
Tech experts, including Google, to discuss future of the USPS - localtalent
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/post/google-execs-tech-experts-focus-on-future-of-postal-service/2011/05/04/AFmuOVpF_blog.html
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IgorPartola
The most sensible suggestion I've heard recently was from a co-worker who said
it would make sense to not sound out postal workers to every house, but
instead to keep all the mail at the Post Office. If you want your mail
delivered to your door, then you can pay extra. Otherwise pick it up yourself.
This would greatly cut down on the USPS expenses.

I also would love a premium service where I get one address (just like Google
Voice) that I give out and then the mail is actually forwarded to my new
location if/when I move. UPS provides something like this, I believe, but why
not USPS?

~~~
jcampbell1
The post office already can and does get this efficiency with community
mailboxes. My grandmother and I both use a key to get our mail from a large
mail drop. She lives in an newly constructed old person neighborhood in rural
Florida, and I live in a Manhattan apartment building. My parents get their
mail delivered by car to a personal mailbox. I agree with your suggestion, but
how do we get existing neighborhoods to build a mail drop? Who pays for it?
Who maintains the keyed mailboxes? My parents would be completely okay with
having a mail drop and picking their mail up at the entrance to the
neighborhood, but I don't think they are interested paying to build it.

I think we should combine some of the ideas:

If your neighborhood has community mailboxes, then you get mail every day. If
you have personal mailboxes, then you get mail 3 days per week. If you want
mail everyday, then organize your neighborhood to have a community mailbox.

~~~
stretchwithme
The cost to build it would be recovered in the first few months if people were
actually charged for the cost of having a person walk around for a half hour 6
days a week. That's got to cost $200 a month for a small community. Of course,
government specializes in hiding the true costs of things, so who knows.

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alanh
I don’t understand why you can’t address physical mail to an identity and let
the USPS automatically route it to a physical address. Especially during and
after college, I moved so much, I’m sure mail got lost _en route._ It would
also help with privacy. You could have “throwaway addresses” given to certain
businesses, possibly, or instruct the USPS to block mail from <sender>.

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IgorPartola
UPS provides this: <http://www.theupsstore.com/products/pages/maiandpos.aspx>

You just have to pay for both storage and forwarding.

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alanh
I’m picturing this being something everyone can do, not a very niche offering.
Interesting, though.

★ Edit in response: Only some of the same problems are being solved. If the
USPS let everyone choose an ID, it wouldn’t be long before websites let (US)
customers enter “tcollins12” instead of “Tom Collins, 145 Main St., Somewhere,
ST 12345” during checkout… it wouldn’t be long before your public wishlist
said “ship it to USPS address ‘alanh’” without giving away your residence…
it’s not just an alias, it’s a paradigm shift. (With the UPS offering you
linked, your address still takes the form of an address.)

~~~
IgorPartola
Everyone can do this. You are picturing it being paid for by the tax payers
instead of you directly, giving the perception of free. Then again I found
their offering to be too expensive and would love to see USPS trying to
compete with them.

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ender7
Anyone complaining about USPS quality of service should really travel to other
countries. From my experience in Europe and elsewhere, USPS knocks it out of
the park.

One of the reasons that USPS is a national monopoly is that it provides an
important piece of national infrastructure. I don't see how that is going to
be replaced, as many features of federal and local government depend on
systems for reliably sending citizens messages, such as censuses, legal
notifications such as court summons, drafts, various aspects of voting and
elections, information and notices from local governments, etc.

Most of these depend on _every_ citizen being reachable by mail, which is in
the USPS's charter, and which causes a lot of overhead. If the USPS goes away,
private companies will not provide service to everyone. I have no idea how
these systems will continue function (e-mail is, for various reasons, not an
acceptable solution at the moment).

I would love for USPS to develop alternate forms of income in order to
essentially "pay for" traditional mail delivery. I'm not sure it's in their
DNA though.

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cullenking
From talking to my grandmother, apparently people used to love the postoffice.
Now, I don't know a single person in my age group (20-30 somethings) that
doesn't despise the postoffice. The fact that I can't opt out of garbage being
delivered to my door, by an actual person, is pretty infuriating to most.

If the post office acted like a "letter carrier" and not a package/spam
carrier, I think they could do alright. Let UPS etc handle shipping actual
packages, drop the spam and drop delivery to 4-5 days a week tops, they would
save alot of money.

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protomyth
The USPS makes money on the spam/junk mail and packages, not on letters. The
profit incentive for them is not the same as their customers desires.

~~~
cullenking
I understand the bulk mailers make up a good portion of their income, and
effectively subsidize regular mail. However, I don't think it's an acceptable
tradeoff. You can makeup for the difference by probably dropping a single day
of delivery - my guess is postage wouldn't even have to raise if you dropped
to either 4 or 5 days a week.

~~~
protomyth
They are going with what they know makes them money. They have already cut
Saturdays, and I would expect them to cut another day too.

~~~
cullenking
They haven't cut saturdays in my area, so it's probably just a regional or
maybe rural thing?

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AndyKelley
Why are we trying to save USPS? It offers worse service than any of the
private companies, and according to this article, it currently has a net loss
of 7 billion dollars. How about we delete it, then git commit -a -m "deleted
unused stuff, should improve efficiency"

~~~
smackfu
Because they deliver a letter for 44 cents anywhere in the country, in a few
days.

Do any of the private companies get within a factor of 10 of that price?

~~~
thematt
That should tell you something: it's not profitable.

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hooande
What _is_ going to happen to the Postal Service? In 10-15 years, dead tree
mail will be an anachronism. Mass mail campaigns will be much less effective
because the current buying generation will have grown up ignoring letters.
Will the post office be able to continue to function after losing 80% of it's
current volume? Does this mean that we'll be trusting one or many startups to
deliver important information from the government?

I also wonder how a world with a much smaller post office would look. I know
there are already several startups operating in this space, but it seems like
there will be a large opportunity in "replacing printed mail" in the near
future.

~~~
DanI-S
According to their facts page[1], USPS process 6761 pieces of mail _per
second_. They had a 2009 revenue of $68 billion. They pay $2.1 billion in
salaries _every two weeks_.

Dead tree mail isn't dead just yet; they definitely have enough time to figure
out a plan.

[1] <http://www.usps.com/communications/newsroom/postalfacts.htm>

~~~
cosmicray
> Dead tree mail isn't dead just yet; they definitely have enough time to
> figure out a plan.

Traditional printed mail (flats, letters, etc) will not go away until every
person has an iPad (or equivalent) and has broadband. Many many areas of the
US are still without broadband access.

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stretchwithme
earthclassmail.com is what they should look at. Many things don't need to be
delivered. The post office could actually let people see images of mass
mailings before they are even printed or let people print them themselves with
no delivery.

In other words, where electronic mail won't work, USPS could handle parts of
the delivery that make sense and how its done shouldn't matter.

As far as delivery 6 days a week, I think most people could get by with
delivery 2 or 3 times a week.

Delivery of commercial could be scheduled to arrive just before delivery days
so they could avoid storing too much mail.

USPS or private equivalents could also accept and store electronic bills for
you as a trusted third party so you can access them as long as needed. It
could certify that bills have actually been paid.

There are a lot of things that could be done to leverage its "official"
position. But to do so, it actually must become technically competent. At the
moment, it cannot even put the mail into the right box consistently at my
house.

~~~
jessriedel
> The post office could actually let people see images of mass mailings before
> they are even printed or let people print them themselves with no delivery.

This makes as much sense as removing commercials from TV shows because people
can now go to the network website and watch the commercials there. The problem
isn't "how do we continue to provide junk mail cheaply?" it's "how do we
continue to provide regular mail cheaply without being subsidized by junk
mail?"

~~~
stretchwithme
Are you sure junk mail is subsidizing regular mail? This article seems to
indicate quite the opposite.

"Of particular concern has been the decline in the lucrative first-class mail,
largely consisting of personal letters and cards, bills and payments and
similar items. First-class mail volume fell 6.6 percent in 2010, 8.6 percent
in 2009, and 4.8 percent in 2008. Traditionally, this mail has produced more
than half of total revenue.

Volume for standard mail – advertising and similar business items – improved
somewhat, indicating some signs of economic recovery, but generates less
income."

From [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/12/post-office-lost-
bi...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/12/post-office-lost-billions-
deep-cuts-congress_n_783070.html)

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iandanforth
I wouldn't mind getting mail once a week. The question is, would this work for
everyone?

Are there items that are time critical (need less than two weeks round trip)
AND must be sent physically AND would be prohibitively expensive to send
through private mail services?

Considering the items I have in my mail pile right now I can't think of any.

~~~
stretchwithme
most people would probably agree. The exceptions can be handled.

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yummyfajitas
One fairly simple solution would be to reduce the frequency of mail delivery.
Instead of Mon-Sat, we could deliver mail Mon-Wed-Fri or Tues-Thurs-Sat
(different days for different zones).

~~~
cosmicray
That doesn't reduce the mail volume. Then you would have to store the mail
somewhere, and still have the same amount to sort. So on the days when they
did deliver, it would take longer to sort it.

~~~
hexis
I think one of the premises of the OP was that mail volume will be declining
over time due to digital communication.

