunt Frieda's Christmas sweatshirt?? And insure it??

 

[Mikej]

I'm surprised no one has put anything up as to the some of the reasons the USPS is in the financial mess they are in?

I've had some very good carriers were I live. A great little gal for a while....Should of seen her bringing the flat rate box with 4000 115gr Montana Gold 9mm bullets to the door! Of course there was the very angry, raging, conservative carrier that made sure he got done with his route every day at just the right time so he wouldn't have to go out again. The guy was a horses behind. Then of course, the folks at the local post office are the slowest people on earth. Do they train them for that or something? They're plenty nice....But slow.

http://my.firedoglake.com/mmonk/201...nging-down-the-american-postal-workers-union/

As headlines across the corporate media world of the U.S. reported on August 11th, the U.S. Postal Service is proposing to cut its workforce by 120,000 jobs and withdrawing from the federal health and retirement plans. Initial reports were that during the last four years, the service lost $20 billion, including $8.5 billion in fiscal year 2010. Therefore, the U.S. Postal Service drafted two documents in "Workforce Optimization" paper and a paper on health and retirement benefits requesting breaking its labor contracts and reigning in its health benefit and pension costs. It would seem almost reasonable until one drills deeper down into the facts. If you do that, then you can see this is a case where the corporate state is union busting again (and attacking the middle class) through a deceptive creation of crisis to seek further privatization (classic shock doctrine).

At the heart of the matter is a 2006 Congressional mandate put on the US Postal Service contained in the "Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006" to pre-fund healthcare benefits of future retirees, a 75 year liability over a 10 year period. No other agency or corporation is required to do this. This provision costs the Postal Service $5.5 billion a year. When you add in an adjustment that was made in how workers' compensation costs were calculated based on interest rate assumptions and long term predictions concerning health care and compensation of $2.5 billion (a non cash accounting adjustment), you come up with $8 billion in cost. Actual loss was $500 million and when added, comes to the $8.5 billion reported for 2010. While $500 million is a lot, it doesn't compare with $8.5 billion and is down from the previous year loss of $1 billion. If you took out the onerous pre-funding mandate, the Postal Service actually shows a $700 million profit over the last four years instead of the $20 billion loss. The Postal Union has been trying to get Congress to authorize the transfer of the Postal Service's money estimated to be between $50 billion and $75 billion overpaid in the Civil Service Retirement System transferred into the PSRHBF.

The National Association of Letter Carriers is pushing passage of Rep. Stephen Lynch's bill, H.R. 5746 which calls for this transfer strategy. The American Postal Workers Union is pushing H.R. 1351 also introduced by Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA) which would address the crisis without cutting pay and benefits, without eliminating collective bargaining rights, or slashing service. The corporatists, on the other hand also have a bill, H.R. 2309, introduced by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Rep. Dennis Ross (R-FL) which would not address the USPS overpayments to its pension accounts, will not address the onerous pre-funding mandate, force postal workers to make up the difference, create a commission that would order post office closures and a board to cut wages, abolish benefits, and end layoff protections, and increase postal workers' health care costs. We can only hope this attack on American workers fails. Is there anyone taking any bets in this dark and disgusting period of American history?

http://crooksandliars.com/kenneth-quinnell/assault-american-unions-extends-p

Rolando lays out the real root of the problem: "The problem lies elsewhere: the 2006 congressional mandate that the USPS pre-fund future retiree health benefits for the next 75 years, and do so within a decade, an obligation no other public agency or private firm faces. The roughly $5.5 billion annual payments since 2007 — $21 billion total — are the difference between a positive and negative ledger."

Postal Service management <broken link removed> : "If we were a private company, we would have already filed for bankruptcy and gone through restructuring—much like major automakers did two years ago." NALC responded by calling this claim the "Big Lie." If the USPS were a private company, NALC argued, it wouldn't have been subjected to the pre-funding requirement and it would've been profitable, since the pre-funding requirement is responsible for 100 percent of the Service's losses in recent years.

 

[IronMonster]

I just got a email confirmation that my mail pickup yesterday was completed, Even though they never showed up.

 

[jbett98]

Have you tried UPS. They pick up and deliver right to your door.
Are the rates from USPS that much cheaper?

 

[IronMonster]

For small packages they are about the same, for larger ones the post office is far cheaper. I can ship 40 lbs with the post office for $15, it would cost anywhere from $25-$40 UPS depending on destination. Just like any other cut rate service, You have to deal with cut rate service

 

[2506]

UPS, FedEx, and other "private" carriers' lobby is too strong to ever get rid of the USPS.

 

[slingshot1943]

While complaining about loosing money the USPS was pulling mail trucks in and replacing lead wheel weights with non lead weights. If they thought they had to do this why couldn't they just change them when they changed tires.

 

[John H]

For small packages they are about the same, for larger ones the post office is far cheaper. I can ship 40 lbs with the post office for $15, it would cost anywhere from $25-$40 UPS depending on destination. Just like any other cut rate service, You have to deal with cut rate service

You get what you pay for.

 

[Norwestr55]

USPS is fantastic! Here's one of my packages from Top Gun Supply. Besides the obvious it only took 16 days to get here via 2-3 day Priority mail. Luckily it was rubber grips and there was no damage.