Here's the formula the U.S. Post Office is using to kill itself off.
Raise rates. Reduce service. Blame the customer for not using it.
Closing postal centers is going to destroy many more jobs at a time when all legislators and the President give lip service to creating jobs.
Here are some of the headlines:
From CBS News.
http://www.cbsnews.com/...
The financially strapped U.S. Postal Service is considering cutting as many as 120,000 jobs.
From CNN:
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/...
To save money, the U.S. Postal Service is proposing to deliver mail at about the same speed it delivered mail when it was first founded, back in 1775.
From Witchita:
http://www.kwch.com/...
The postal service plans to close nearly half of its 500 mail processing centers. That means it will take at least two days, sometimes longer, for priority mail to reach it's destination; things like bills, mail order medications, and even payroll checks.
First Class Mail:Just a Little Bit Slower (Boston.com)
http://www.boston.com/...
U.S. Postal Service Seeks to End Overnight Mail (Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/...
For years the USPS has been raising rates on its customer base, first-class customers, and reducing the quality of its services. It can take a lot of time already for priority and first-class mail. Many post offices have long, long waiting lines. And then the USPS blames its customers for using other kinds of services instead of the USPS. Duh!
In Alaska, where most rural communities have no delivery service alternatives to the Post Office, the impacts are particularly egregious.
Priority mail to and from Alaska already can take as much as ten days to either arrive or reach its destination when sent. Too bad if you are sending smoked or frozen fish.
Think Fed-X is the solution? Overnight express Fed-X to Alaska goes to the U.S. Post Office in Anchorage and can then take as much as another week to ten days to get to a rural destination here. They didn't tell my sister that when she tried shipping me some frozen deer meat from Texas. Fed-X just took her hundred bucks for overnight service.
Maybe you use UPS? Good luck doing that in rural Alaska. First it will cost you an extra $50 bucks to fly your package to or from a central service in Anchorage, Fairbanks, or Juneau.
So if the Post Office keeps raising rates and keeps reducing services, is it going to help itself stay in business?? Wouldn't work for my business. Wouldn't work for much of any business.
Already, small book publishers, of which I am one, and others have been hurt by recent changes in Postal rates and services. In Alaska, I can't send a 13 oz. book by first-class mail. I am required to send it priority mail. $5 for postage to mail a single book to someone really cuts into business. The alternative in Alaska is book rate, which goes by barge and takes about six weeks for delivery. Not good for business either way.
Magazines and newspapers may take a little longer to get delivered.
From Time:
http://www.time.com/...
They could slow everything from check payments to Netflix's DVDs-by-mail, add costs to mail-order prescription drugs, and threaten the existence of newspapers and time-sensitive magazines delivered by postal carrier to far-flung suburban and rural communities.
Personally I'm not a Netflix user, but I know a lot of folks who rely on mail-order prescription drugs. I am however a consumer of magazines. Already, in Alaska, my Time and National Geographic Magazines arrive a month late or more. I finally gave up on my subscription to High Country News. Sometimes, I get two or three issues on the same day of magazines published one month apart. They are already seriously backing up somewhere. And now they want to slow this delivery even more? This is a threat to freedom of information, to freedom of the press.
And here's the kicker. The Federal Times reports:
http://www.federaltimes.com/...
As the U.S. Postal Service was careening toward a record $8.5 billion loss in 2010, it was paying more than three dozen top executives and officers salaries and bonuses exceeding that of Cabinet secretaries — almost triple the number who were in that category only a year before, according to newly disclosed figures.
Looks like it's time for the people to Occupy the Post Office. Start by contacting your Congressional representatives. I did so today.