Price For stamps Dropping

[thistlebloom]

I am very much a casual observer of the postal service but I find a lot of things strange, these days.

First of all, I easily remember the arguments FOR corporations, allowing them to compete directly with the USPS with package delivery. Apparently, it was a profitable part of the public service but the arguments for amounted to some sort of right of free enterprise. The USPS struggles to stay out of the red. Now, they reduce the cost of door to door delivery?!

Meanwhile, UPS trucks now back up to the doors of the post office, take on packages delivered to them through the public service, then scoot off around town to deliver. UPS uses the Postal Service to move their packages around the US!

The USPS has some sort of contact with Amazon to deliver their packages. Apparently, it goes beyond Amazon slapping a stamp on a box. Mail carriers deliver Amazon packages on Sundays!

confused digitS'!

Well I'm sure the USPS is making something from UPS and Amazon. They're looking for revenue in different places than traditionally. The rate of letter sending may have dropped off due to the internet, but I think a lot more people buy online and have packages shipped than ever before.
The junk mail has certainly not slowed down. Maybe they could increase the rates on junk mail senders to discourage them. Haha.

Has anyone sent a package lately? It's crazy expensive anymore, USPS, FedEx, and UPS included. Sending Christmas packages to family in different parts of the country more than doubles the gifting budget. But who wants to send an impersonal gift card?

 

[aftermidnight]

This Sunday the price of stamps goes down 2 cents.

You aren't joking are you? If not that's a first.

Annette

 

[digitS']

...
Have you checked out the stamps available? There is a nice gardening set I got last time I needed stamps. It's called "Summer Harvest".

I got those !

The postal service really served the purpose of commerce with Great Britain as a model (do they still have twice a day delivery?).

Grandstanding legislators from rural districts really have to bite their tongues when USPS sends out a list of the small town post offices that they could close and the limits they could impose on rural delivery.

My co-father in law works for USPS. I asked about this idea of banking at the post office. Hey, I used to buy money orders and, way back, US savings stamps . He said, it would be weird ... says the special rules for pensions increases the difficulty for them making a buck.

How do decisions on USPS pension investments work? I wonder if that will be our next big scandal ..! Pensions in "forever" stamps.

Steve

 

[Ridgerunner]

Steve it's been many decades since I lived in the UK, London specifically. Late 70's. Even then the regular delivery had dropped off, nothing like later day delivery in England if you mailed a letter in Ireland in the morning like it used to be. But their post office model was quite a bit different than ours. In addition to some other functions you could pay your utility bills at the post office. Comparing their post office to ours is like apples and oranges.

 

[Carol Dee]

Well I'm sure the USPS is making something from UPS and Amazon. They're looking for revenue in different places than traditionally. The rate of letter sending may have dropped off due to the internet, but I think a lot more people buy online and have packages shipped than ever before.
The junk mail has certainly not slowed down. Maybe they could increase the rates on junk mail senders to discourage them. Haha.

Has anyone sent a package lately? It's crazy expensive anymore, USPS, FedEx, and UPS included. Sending Christmas packages to family in different parts of the country more than doubles the gifting budget. But who wants to send an impersonal gift card?

You are right about postal rates busting the budget. I try to send treat and holidays gifts to family and friends. I still do .... but cringe when they tell me what it is going to cost to send it! OUCH. I was going to send a friend in Australia a SMALL package- the bill would have been $22.00 and the item in it totaled about $6 !!!! So... she may received a parcel at Christmas and only cards for BD and other holidays. Makes me sad. I did send a bigger package to Russia and that was less, only $20!!!

 

[seedcorn]

@thistlebloom ME. ME. ME. Send all impersonal gift cards my way. I have enough junk.... So next time someone gives you one, send to me, shoot I'll even pay postage....

 

[Pulsegleaner]

It won't last long. They expect to lose billions (billions? I think that's what I heard...)
They'll be applying for steeper increases soon.

According to Linn's Stamp News (which keeps abreast of the USPS policy plans) The current Postmaster General has gone on record as saying that he thinks $1 would be a "bargain" to pay for mailing a letter within the country.

Some other ideas he has gone on record supporting were things like demonetizing all stamps (i.e. the P.O. would continue to print "stamps" but they would no longer be valid for postage and would be nothing more that colorful bits of "collectible" paper), getting rid of to door delivery entirely (in favor of neighborhood "drop boxes") and giving each post office the right to decide on a day to day basis if and to where they would be delivering based on mail volume and staff supply, and to hold mail from further motion until such time as it was economical (so that, if you lived somewhere where there wasn't much mail arriving, each post office along the line could hold your mail for months before passing it on while they waited for enough to accumulate to make it worth sending on.)

More and more I wonder if all those countries in Europe who totally privatized mail delivery might have had a better idea. This hybrid thing we have (private in the sense of being allowed to run for-profit, government in the sense of being regulated by Congress and having the luxury of basically being unsuable) doesn't really seem to work.

 

[aftermidnight]

Going to hell in a hand basket isn't it, seems to be the way everywhere. I just got an envelope that was mailed over two months ago in the UK it should have been here in two weeks. The area where we live we've always had a drop box, only in town do they still get door to door and it seems that's on the chopping block in the near future. But hey the powers that be, they've given us house numbers, we are no longer a rural route.

Annette

 

[digitS']

Well, I may be going too far back in my notion that the USPS had a British model.

Americans know that Benjamin Franklin was the first US Postmaster General. Wikipedia tells us that Franklin served as British North America deputy Postmaster General from 1753 until 1774. And, that it even was Franklin who opened the first post office in Halifax, Nova Scotia ..! @aftermidnight , did you know that ?

Pay a utility bill at the post office?!

I never thought that I would enjoy collecting stamps. For one thing, I wouldn't know where to begin! To have the postal service run off some colorful papers and for me to frolic in to buy the otherwise useless things ... oh, I guess that is kinda what the Federal Reserve Bank does ...

Steve

 

[aftermidnight]

Have any of you seen our (Canadian) new folding money, wrong term you can't fold it, it's plastic, you can't keep it in a roll either, if you do you'll never get it straightened out, and god forgive, if it ever went through a wash and then the dryer in a pants pocket forget it, apparently it shrivels up, so far I haven't had to deal with that one.
We no longer have one dollar bills, or two for that matter, no longer do we have a 50 cent piece, the penny isn't used anymore copper's too expensive, whatever the total comes to it's calculated to the nearest 5 cents. Ahhh progress, sweet progress, IMHO it sucks!!!
Annette