Pending Postal Service Changes Could Delay Mail And Deliveries, Advocates Warn

Discussion in 'Ancient Coins' started by robinjojo, Jul 30, 2020.

  1. robinjojo

    robinjojo Well-Known Member

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  3. TIF

    TIF Always learning.

    Not good news.
     
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  4. Mat

    Mat Ancient Coincoholic

    Just means more loss of packages I bet. edited :mad:
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 31, 2020
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  5. Beardigger

    Beardigger Well-Known Member

    It's a step toward eventually Privatizing the postal service. The new PMG has never worked for the Postal Service. He is just a businessman who doesn't care about Service Standards, only profit. When it does go private.....watch the shipping rates double or triple. Will put a lot of small eBay sellers out of Business.
     
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  6. robinjojo

    robinjojo Well-Known Member

    Yes, this is sad news and the changes could impact delivery of letters and packages.

    Despite the shortcomings of the USPS, and there are many, they do provide a vital service that needs to be maintained and supported. They're in a bad spot, having to deal with the pandemic and lost revenues. The only way out for them, as I see it, is some kind of on-going subsidy from the government. I know this is controversial, but other than seeing the USPS disappear, leaving only Fedex and UPS as the only alternatives, there seems to be no other way for the Postal Services to continue, long term.
     
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  7. Inspector43

    Inspector43 Celebrating 75 Years Active Collecting Supporter

    Part of all the issues with all shipping companies is the current fixation society has for instant gratification. In my generation we had no problem putting a stamp on an envelope and waiting 5 or more days for it to be delivered to the addressee and then another similar time for a response. I still don't have a problem with that.
     
  8. DonnaML

    DonnaML Well-Known Member

    I guess it depended on how far you were sending it. When I was young, if one were sending mail within New York City, it would generally arrive at its destination the day after mailing. The second day after mailing if one were sending mail between New York City and another location not too far away. Of course, I'm not old enough to remember when there were multiple deliveries each day, and one could be reasonably sure that a letter mailed from Brooklyn in the morning would be delivered to its Manhattan destination the same afternoon.
     
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  9. Inspector43

    Inspector43 Celebrating 75 Years Active Collecting Supporter

    I may have over stated the 5 days in each direction, but, from a small town in the Midwest it was usually a few days either way.
     
  10. Alegandron

    Alegandron "ΤΩΙ ΚΡΑΤΙΣΤΩΙ..." ΜΕΓΑΣ ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΟΣ, June 323 BCE

    Gosh, I remember when I was a kid that we had our mail hand-delivered on Horse-back:

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    Presently, I have it beamed into my living room!

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    BUT, I am working on telepathy....


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  11. Dobbin

    Dobbin Active Member

    This has already been impacting delivery times for a week or two now.

    Also, mail is sorted regionally, not locally. This itself isn't a new change but I don't think a lot of folks know their local post office does nothing with incoming mail except truck it to a collection point then to a sorting center. Given the new policy, every trip is a chance for delay and all mail makes at least a round trip somewhere in the process.
     
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  12. dougsmit

    dougsmit Member

    Each of us will have differing personal situations but I would have no problem with my mail delivery being cut to three days a week (MWF or TuThSa) on a neighborhood basis. 95% of the mail I find in my box on a daily basis is ads for businesses I do not patronize and outright trash that I drop in the recycle bin on my way back into the house. Personal letters and greeting cards from friends are not what they were 50 years ago. I get the occasional coin package but they tend to be 'timed' according to when they were mailed rather than transit time unless they involve customs which is not something we need to hold against the Post Office. I do know that you can slow down something by Registering it which also seems to increase the likelihood that it will take a delay filled tour of the country along the way. In the last month, my coin transit times (payment by Paypal to delivery) ranged from 3 days to three weeks with the latter sitting untouched by a California VCoins dealer and not mailed for 18 days. I understand the desire not to go out to mail things but that is not my definition of reasonable. I would prefer the resources saved by the every other day schedule applied to maintaining post office staffing for mailing things 6 days a week and cutting down the lines we encounter there. Even those wait times have been improved locally by the fact that the crowds of people getting passports at the post office here have been cut way down due to Covid travel restrictions. I can't say I ever understood why it was necessary to use post offices for passport business in the first place. Persons who want daily access to their incoming mail do have the option of renting a post office box which also lessens the impact of mail trucks arriving after the morning departure of home delivery carriers. I do not support the idea of making the Post Office into a profitable business rather than a 'service' but it might just be time to realize that the business and personal needs of 21st century lifestyles are different than they were 200 or even 20 years ago. I, for one, can wait for the paper format spam that gets stuffed in my mailbox and would rather see the time my carrier spends on the road utilized in receiving and sorting my outgoing mail.
     
  13. ancient coin hunter

    ancient coin hunter 3rd Century Usurper

    Sad state of affairs. The postal service was created by the framers to offer a modern (at the time) system of delivery, it was never intended to be a profitable enterprise. When I ask my letter carrier (a long time veteran of the USPS) about the situation he just shrugs and says the morale is getting very low. He is only a few years away from retirement and plans to stick it out.
     
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  14. whopper64

    whopper64 Well-Known Member

    We've all seen what has happened to prisons since privatization - Almost no security resulting in increased escapes, rampant drug circulation (even worse than before), increased inmate on inmate violence, quality of food much worse, COVID-19 petri dish due to lack of proper training by personnel. Now we have deliberate systemic damage to the Post Office by a totally unqualified postmaster. He knows exactly what he is doing as far as what is bad for the postal service and bad for the public. Once the mail is left in private hands, be prepared for spotty and irregular deliveries, much higher mailing costs, much worse delays in shipping times, and millions of residents no longer receiving mail as deliveries will be cut especially to rural residents. It will not be a pretty picture. Sure the postal service has it's problems but just picture the above scenarios and we'll all wish we had them back again.
     
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  15. medoraman

    medoraman Supporter! Supporter

    First of all, everyone needs to be cognizant of where these articles originate and their political views.

    From what I read, a logistics expert took charge of the USPS and made very valid discoveries. In logistics, your system will wind down and collapse if you try to accomodate every error. What the new manager is proposing is to actually KEEP TO THE SCHEDULE. If a route is late, leave without those packages and deliver them the next day. The net effect of this will be to improve delivery times for most items.

    However, and this is why these "stories" are popping up in certain press publications, what this also does is highlight to management those employees who messed up and didn't get their deliveries done. Doing it this way will enable management to actually see, reprimand, and try to fix those who are not performing their jobs in the USPS or outside contractors. Unions do NOT like accountability, so they are using their media friends to scare everyone that this will ruin the USPS, when in fact it will improve it but not allow those not doing their jobs to hide and get away with it.

    Kind of a different spin, huh?
     
  16. robinjojo

    robinjojo Well-Known Member

    Has anyone else experienced slower USPS delivery recently? It seems that the policy changes are being put into effect at the USPS, and "late" mail is being left at the distribution centers. Items ordered, even domestically, have slowed down for me, even taking the pandemic into account. International shipping seems even slower.

    I'm willing to put up with the delays. The items ordered will eventually show up; if not, I will get refunded. What I really feel badly about are the delays that others might be experiencing while waiting for medications, medical devices, checks and other essential items. Of course, Fedex and UPS are available, but not everyone can afford their services.

    I also read, in the Washington Post, that the USPS is under pressure to increase its rates, which might happen this fall.
     
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  17. whopper64

    whopper64 Well-Known Member

    The goal of this federal administration is to get rid of the USPS. Also, the USPS keeps parcel package rates low to be able to compete with UPS and FEDEX. Much of the USPS revenue is generated by "junk mail" and first class, which with the pandemic the volume of those two items has been greatly reduced. It it's spin, why would the choice for the new postmaster be someone who has no clue how the postal service works, but he is a large donor.
     
  18. medoraman

    medoraman Supporter! Supporter

    Like I said, he may not have experience with mail, but he IS a logistic management expert, which is a pretty good fit IMHO.

    It is congress that mandated prepayment of benefits sir, not any one President. That is what is causing the losses on the USPS for the past 30 years. Your argument is with them sir, again IMHO.
     
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  19. Alegandron

    Alegandron "ΤΩΙ ΚΡΑΤΙΣΤΩΙ..." ΜΕΓΑΣ ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΟΣ, June 323 BCE

    I enjoy great discussions... however,

    Can we drop the political discussions within the Ancients Threads? We have had a few Modern Coin drive-by's resulting in threads being removed and Moderators banning folks. Ain't worth it.

    Moderators can direct folks to their general discussions threads or their sister forums dealing with the modern or political issues.
     
  20. medoraman

    medoraman Supporter! Supporter

    Respectfully @Alegandron I do not see it political. I think we have done a good job keeping it not so. Maybe the thread belongs in Coin chat instead of ancients, but think about it. Are there ANY other collectors more dependent on the USPS than ancient collectors? We are so specialize we can never hope to have local dealers to visit. Heck, I visit REGIONAL shows with almost nothing of interest to buy for my ancient collections.

    If you thought my posts were too political I apologize. I was not trying to be, and simply explain the world as I see with without mentioning politics, (per @Peter T Davis wise rule).
     
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  21. Alegandron

    Alegandron "ΤΩΙ ΚΡΑΤΙΣΤΩΙ..." ΜΕΓΑΣ ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΟΣ, June 323 BCE

    I did not feel your comments were political. I was on threads that started innocently, then went ballistic, with folks getting banned.

    YOU are a very respected poster here, and I really enjoy your posts. I enjoy and learn a lot from your posts. We had several folks coming in from NON-Ancients threads, and kinda blew them up and had the threads completely removed.

    I did not mean to interfere, just I really respect some of the players, and did not want the thread to go down a wrong path. :)
     
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