

How Much Will the Post Office Put Up With? - splat
http://improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume6/v6i4/postal-6-4.html

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inaka
Moving to Argentina has given me a newfound respect for the USPS - their
reliability, sense of duty, and their humanity. In many ways they are a
representative slice of America - flawed but generally reliable, hard working,
and flexible.

Losing things in the mail, spending hours waiting in line to pick up a
package, christmas presents delayed for three months for no apparent reason,
all of these experiences down here make me miss those guys.

~~~
mrtron
I loved the daily show bit about how the government can't efficiently run
health care - he mentioned how the USPS can deliver a letter across the
country in a few days for a few cents.

It really is an impressively efficient distributed system considering the
hassles involved, specifically the diversity of items as listed in this
article!

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solutionyogi
I hope you realize that it doesn't really cost few cents. The taxes paid by us
keeps USPS running. FYI: USPS lost 2.8 billion dollars in 2008.

~~~
sachinag
The USPS operates under an insane number of constraints that private
competitors don't. They have to serve every single residental address in
America, no matter how remote (UPS, and especially FedEx, laugh at this); they
have to have outposts in bumblefuck nowhere; they have to offer six days of
service even though volumes don't support it; fixed rate pricing for First
Class letters even from/to the most remote destinations; and so on, all under
their universal service obligation.

Furthermore, the postal service is mandated by the United States Constitution
(Article I, section 8, Clause 7).

Look, it's like criticizing Amtrak. It's under congressional (although not
Constitutional) mandate to run all those dumbass routes with stops in the
middle of fucking nowhere on tracks where the freight companies are blatantly
ignoring the law that requires passenger trains to have right of way. No
wonder Amtrak's losing money and are late all the time; they're not allowed to
do their jobs.

~~~
yummyfajitas
The postal service is _permitted_ , not mandated, by the constitution.

"The Congress shall have power to...[long list] To establish post offices and
post roads..."

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sachinag
The Congress shall also have the power to set up the court system (aside from
SCOTUS). It is well established that this construct in the Constitution
obligates Congress to do these things.

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mshafrir
"Helium balloon. The balloon was attached to a weight. The address was written
on the balloon with magic marker; no postage was affixed. Our operative argued
strongly that he should be charged a negative postage and refunded the postal
fees, because the transport airplane would actually be lighter as a result of
our postal item. This line of reasoning merely received a laugh from the
clerk. The balloon was refused; reasons given: transportation of helium, not
wrapped."

~~~
matt1
I burst out laughing when I read that in the article.

This is good too: "Never-opened small bottle of spring water. We observed the
street corner box surreptitiously the following day upon mail collection.
After puzzling briefly over this item, the postal carrier removed the mailing
label and drank the contents of the bottle over the course of a few blocks as
he worked his route. "

~~~
diN0bot
interesting: "Wrapped brick. Wrapped in brown paper; posted in street corner
box with same amount of postage as was strapped to unwrapped brick. Extreme
weight for size made package seem suspicious. Notice of attempted delivery
received, 16 days. Upon pickup at station, our mailing specialist received a
plastic bag containing broken and pulverized remnants of brick. Inside was a
small piece of paper with a number code on it. Our research indicates that
this was some type of US Drug Enforcement Agency release slip. The clerk made
our mailing specialist sign a form for receipt. "

~~~
billswift
The obvious moral is that if you're going to send anything heavy through the
mail, send it in a larger than necessary box. Machine tool parts and so forth
of steel are actually significantly denser than bricks.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
It may have something to do with where the mailpiece originated. I get machine
tools through the mail without any problem -- just got a 25lb vise two weeks
ago, but it was sent from a clearly commercial address with the words "machine
shop" in the title.

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budu3
I like the way they went an extra mile to treated the employees with decency.
Kudos.

"We sought out as many of the USPS employees who had (involuntarily) been
involved in the experiment as we could identify, and gave them each a small
box of chocolate"

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aberman
Reed Hastings tried this experiment in 1997 with DVDs. It worked, and he
founded Netflix.

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jcl
Of course, this was all back in 2000. I imagine the tolerance of unusual
objects in the mail has changed somewhat in the interim.

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jakewolf
There's always <http://mailabrick.com>

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jacquesm
For an exercise in school we had to draw a postcard. Some of them looked
pretty good so we decided to see what would happen if we used them.

100% success, all of them arrived stamped and on time.

So, if you're ever out of stamps but you have an urgent envelope to mail...
bring out those crayons, success guaranteed.

~~~
socillion
Actually, just mail it with either no postage or one cent postage. It has a
high probability of getting through, even if it's international mail. I did
some experiments a few years ago, and of the 4-5 I sent every one of them got
through.

Crayons wouldn't help anyway, except for maybe fooling people. The postal
service machine's actually only look at the envelopes for flourescence which
is applied to the stamps. In reality, the stamp's design could be totally
blank. However, if the package or letter is an odd size, humans must handle it
because it would otherwise jam the machinery - the reason there are now
charges for oddly shaped mail. So, if you're scamming the USPS, make it an
envelope that will have to be processed by people. Maybe a 1/2 too wide or
something like that.

I'm not 100% about this, but I think the machinery spits out the envelope for
a human to look at if there doesn't appear to be a flourescent stamp; else
stamps from 50+ years ago would be invalid.

One more interesting item: the USPS uses some pretty cool OCR to read the
addresses on mail. As I recall it has a 98% accuracy, although I wouldn't be
able to find the source.

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wglb
It has been fashionable to trash the post office (USPS) but growing up in a
rural route area, I occasionally did a test by sending a letter to the
grandparents with just the last name, the city name and the zip. Always got
there. I probably could have just put the name, county and zip.

~~~
ars
You can put just the zip and the P.O. box number and it'll get there.

~~~
psadauskas
The zip+4 uniquely identifies every address in the US. We're probably nearing
a billion addresses, though, I wonder what happens after that?

~~~
zngtk4
According to wikipedia, zip+4 does not uniquely identify single individuals
unless they are high volume recipients.

~~~
riffic
sometimes they do, depends on population density.

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patio11
I know how much the Japanese Post Office will put up with, because the US
Social Security Administration can't handle a mail merge:

"Patrick McKenzie $CITY, Japan"

is deliverable.

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olliesaunders
Page seems to be a 404 now. Any chance of a new link?

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olliesaunders
Hm, working again. :-)

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ericb
I did a similar experiment with good results in college--mailed an
individually wrapped slice of American cheese to a buddy.

~~~
psadauskas
I mailed a can of soda that was only available in the town where my college
was to a friend across the country. It arrived intact, only slightly dented.

~~~
ja27
In college, Unilever mailed a bar of soap (in the normal bar-of-soap box) to
every student on campus. The whole post office reeked of scented soap. Dozens
wound up in fountains around campus. I can't smell that soap without being
grossed out.

~~~
ergbvreg
Virgin mobile phones mailed one of those Love Heart candies to business as
apart of a "we love our customers" campaign. Unfortunately they got crushed by
the post - resulting in white powder filled envelopes being mailed to lots of
US business in the middle of the anthrax scare.

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johnohara
Article has 2000 copyright -- Powered by Wordpress. Has Wordpress been going
strong 8 years, or more?

~~~
jonknee
No, but people are able to upgrade their content management systems. The
internet wasn't around in 1900, but you can read news articles from that
period just fine on NYTimes.com.

