Get used to ever increasing postage rates. The USPS is “10,000 percent better” than 2 years ago, US Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told the Washington Post, and said he was committed to “dramatically increasing postage rates” as he works to transform the Postal Service “from an aging letter courier to the backbone of the e-commerce economy.”
Now I am a big supporter of the USPS. Our last postmaster, was outstanding. Very business focused and knew how important what he did was to us.
In the COVID times, one of the counter persons even came on her lunch hour to help us deal with the workload. God bless her for that.
But 10K % better? Give me a break.
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I believe this is what we call “invalid data” as the person stating the fact is not an independent authority.
Up until 2017, we had the BEST postal carrier at our store. THE BEST. Would leave us “hampers” to fill every day. He then retired, and we got temps.
At home I’ve had the best for the past 5 years, once again I’ve had the best carrier. knows exactly where my pickups are, I leave water and snack bags out for all drivers, some even camp out in the driveway for a few minutes sorting their vans out.
Reliability, I’ve always found USPS to be reliable, we were a GIANT 1st class shipper till around 2018 when regulations changed. they lost one package in maybe 1000-2000 shipments.
In my experience there has been a huge increased in predictability and reliability of USPS First Class Mail Service, and a much smaller impact on media mail.
It is faster for me to ship to CA or TX than to ME, NY or NJ but it is well within acceptable limits.
It is causing me to rethink some of what I offer, because it appeals only to cheapskates who do not want to pay for more than a First Class stamp.
Ebay’s Standard Envelope with limited tracking is too erratic in its tracking for me to feel comfortable.
I admit that a shipping cost of 50% of the sell price seems like a lot, and I am sure it will get worse, but some of my shipping price buyers have started to buy multiple items since shipping has increased, so they take less effort to ship an order.
I have not figured out whether they are buying less frequently, but my average order is back to the level I had on Amazon when I started there in 2008.
Based on the attitude of the workers in our post office over the last two years, I would agree. They are not happy. My “right hand man” a woman, is married to a postal worker who has a on his feet all day route. They as a family, are not happy with him. The nickname they use is “Destroy” not DeJoy.
Many of our CAROLINA/NEW YORK/NEW JERSEY Media Mail orders are getting there in 3-4 days if they go through the Phoenix or Albuquerque hub instead of Bell Garden. Sacramento in 2 days!!
Hope eventually will do something to improve Memphis or Atlanta, in my opinion, the worst in the system.
This issue with breaking even was the requirement by congress to pre-fund the retirement for all USPS employees. No other business has (had) to do this.
The recent uptick in service level has more to do with the airlines being back in action from the COVID pandemic slow down than things implemented by DeJoy.
And Agree
It’s about routing, equipment in the processing centers and volume each center handles. We can ship to Portland OR from here (West Texas) and it arrives in 2 days. We can ship to areas around Dallas TX from here (West Texas) and it takes 3 days. We can ship to an address in town and it takes 2 days because it is routed out to the local distribution center and then back to the Post Office here in town (which is done to get a machine count of the volume being delivered in the local Post Office). The one that always amazes us is Hawaii … 2 days for us if going to Honolulu .
Except it was already terrible and it wasn’t him. Executing a plan devised by your predecessor isn’t really you. You can go read the hearing testimonies and public statements from the non-partisan board of governors.
Like everything else. It’s called inflation.
Going after DeJoy for the Postal Service problems is pure political theatre. Congress is the real culprit, [mod edit: papy removed political stuff]
Absolutely, and price increases create price increases by smart sellers. I will include us in that market segment. We have increased the price of our free shipping, by increasing our prices.
When we first started shipping, our First Class Package shipping with tracking was $0.95 for 3 oz and the price of a gallon of gas was around $0.90 (in California). Now the average USPS is $3.90 and a gallon of gas is hovering around $2.90 (in Texas). A $7.95 item is now $29.95. But then, there was a time when a loaf of bread was $0.05 (about 50 years before we were born).
To us, it isn’t as much about the cost of USPS as it is the quality and reliability of service for the cost of the service. Inflation is going to happen … sometimes at a slow pace and sometimes at a fast pace. But in the end, it is always the service level … are our packages getting to the destination or are we seeing damaged and lost packages? USPS has done fairly well on this note (except during COVID) despite the monetary issues Congress created for USPS.
Are we going to ignore the law? The law literally states USPS should be a self-funded entity and is expected to receive no tax dollars for operating expenses.
Some people would consider operating at net losses of 4b-10b “hand over fist”. You do not. Cool, what business are you in my man? I need to get in on that lol
As a reminder, “DeJoy is deluded in his assessment and has demonstrated chronic incompetence throughout his tenure. He does NOT the USPS.” could 100% be considered political. I did not consider it so FYI, but it could. Nothing I have said has been political at all, just personal opinion which I noted and facts.
You guys want to keep pulling the no politics card fine, then we just cant talk about things like USPS at all. Seems a bit infantile.
Hopefully, nothing I have said comes off as a personal attack. Its not. But every once in a while we have to take a big step back and look at what we are doing.
I have deleted that comment. Any personal opinion comment that can be politically triggering is a comment we don’t need here on SAS–including staff.
This comment was a general mod reminder and not targeted toward you specifically, at all. However, if I used the reply arrow on your comment to respond–instead of the reply arrow on the topic–then I am sure that it looked that way, and I am very sorry. It was meant for everyone, not you particularly in any way.
“Infantile” or no, that’s how we operate here: NO POLITICS. There are many other places on the internet to get political, but that’s not SAS. Take it or leave it.
Because discussing politics certainly brings out infantile behavior, and since we staff are all volunteering our time in addition to running our businesses in addition to all other commitments, we simply don’t have the time for the modding that political conversations necessitate.
I hope that you’re wrong about continuing the discussion about USPS, and at this time we’re keeping the topic open, but you might be right. If we need to close it, we will.
Actually, the architect of the USPS was probably the most partisan Postmaster General in history.
And chairman of one of our major parties.
As for our libraries, they would be non-existent in some parts of the country were it not for a “robber baron” - Andrew Carnegie. Were it not for Andrew Carnegie and the libraries he donated, the library I frequented as a kid, and many others would not have existed because government had higher priorities. I know there are other posters on this forum who are indebted to Carnegie libraries.
Not to disagree with the intent of your comments, but to try to maintain some historical perspective.
There are lots of things which should be, but someone does have to pay the bill, and that is not political.
Now wait a second, are we going to ignore the Constitution? Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 “To establish Post Offices and post Roads.” The Post Office and Post Roads are in the constitution, the Federal funding of our highway system is only constitutional bundled as ‘post roads’. I’m ambivalent personally, but by that logic then all Federally funded roads should be self-funded and expect to receive no tax dollars.
The important question that Sellers want to ignore is this, “What constitutes post and how is it different from freight?”
Regardless, no tax dollars versus 5-10billion tax dollars is a big difference. If we use common sense I think the average person would say fine lets float the post office that few hundred million they were deficit this year. Allow them to make postage price changes so that next year that does not happen (heck maybe even back pack the loan).
But we talking bazillions here. Year after year after year. Thats not sustainable.
As a point I would like to declare that for my own personal business, I ship SOLELY USPS 1st class. I have felt the squeeze as much as the next guy.
But if I insisted on not raising any prices than, effectively every US Citizen is covering that postage deficit for my personal business. I already charge too much for a glass bauble.
All we need now is dog-tamer to drop in this convo and say something long and complicated that none of us would understand but we would bond over the attempt to.
the USPS. It’s an amazing piece of democracy for which I am grateful.
