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Let's see how many packages that other poster has sent in the last 11 years compared to my 1,681.
I continue to be amazed at how so many people disregard first-hand experience as important criteria when researching the reality of an issue.
I continue to be amazed by how many people don't understand basic math and statistics. Your anecdote doesn't hold water in scientific terms. Assuming you mail similar packages from similar locations on similar times, you are worlds different from someone half way across the country mailing different packages, from different locations, at different times. Its not a hard concept to grasp. If the police in your neighborhood always responded within 3 minutes of a call, would you also expect that police in another state 100s or 1000s of miles away also responded in the same time?
The Postal Service was created by Constitutional mandate.
So it would take an amendment to do away with it.
If it loses money, so be it. Congress has to make up the shortfall. For most of its existence the Postal Service never did better than break even. The reason for its existence is it is a guaranteed way for the Government to conduct official business in all corners of the nation. Every little village or greasy spot in the road gets mail. Every lone individual way out in the middle of nowhere gets mail.
Since the Postal Service has to deliver mail to anyone with an address, it's always a money-loser in all the tiny places. The private carriers have always skimmed off the gravy, but they don't cover everywhere and never have. The same 50¢ stamp will deliver the same piece of mail to the address, whether that's a cheap thing for the Postal Service or an expensive thing.
It is a service. It's not a for-profit corporation. The money it spends comes from the Treasury, and the money it makes goes to the Treasury.
I thought the city mailman was supposed to take your stamped outgoing mail, if you attach it to your mailbox with a clothes pin or whatever. Some city routes have rural mailboxes with flags by the curb. If you leave the flag up, that means you got outgoing mail for the mailman. But then that gives notice to mail thieves.
We are, but if we are on the sidewalk and your box is by your door and you didn't have any incoming pieces then I am not supposed to "waste time" to walk up to your door just to take a look. However many regular carriers know which of their customers are likely to leave outgoing mail and break the rules to spend the time to check
Am I the only one that has noticed USPS consistently delivering packages late? UPS and FedEx seem to be getting it right.
What if we just let USPS die of natural causes? I'm talking about not keep putting it on life support. If they can't deliver mail and packages on time, what's the point of keeping it around?
A very casual disposing of a lot of jobs, obviously you arent an employee of USPS.=
Quote:
Employees 625,113 (493,381 career, 131,732 non-career) as of January 13, 2016
The Postal Service was created by Constitutional mandate.
So it would take an amendment to do away with it.
If it loses money, so be it. Congress has to make up the shortfall. For most of its existence the Postal Service never did better than break even. The reason for its existence is it is a guaranteed way for the Government to conduct official business in all corners of the nation. Every little village or greasy spot in the road gets mail. Every lone individual way out in the middle of nowhere gets mail.
Since the Postal Service has to deliver mail to anyone with an address, it's always a money-loser in all the tiny places. The private carriers have always skimmed off the gravy, but they don't cover everywhere and never have. The same 50¢ stamp will deliver the same piece of mail to the address, whether that's a cheap thing for the Postal Service or an expensive thing.
It is a service. It's not a for-profit corporation. The money it spends comes from the Treasury, and the money it makes goes to the Treasury.
Most of what you have here is correct, except the part about the money that USPS spends coming from the Treasury. While that was true up until the early 70s, it is no longer so. The Postal Service's revenues come almost 100% from their customers. The money the USPS makes goes back into their operations.
USPS is still a government agency from a law enforcement standpoint, but it is, for the most part, financially independent of the U.S. government.
Congress heavily subsidized first-class postage rates up until the early 70s. At that time, for some reason that has never been adequately explained by anyone then responsible, Congress decided that it would be a good idea to make the USPS financially independent of the federal government. That's why first-class postage was so cheap in the 60s, then took off like a fireball out of a Roman candle starting in the 1970s, something that has continued until the present day.
I have always found it strange that Congress would have decided to punt one of the few constitutionally mandated functions of the federal government, namely delivering the mails, by making it an independent financial entity. But that die was cast 50 years ago, and there is probably no going back at this point.
Personally, I think the Postal Service does a pretty good job, considering the volume of material they are asked to handle. Just about everybody has some USPS horror story to tell, but those are usually variations from the norm. I can think of one instance where I was expecting an item in the mail, and when it arrived, it didn't have my name anywhere on the envelope, the street address was wrong, and the ZIP code was for a town 70 miles away. The handwritten address also appeared to have been written by some primate who wasn't fully familiar with how to operate an ink pen. Somehow, the Postal Service got it to me, although I was at an utter loss to understand how they did it, especially considering I had only been at that address for a few months.
Am I the only one that has noticed USPS consistently delivering packages late? UPS and FedEx seem to be getting it right.
What if we just let USPS die of natural causes? I'm talking about not keep putting it on life support. If they can't deliver mail and packages on time, what's the point of keeping it around?
The USPS supports itself. And there are many reasons to want the USPS to remain in operation.
And FedEx has left many of my packages in undesignated areas so that some they have been stolen. If I don't call ahead with the tracking number and explain that they need to deliver to the door as opposed to just dropping the package anywhere, most of these dolts practically leave the package on the curb.
As long as Congress has the delegated power to operate a mail service, there's not going to be any change to private carriers. Plus, there are many treaties involved with international mail delivery that cannot be changed to accommodate a shift to private sector delivery.
Pesky laws.
I continue to be amazed by how many people don't understand basic math and statistics. Your anecdote doesn't hold water in scientific terms. Assuming you mail similar packages from similar locations on similar times, you are worlds different from someone half way across the country mailing different packages, from different locations, at different times. Its not a hard concept to grasp. If the police in your neighborhood always responded within 3 minutes of a call, would you also expect that police in another state 100s or 1000s of miles away also responded in the same time?
Your analogy fails, sir.
The police in my neighborhood is a separate force from the one in a different state. Apples and oranges.
The United States Postal Service, however, is one large government organization. It is reasonable to assume similar policies are in place all over the country, and that if there were any geographical locations that were consistently under performing, that those locations would be scrutinized and problems addressed. At least I'm comparing Apples to Apples.
So, you appear to believe you have math and statistics skills, but seem to lack the logic required to take into account that someone who has been mailing multiple packages daily for years on end has a much better grasp on the postal system's performance than someone who doesn't, regardless of if it is just "one anecdote vs another anecdote".
I use USPS for my eBay sales. I've never had a problem with them and I think their delivery timelines are a-okay. I don't know why everyone hates on USPS.
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And there are many reasons to want the USPS to remain in operation.
