Another Post Office Rant

[W2R]

When I bought the house near D.C. I was getting occasional junk mail addressed to the previous owner for all of the 16 years I was there. And I'll wager the current owner is getting that and junk mail addressed to me.

We bought this house brand new so we don't have that issue.

At least in the places I've lived USPS has done a fine job. I wonder what accounts for the differences in other locations?

Reconstruction.

 

[ownyourfuture]

Wow, I'm so disappointed to hear how awful the USPS has become in some places. I'm sure if I lived there my opinion of them would change pretty quickly!

Still, I root for underdogs, and the USPS has been beleaguered from all sides lately. I hope they get their act together, and get the funding they need to get back on track. Not likely, but I can always hope.

I've sold over 1000 items on E-Bay since 2002 & purchased more than that, & I only had an 'issue' with one item. Like you said, it must vary from place to place.

As far as addressing the funding issues, I seem to recall the postmaster general practically begging to allow them to discontinue Saturday delivery, & he was denied

 

[travelover]

Reconstruction.

From the Civil War?

 

[aja8888]

We got a Christmas Card in the mail yesterday from relatives in Marin County, CA. It was postmarked December 12, 2016. Late, but actually IN our mailbox.

 

[Chuckanut]

PO offices seem to vary a lot from area to area. Ours is pretty good.

 

[Bestwifeever]

I don't really have any complaints about the postal service--my mail-related rant is about my neighbor who is an idiot in many many ways, but when he gets a piece of our mail accidentally delivered to him, rather than immediately walk it the thirty or forty feet to our mailbox (as we do when we accidentally get a piece of his mail), he takes it into his house and holds on to it until he sees DH out in our yard and remembers he has a piece of our mail. He then makes a huge deal out of the fact that he has been taking care of this piece of mail because he is such a great guy and then hands it to DH, up to a month after it was sent. DH is afraid that idiot neighbor would just throw it away if DH suggested he put it in our mailbox instead of holding on to it, so he just smiles and says thank you.

 

[MichaelB]

We get two kinds of mail and packages issues. Mis-delivered, and bad address. In my HOA there are street names and home addresses that are quite similar. For example, my address is

12345 50th st while another home in the development a couple of streets away is
12345 50th rd The only difference is rd vs st, and this leads to lots of confusion.

I don't know how many times the lady at the "rd" address has a recurring account billed with the "st", so the paper bill comes to us. Their house is out of the way, so I usually write "forward to xxx and please update address" and drop it in my box, but this will typically go on for a year before being changed. Same with her multiple businesses. And the law firms pursuing collection (I presume).

UPS, FedEx and PO will occasionally deliver their stuff to us, or leave a package in front. In that case I usually walk over and drop it off. The "neighbors" have even accused us of keeping their stuff, insisting packages have been mis-delivered to our door because the UPS or FedEx web site confirms delivery was made.

I haven't seen any indication our mail has been improperly delivered to them. It probably only happens one way ..

 

[ER Eddie]

I love my mailman. He has toted so many amazon packages to my house over the years, I feel greatly indebted. He always waves, and he writes "Have a Blessed Day" on the notes he leaves. Nice fellow. I've had two packages go missing out of about 1000, and amazon has always been perfect about replacing them. No gripes here.

 

[Hermit]

Wow, I'm so disappointed to hear how awful the USPS has become in some places. I'm sure if I lived there my opinion of them would change pretty quickly!

Still, I root for underdogs, and the USPS has been beleaguered from all sides lately. I hope they get their act together, and get the funding they need to get back on track. Not likely, but I can always hope.

I'm of the opposite opinion. Cut them loose. Give them the infrastructure, pay their accumulated retirements, and cut them loose. Let them sink or swim. I believe their problem is a mentality of a right to a job and a paycheck. As long as employees cannot get fired and have a promise of a Government backed pension they will never compete. This does not mean there are not good people in the system, it just means they cannot do anything about the bad people and there seems to be quite a few.

By the way, were I live is not convenient to them delivering, so the don't - ever! UPS and FedEx do. Maybe that is why it costs more - they deliver anywhere.

 

[Danmar]

I'm of the opposite opinion. Cut them loose. Give them the infrastructure, pay their accumulated retirements, and cut them loose. Let them sink or swim. I believe their problem is a mentality of a right to a job and a paycheck. As long as employees cannot get fired and have a promise of a Government backed pension they will never compete. This does not mean there are not good people in the system, it just means they cannot do anything about the bad people and there seems to be quite a few.

By the way, were I live is not convenient to them delivering, so the don't - ever! UPS and FedEx do. Maybe that is why it costs more - they deliver anywhere.

This is pretty much what Canada did. Canada Post is managed like a business and break even or better most years. Still have issues, though, and Govts still meddle. Still it's better than it once was with huge annual deficits and frequent strikes.

 

[CaptTom]

I'm of the opposite opinion. Cut them loose.

Maybe that is why it costs more - they deliver anywhere.

I think that's a big part of it. A private business would avoid doing anything that's unprofitable. There would be a complicated, tiered pricing system based on volume and location. They would institute hidden "actual" price structures for their biggest customers, and us peons would pay the "retail" price. There would be no incentive to service small towns.

In fact, I think a lot of the problems of the PO started when the Gov't allowed private companies to take over the profitable package side of the business, and left the PO with the expensive job of delivering letters to individual houses.

Even more problems come from micromanagement by politicians. No doubt some is due to bloated benefits and pensions for workers. But the company I worked for offered similar benefits and pensions (I retired at 56) and they're extremely profitable, so I don't think you can blame it all on that.

This is pretty much what Canada did. Canada Post is managed like a business and break even or better most years. Still have issues, though, and Govts still meddle. Still it's better than it once was with huge annual deficits and frequent strikes.

Interesting. Maybe that's the way to go. Sort of like a regulated monopoly.