US Priority Mail. Negative Experience

[Nords]

A friend of mine is always refining her billion-dollar service-franchise idea, which I'll reveal here for free:

"Good, cheap, fast: You choose which one."

She claims she'll make a profit on every choice.

 

[TromboneAl]

Fast and highly available communications more frequently result in half baked ideas, angry retorts, and things that require damage control.

Bullshit!

 

[MikeD]

Bullshit!

Link?

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Everythings debatable Al, but the findings of a number of decent studies have shown that the distractions of reading/listening and responding to peppered communications cause huge reductions in attention and quality of work.

Heres an example: CNN.com - E-mails 'hurt IQ more than pot' - Apr 22, 2005

There were further evaluations of the longer term implications of high speed electronic messaging which found that many times people were launched into efforts only to be recalled later when more thinking was put into a matter. One study showed that each average employee sent out at least one email per year which consumed an average of two man-weeks of aggregated wasted time in an organization. Another showed that the majority of 5 minute telephone calls turned into hours of back and forth electronic communication.

My study attempted to determine if speeding up the device and/or the communications link made any difference. It did. Error rates went up and overall productivity went down with the increase in speed of the device OR the communications link. We also determined that slow but predictable response times improved overall productivity vs a faster but variable/unpredictable response time.

 

[REWahoo]

Bullshit!

Good one, Al!

 

[Nords]

Another showed that the majority of 5 minute telephone calls turned into hours of back and forth electronic communication.

"Thank you for calling; your business is very important to us. Please listen to this entire recording as our menu options have changed. If you know the extension of the party you're trying to reach, press '1' for English. Otherwise for our directory press '2'..."

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Good one, Al!

Oh crap, I just got it.

Eh, seems to have helped prove my point. I wasted 3 good minutes on more detail when that was probably unnecessary.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

"Thank you for calling; your business is very important to us. Please listen to this entire recording as our menu options have changed. If you know the extension of the party you're trying to reach, press '1' for English. Otherwise for our directory press '2'..."

"We are experiencing an unusually high call volume at this time!"

I always yell back "You're experiencing an unusually low level of spending money servicing the customer!!!"

 

[TromboneAl]

Oh crap, I just got it.

Eh, seems to have helped prove my point.

Ah, the wonderful symmetry of life!

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Wasnt that a song in one of the Mel Brooks movies?

 

[novaman]

I don't trust priority mail- about 10 years ago my accountant priority mailed all my end of the year tax stuff for my business to me....and it didn't show up. He ended up duplicating everything and having a courier deliver it to me so I could beat deadlines......oh, that priority mail package did actually get to my office....about 2 months later!

 

[Dog]

I never really gave it much thought until I joined NetFlix and noticed how quickly they recieve the movies I mail back. Pop it in the mail on Monday and Wednesday I have an e-mail from NetFlix confirming they recieved it. Impressed with USPS and with NetFlix.

 

[tryan]

Yeah, the post office is putting themselves out of business ... had a tenant mail a life jacket back to the lake house using priority mail; the post office sat on the package (1 mile from the house !!) for a few days then RETURNED it to the sender. Called them to say WTF? And was told they don't deliver to "rural" areas. WTF?!?! ONE MILE FROM THE HOUSE!

FedX and UPS have delivered many, many times. Easy to see why the cost of a stamp keeps increasing ... volume is decreasing and they're still the same bloated organization.