U.S. Postal Service: salvageable or doomed?

Why....are you receiving mail every day...? Let alone lots of mail every day....?

Same here Josh, it’s been patchy and odd for a few weeks now. A different carrier almost every day seems to be the biggest thing I’ve noticed.

And, it’s not that weird to receive mail every day, is it? We get at least something every day (when it’s delivered, that is), even if 90% is junk.

This may be an american divide again

we get mail daily. usually dad's hospital bills, my bank trying to make me some bullshit offer for a new account, stuff we ordered, etc.

This may be an american divide again

Long ago the US postal service made a decision, probably motivated by or dictated by politics, to offer extremely favorable rates to commercial interests and non-profit organizations making bulk mailings of advertising materials or begging letters. The advertisers/non-profits are required to presort and prepackage their bulk mailings to reduce the amount of handling required, but the upshot has been that the lion's share of daily mail received by any US postal customer is "junk mail", advertising fliers, catalogs and pleas for money that are thrown out with hardly a glance.

It's a strange, wasteful and annoying system, but it is what we have developed over many, many decades. This inertia is akin to what strangled the Byzantine and Russian Empires, but no one knows how to fix it painlessly, so the US endures it, because any pain involved in fixing it will be resented and complained about, but simply standing aside and watching it decay and die brings nobody into blame.

if we're talking mail that I actually give a fuck about, then usually the shit I order is the only meaningful stuff I get lol

Yeah, I would be OK with mail every few days, if it were reliable, but that wouldn't exactly help the USPS out, nor those who rely on the mail more than I do. I mean, I think something like 40% of American households still have landlines, 100 million people with cable plans, etc. While I'm annoyed that the new New Yorker hasn't shown up yet, there is a big chunk of the population that relies on the mail for checks, bills, medicine and other important, regular deliveries. Though of course most things I *intentionally* request, orders and purchases and whatnot, arrives pretty quickly and reliably.

Mail-order goods have become more prominent in our lives lately and that trend seems likely to continue. That doesn't mean we have to underwrite Amazon, but hopefully the USPS can be saved.

For the first time ever I am now subscribing to magazines digitally because the Post Office has slowed down delivery significantly in the past year.

this has messed with Fraud prevention efforts for my company as well. we instituted a rule that people requesting withdrawals from their 401k can only use direct deposit accounts that have been on file for 7 calendar days or more, the logic being that gives enough time for the paper confirmation that goes out to reach them in case it was not them that requested the withdrawal (y'know, fraud).

that letter isn't arriving in no 7 days now!

DeJoy still helming the USPS 4 months into the new administration is a huge frustration. This guy blatantly tried to subvert a fair election in the midst of a pandemic *and* put more people at risk by making them less likely to trust their ballots to the mail. He should be behind bars.

I was poking around this morning for an update on why nothing has happened yet, turns out just a few days ago (April 28th) the Senate Committee finally advanced Biden's list of three nominees for full Senate confirmation.

I'm hoping this is just a feint to get them confirmed, but it was disheartening to see this line:

Their confirmation is unlikely to spur an immediate change in leadership at USPS, however, as none of the appointees during their nomination hearing last week directly criticized or said they would seek to remove Postmaster General Louis DeJoy.

why would they say that tho

Right, of course they aren't going to say that out loud, I'm just surprised that this article seems to take that silence at face value to mean they won't replace him.

Would be hilarious if he gets fired and then ends up getting arrested on a yacht by the Postal Police.

Maybe they could misplace him somewhere between postal facilities.

Yeah, I would be OK with mail every few days, if it were reliable, but that wouldn't exactly help the USPS out

deems is not being outraged that the post office delivers mail every day. he is being surprised that things, indeed lots of things, are sent personally to you every day.

There was a big anti-phonebook group here in the SF Bay Area, not sure if they were successful in their goal: i.e. stop sending out giant anachronistic phone books that nobody wants or asks for. Feel like I still get one every year which goes right into recycling.

I think the phonebook printers claimed First Amendment rights to ads for chiropractors and muffler shops

We hadn't gotten a phone book in many years, but one showed up a few months ago, albeit about the half the size of what they used to be. I can't imagine anyone was asking for that.

I heard that's why there's so many AAAA Mini-Storage and AAAAA Tires, etc... it was a way to be at the front of the ads in the phonebook. Sort of Google optimization in an old analog format

Ha, I remember an 'AAA A1 Auto Care" from a town I lived in when I was a kid, presumably for that very same reason.

Phone Books are good for finding a complete listing of some category (at least every business with a phone) without being unwittingly gamed by Google or Yelp or some non-transparent online source.

I'm not opposed to them, and they might be handy in emergency situations... but they should also make it easy to opt out

Yeah, sorry, there is no potential benefit that is going to overcome the massive waste and environmental impact of printing up tens of thousands of massive books that will be immediately recycled or ignored.

And they usually deliver them in thick plastic bags

Exactly, even before getting into the resources wasted in delivering them, unrequested.

Remember in the '90s when AOL sent everyone in the country about 15 CD-ROMs apiece, unrequested and unwanted?

https://www.vox.com/2015/5/12/8594049/aol-free-trial-cds

an interesting anecdote for the chicagolanders itt: a good friend of mine moved about four blocks, going from the north side of lawrence at sacramento to the south side of lawrence, and has gone from getting mail about three times per month (by his estimation) to getting mail every day before 10am. what do you think could account for this?

Just fortunate enough to move to a better/more consistent route?

All anecdotal, obviously, but in talking with other people around my city, it really appears to depend on your route. Some routes are remarkably consistent while others seem to suffer from nonstop turnover and problems. Our carrier has never been the same person for more than a week or two, some weeks it's a different person every day that mail comes. We've hit patches of really inconsistent delivery (never as bad as only 3x per month though), tons of misdelivered mail, sometimes weeks go by without mail only to get a massive pile finally. Talked to a friend that lives barely half a mile away and he said he's had the same carrier on his route for about four years now, super consistent and regular, and the only problem they've seen in the past year has just been the delays in stuff shipped from further away.

Just checked the tracking on a package that I figured should've been here by now, traveling from NJ to IL.

Well, it's in California.

must be Led Zeppelin IV

Sorry - we just wanted to see what you ordered, I'm forwarding it on now

Not as egregious as OL’s experience, but I ordered something that was shipped from Chicago and I live an immediately adjacent suburb. My package was sent to Des Moines, Iowa and has now been sitting at a different suburban distribution center for over a week since.

shouldn't have said what you did about Greta Van Fleet in front of your mailman, who runs the fan club

Our mail delivery, as such, as been a host of randos for the last several weeks. We'll see one guy a few times, then nothing for a couple of days. Then a new woman, then nothing for a couple of days. Yesterday we got last Wednesday's delivery of the weekly local paper. It's a little disorienting but also a tad distressing, because of course we have no idea what mail be might not be getting at all.

you want this thread:

rolling FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS thread

Or maybe the thread dedicated to talking about USPS issues, I dunno

You should start one!

Anyway, fine, here's an example with perhaps more weight to it: as of yesterday, count us among the Americans (first world!) who were expecting an important medication in the mail that simply never arrived because the mail service has been so erratic.

FWIW Josh I was defending your right to post on a topic in the thread dedicated to that topic.

I know, I was just kidding.

https://64.media.tumblr.com/a488faeb262a0ae714cca91deeca65f4/tumblr_phkl0cystq1s0s8m8_1280.jpg

^ Me

Can't speak for everyone, but things seem to be really bad again lately. Seeing a lot of complaints on Twitter and, personally, I have three packages on the way to me via USPS - checking the tracking this morning, all three say "in transit, running late". One was originally to arrive last Wednesday, one last Friday and one yesterday. Two appear to be stuck in a local distribution center, can't quite figure out what is going on with the third.

this is why I won't use mail-order RX for a while. mom was left without meds for days due to a misdelivery

So at this point, is it safe to assume we aren't getting rid of DeJoy anytime soon? Seems like Biden's board members aren't going to oust him?

Love that we just all sit and watch this dude completely cripple a vital service while everyone in power just kinda mumbles and kicks at the dirt.

I think it's more than just him, unfortunately, covid pushed a lot of mail carriers into retirement.

Probably, but all of his other decisions have absolutely made an already rough situation significantly worse. I mean, let's not defend him at all, he is doing exactly what he was hired to do, which is destroy the USPS.

Judging by some of the sureddits, shit is absolutely messed up in the Chicago area. Lots of people reporting 10-12+ days of packages sitting in the local distribution center without updates.