Our postage rates just went up by about 6 percent. Oh, its still a great bargain. We get our mail delivered in LA from one side to the other in about two to three days for 39 cents. We get to stand in lines for 20 minutes to pick up a package and then be snarled at by the clerk. We get ….well you know.
The problem I have is that the post office isn’t allowed to go out of business for incompetence.
Case in point — they just built a new post office just down the street from my house. Nice place but its area for dealing with the public is too small — there is always a line of at least five people and usually 10 or 15. And that’s when all the windows are open.
However that’s not the real issue. The place is already a mess — the card readers on the cash registers (for credit card purchases) don’t work — they are taped over — there are year old posters on the walls with scotch tape, piles of junk all over the area where the staff works. It show no pride whatsoever by the staff (The local FedEx has been open 10 years and the place looks like its brand new.)
However how could the post office save money? Lets see — we get Saturday Delivery — probably the only place on earth that does. and Why? Don’t you think that if we reduced the delivery by about 17% we could get a substantial savings in costs? Would it save 17% of the post office’s budget — of course not.IF you need Saturday Delivery, get a PO box, or pay extra for it.
Why not open post offices in super markets, wall marts, and the like — or let them sell postal services. And then close the post offices that would be redundant.
Pay the postal carriers not by the hour but by the number of deliveries they make. My guess is that you would have a smaller staff and save big bucks.
Get those postal ATM machines you find in post offices everywhere and sell postage over the ‘net. Well they do, kinda, but its a pain in the butt.
Allow competitors to the post office. That would reduce prices faster than anything else.
Get the bureaucracy out of the postal service — dealing with them for anything other than a first class stamp is almost as bad as the IRS.
Privatize it completely and get it out of the government service. The Canadians appear to have been successful at that — maybe we could let them take it over.
JVH
