Saw this today
(I’m a bit behind)
4 Likes
According to the USPS fact sheet regarding the proposed changes to the postal network, it would have no impact on 75 percent of first-class mail.
They keep touting this “75%” like it doesn’t mean that 25% will be negatively impacted. That is a minority but not insignificant.
And the data simply don’t support that the changes made have lead to actual improvements. We would all support changes that increase reliability and usability, even with price increases. But making customers pay more for crappier service feels like bad business.
The New York Times | Postal Service Overhaul Runs Into Challenges | August 29, 2024
From April through June, the agency delivered 80.5 percent of single-piece first-class letters and postcards on time, which is the mail category that households use most often. That is down from 86.8 percent during the same period last year and below the agency’s current target of 92.3 percent, according to Postal Service data. On-time delivery has climbed to 84.3 percent as of the week ending Aug. 16.
4 Likes
I am curious about this statement.
First class mail volume is in free fall.
It is likely that the statement is true, but that might not mean it is as important as it once was to household as it once was.
Online bill payment is commonplace, so increasingly is receiving one’s bills online.
My FCM is almost all financial, and most of it is not time critical. Because I am old and crusty, I require paper delivery on many items which I also get electronic delivery on.
A recent article I read, spoke about a problem USPS has, Many younger people are not emptying their mailboxes, creating issues for postal carriers who can’t put new mail in people’s boxes.
Apparently, some people who use informed delivery service, only open their mailbox if there is something they want or need.
4 Likes
While I only quoted the statement, it seems accurate to me. In my personal household:
- our daily FCM/postcards received through USPS is much higher than daily packages received through USPS (heck, than daily packages received via any/all carriers)
- as for our outgoing post, it is 90% FCM via USPS
The statement doesn’t address whether FCM has generally declined, only that FCM is the primary USPS service used by households (not businesses). I’m sure we send and receive less FCM than we would if auto pay, e-statements, and email didn’t exist.
1 Like
I’m trying to think if the last time I’ve mailed ANYTHING that wasn’t for the business. As far as I can recall, the only pieces of outgoing mail this year would have been the mail in ballot for the primary election that didn’t matter anyway (NJ has it so late that everything is decided already), and my state Income Tax return, which I would prefer to submit online, but there’s a $20 charge to do that, so I send it FCM.
I honestly can’t think of anything else I’ve sent. And it’s very rare that I get any FCM that’s something I actually want.
3 Likes
Me too. My street-side mailbox is much more manageable than my email inbox. Too many junk emails to obscure the important ones. Computers crash, hard drives fail, the cloud storage growth rate is unsustainable.
The paper junk mail helps keep the USPS alive, I recycle it.
I’d like to see their on-time package delivery rate, and how that compares to the impending OTDR target.
5 Likes
I still mail birthday cards and thank you notes. There is something soothing about receiving a paper card/note that a human has taken the time to write by hand.
My sister who is developmentally disabled still sends cards and bill payments by mail. She doesn’t have a computer or a smart phone and wouldn’t know how to use them if she did. Same thing for a debit card. It would be too easy for an unscrupulous person to offer her “help” with using it.
6 Likes
Both my incoming and outgoing electronic communications are an order of magnitude greater than the letters mail I receive, and more than half of the letter mail is junk.
Yes, there are still people who are totally dependent on the mail. But it is harder to be because the senders are forcing the issue.
I had no choice but to have my social security electronically transferred and it now arrives 4 days early.
This past year, the IRS insisted we provide them with bank info to electronically send our tax retund.
The cable company in Maine has a $10 surcharge if we do not pay electronically and if we want a paper bill.
3 Likes
Whether you want it or not doesn’t change that it’s delivered to you. 
This can be true, AND first class mail can still be the primary USPS service utilized by non-business households. 
The facts that there is less FCM in general and that companies are trying to use it less and less–neither of which I dispute–are simply not relevant when it comes to the quote from the NYT that references FCM as the USPS service most used by households.
As many packages as we receive, we still receive 5x-10x more FCM. And though we rarely mail out anything FCM any more, we do so much much more than we mail out any packages.
1 Like
Everything which puts the quote in context is relevant.
This is the major role being played by fact checkers of all political persuasions, though it is usually absent from press reports on what the fact checkers actually say.
1 Like
Me, three. I don’t trust digital completely. Some bad actor might come in and drain everything. At least I have an official hardcopy.
4 Likes