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07-23-2020 03:12 PM
I've been reading several posts about delays at various post offices. I'm right there with you. I had a package shipped from QVC on July 7. It got as far as Lehigh Valley, PA on July 15. That's unusual as most of my packages get stuck in Bridgeport NJ.
Anyway, I went to the USPS site and filled out the form for a missing package and got the standard letter about investigating the matter. Hopefully I'll get my package. Someday.
Interesting article I read about the changes the PO is going through . . . . . .
Postal Service memos detail ‘difficult’ changes, including slower mail delivery
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told employees to leave mail behind at distribution centers if it delayed letter carriers from their routes, according to internal USPS documents obtained by The Washington Post and verified by the American Postal Workers Union and three people with knowledge of their contents, but who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution.
“If the plants run late, they will keep the mail for the next day,” according to a document titled, “New PMG’s [Postmaster General’s] expectations and plan.” Traditionally, postal workers are trained not to leave letters behind and to make multiple delivery trips to ensure timely distribution of letters and parcels.
Analysts say the documents present a stark reimagining of the USPS that could chase away customers — especially if the White House gets the steep package rate increases it wants — and put the already beleaguered agency in deeper financial peril as private-sector competitors embark on hiring sprees to build out their own delivery networks.
Steep drop-offs in first-class and marketing mail, the Postal Service’s most profitable items, have exacerbated the USPS’s cash crisis. Single-piece, first-class mail volume fell 15 to 20 percent week to week in April and May, agency leaders told lawmakers last month. Marketing mail, the hardest-hit segment, tumbled 30 to 50 percent week to week during the same period.
Skyrocketing package volume, up 60 to 80 percent in May as the coronavirus pandemic made consumers more reliant on delivery services, has propped up the Postal Service's finances and staved off immediate financial calamity. But the packages also have intensified the USPS’s competition with Amazon, FedEx and UPS, industry leaders looking to capitalize on enduring changes in consumer habits brought on by shelter-in-place orders.
The Postal Service’s future needs to be as a low-cost package carrier, industry analysts contend, as parcels make up a growing portion of the agency’s volume and profits, and paper mail volumes continue to decline as coupons and bills increasingly move online. Postal leaders project the agency could run out of money between March and October 2021.
“If this is true, it would be a real concern to customers if service were slowed, especially in light of the fact that the Postal Service may get more rate authority, meaning higher rates, later this year or early next year,” said Art Sackler, manager of the Coalition for a 21st Century Postal Service, an industry group whose members include Amazon, eBay, Hallmark and other commercial mailers.
The Postal Service said in a statement that it was “developing a business plan to ensure that we will be financially stable and able to continue to provide reliable, affordable, safe and secure delivery of mail, packages and other communications to all Americans as a vital part of the nation’s critical infrastructure.”
But the documents circulated Monday on shop floors around the country called for specific changes in the way postal workers will do their jobs.
“Every single employee will receive this information, no matter what job they perform, so remember that YOU are an integral part of the success we will have — again, by working together,” the second document states.
“The shifts are simple, but they will be challenging, as we seek to change our culture and move away from past practices previously used,” it adds.
The first memo says the agency will prohibit overtime and strictly curtail the use of other measures local postmasters use to ameliorate staffing shortages.
Even a common method for mail delivery — “park points,” in which letter carriers park their mail trucks at the end of a street, deliver mail items by foot for several blocks, then return to the trucks and drive on — is under scrutiny. The document bans carriers from taking more than four “park points” on their routes and claims “park points are abused, not cost effective and taken advantage of.”
The second memo says the Postal Service will first look to cut its transportation costs, and estimates that late and extra trips cost the agency $200 million annually in “added expenses,” or about the same amount the agency lost in May. The memo warns postal workers that it may be “difficult” to “see mail left behind or mail on the workroom floor,” but that the agency “will address root causes of these delays and adjust the very next day.”
Postal union leaders condemned the measures and said customer service is being sacrificed for only meager cost savings.
07-23-2020 03:38 PM
Really discouraging info as I wait for an important piece of mail to show up.
I know I've removed the routine mailings from the PO over the years, but I still read more easily from print for magazines and newspapers, so there's some of that in my box.Plus occasional letters and cards And every once in a while, as now, something a company needs me to see that their email informed me is coming via "postal mail."
Scary to imagine what the new normal of the US mail will become.
07-23-2020 03:51 PM
I find it interesting that your article states that there is competition with Amazon. The post office is making deliveries on Sundays specifically for Amazon Prime. We don't have Amazon delivery here. I would imagine that the Post Office is likely taking a loss on those Sunday deliveries for Amazon. If I as a resident chose a Sunday delivery for a normal package I would be paying a premium price.
07-23-2020 03:57 PM
@mimomof4 Try Googling - I know there's been press about the relationship between Amazon and the PO. As of the time I was rreading, they need each other although I don't know that I read anything speciic to Sunday deliveries.
07-23-2020 04:08 PM
@millieshops wrote:@mimomof4 Try Googling - I know there's been press about the relationship between Amazon and the PO. As of the time I was rreading, they need each other although I don't know that I read anything speciic to Sunday deliveries.
@millieshops The post office has been in such a bad financial position for so long I would expect that they don't have the best contract with Amazon. I'm not an Amazon shopper, I only mention Sunday deliveries because I have neighbors that have deliveries every single Sunday from the Post Office mail truck- Amazon boxes. Another nosey neighbor did ask our mail carrier who told her it was all Amazon Prime deliveries on Sundays. We found it strange that all of a sudden late last year the mail truck was going down the road every single Sunday until we found this out.
07-23-2020 05:43 PM
@mimomof4 wrote:
@millieshops wrote:@mimomof4 Try Googling - I know there's been press about the relationship between Amazon and the PO. As of the time I was rreading, they need each other although I don't know that I read anything speciic to Sunday deliveries.
@millieshops The post office has been in such a bad financial position for so long I would expect that they don't have the best contract with Amazon. I'm not an Amazon shopper, I only mention Sunday deliveries because I have neighbors that have deliveries every single Sunday from the Post Office mail truck- Amazon boxes. Another nosey neighbor did ask our mail carrier who told her it was all Amazon Prime deliveries on Sundays. We found it strange that all of a sudden late last year the mail truck was going down the road every single Sunday until we found this out.
I don't have Prime and have gotten Sunday delivery of my Amazon orders from the post office.
07-23-2020 07:01 PM
Our local news said that our Post Office was only going to be open 6 hours M-F to buy stamps and mail packages...
07-23-2020 07:14 PM
@lmt Thank you for this very thought-provoking article! Much of it confirms what we've been anticipating, and or experiencing for a while, but this certainly puts it into perspective. It's really difficult watching what is happening to the postal service-just sad😐
~~~All we need is LOVE💖
07-23-2020 09:07 PM - edited 07-23-2020 09:08 PM
Yes, the post office has become even worse with the deliveries. This is what they wrote in April 2020, but of course with what you posted, it is worse.
07-24-2020 06:25 AM - edited 07-24-2020 06:26 AM
So many changes at the PO these days.
I remember growing up when we had the same mailman for years. The only time we got a new one was when the old one finally retired.
In recent years, we had the same mailman for about 6 months and then they would change their route.
These days it seems like we get a new mailman every few weeks.
We have Amazon Prime and none of our packages have ever been delivered through the PO.
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