
The Styrofoam Cube In This Letter Serves A Bureaucratic Purpose - ubasu
http://consumerist.com/2011/10/the-styrofoam-cube-in-this-letter-serves-a-bureaucratic-purpose.html
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juiceandjuice
AT&T told me I can either get an unlimited Text Messaging plan or no text
messaging plan and pay per text message.

Comcast told me that the 6mb internet service would be $50, and that I could
only get the 20mb service, the service I wanted for $50 for the first six
months, 60 for the next six months, and 70 for the next 12 months after that.
They called it a "bundle" because it included local TV channels, channels
which I get for free. The didn't offer me the choice of no free TV channels
over cable.

Apple continually charges a ridiculous amount on memory upgrades.

Half the places I shop at want me to register with them in some capacity. No
REI, I don't need a special card for the 2 annual purchases I do a year. You
can keep the $2 I'd get back at the end of the year if I did have the card.

Amazon sells the same kindle at two different prices, depending on whether or
not you like advertisements.

Are all these things stupid? Yes. The USPS is not alone, so stop pretending
it's some government bureaucracy thing. People sometimes complain that the
government should act more like a business, and get upset when they actually
do.

~~~
njharman
> so stop pretending it's some government bureaucracy thing

Yep, USPS is not a normal government agency. Also "The USPS has not directly
received taxpayer-dollars since the early 1980s with the minor exception of
subsidies for costs associated with the disabled and overseas voters."*

If people point to USPS as example of government waste they do so out of
ignorance.

* <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Service>

~~~
sp332
USPS has been running a massive deficit.
<http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0911/090611l1.htm> So how are they still
operating if they don't get taxpayer money?

~~~
muhfuhkuh
They run a deficit because the Congress passed the Postal Accountability and
Enhancement Act of 2006[1] forced them to pay for the next _75 years_ of
retirement and pension benefits within _10 years_ , the first downpayment of
which they start making payments on Sept. 30 this year, which is why they've
been running in the red for two years now.

In 2004, they actually _made_ 4 billion in profit, in 2005, 2 billion, and in
2006 a billion. They've had to prepare to make 5.5 billion in payments each
year since due to the PAEA, and will do so until 2016.

[1] [http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/five-things/the-u-s-
pos...](http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/five-things/the-u-s-postal-
service/11433/)

------
rudiger
Maybe there's a technical reason for this? It's possible that the handling of
parcel packages is different and is helped by a minimum thickness.

~~~
ajross
More probably that the detection of parcel packages is machine-driven and
based on thickness.

I don't know why everyone is up in arms about this. The Indiana people had a
problem (how to get the letter mailed via the service they wanted) and solved
it creatively.

This is called a "hack", not "bureaucracy". And we should applaud it. Is the
rule dumb? Yeah, probably. But it's hardly alone in the world. For every
styrofoam cube there are a dozen people putting letters into boxes needlessly,
and _that_ is the bad thing. This is cute.

------
heyrhett
"The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy."
-- Oscar Wilde

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joshz
Polish equivalent of USPS has, still until 2013, a monopoly on delivering mail
weighing up to 50g at some low price, 1.55 pln i think, while private delivery
companies would have to charge 2.5x that. So they attach metal plaques or
small notepads to letters to increase weight.

~~~
delinka
Maybe I need caffeine, but I don't follow your comment.

Who adds these items to increase weight? Why? If my item is <50g, I use the
Polish monopoly mail service (PMMS?) and pay 1.55pln (40% of what I'd pay with
the competition, according to your numbers.) If PMMS is adding this weight,
the mind boggles - they're wasting fuel delivering light items. If customers
are adding the weight, why would they want to increase their costs to mail
light items?

~~~
joshz
Perhaps I could have been clearer.

> Who adds these items to increase weight?

Private delivery companies add these items.

> Why?

Because due to the existing PMMS (Poczta Polska to be exact) monopoly on mail
<50g, private companies would have to charge 2.5x the PMMS rate to deliver the
same piece of mail. Adding the item allows a private company to circumvent the
monopoly (by increasing weight >50g) and thus being able to deliver this piece
of mail at a _lower_ rate than PMMS. How this ends up being profitable is a
bit of a mystery.

> If PMMS is adding this weight

They're not. They have the monopoly so they don't need to.

> they're wasting fuel delivering light items.

No arguing there...

This is what one of those metal plates looks like
<http://gfx.mmka.pl/newsph/222924/44881.3.jpg>

~~~
delinka
Ah. Private carriers are increasing weight to stay above the 'legal minimum.'
That makes more sense.

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watmough
According to my wife, delivery confirmation on a parcel is around 20c, saving
money against using registered mail.

~~~
drinian
Registered mail is supposed to be held to a different standard for proof of
delivery than delivery confirmation as well.

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ck2
Except what the article doesn't mention at all:

Cost to ship up to three ounces as first-class-PARCEL with tracking is $1.75

Cost to ship 8x11, same three ounces without tracking that is machine-sortable
(bendable) is 88 cents.

So you are paying for that as a parcel, it's not just bureaucracy.

They cannot put tracking on every first class item, it would destroy their
profitability.

Just try getting FedEx or UPS to deliver anything these days with tracking for
only $1.75

~~~
ahi
Most first class mail isn't touched by human hands until the mail carrier puts
it into your mailbox. I'm guessing that you could ship a machine-sortable as a
parcel with tracking if you brought it to the post office, but not when it's
being mixed in with a thousand other machine-sortables in the out-going mail
bag. You don't want to go through each machine-sortable letter to see if
tracking is required. I suspect this is less about bureaucratic complexity and
more about dealing with a corner case caused by operational efficiency.

edit: Jacob on the consumerist thread explained it better than I did. "I
suspect that letters (or flats) are processed through equipment that doesn't
scan the barcode for the delivery confirmation system. Only if your letter is
really a package and doesn't fit through the equipment that processes letters
does it go through the package system which does scan the barcodes."

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ROFISH
As someone who ships items daily with the postal service, the cube is not
necessary. Yes, you have to pay extra for the "package rate" to get delivery
confirmation, but you don't actually have to add extra items to make it a
package.

This is the fault of the shipper, not the postal service.

~~~
Symmetry
Large corporations generally don't feel like they can get away with ignoring
rules just because they aren't enforced. What if the Post Office suddenly
started rejecting "packages" that their policy said they should reject? The
corporation wouldn't be able to change their process quickly, and would lose a
lot of money until it was fixed.

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bfung
nice hack.

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TruthElixirX
Ugh. USPS. I cannot actually remember the last time I used their service.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
Likely more recently than you might think. See, for instance, the Wikipedia
entry on FedEx Smartpost (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FedEx_Ground>).

edit: regarding UPS: [http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r22924632-ups-using-
USPS-for...](http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r22924632-ups-using-USPS-for-
last-leg)

~~~
TruthElixirX
:(. I will have to switch to UPS now.

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steve8918
Wow. This is the reason why the USPS is going bankrupt in front of our eyes.

If they don't change ridiculous rules like this, they'll never survive.

~~~
clawrencewenham
The post office themselves claim it's a congressional mandate to pre-pay
75-years worth of employee pensions and benefits in a 10-year window. They
give Congress 5.5 billion dollars every year, and it's that which is driving
the crisis.

~~~
ahi
I believe the USPS snark is that they are paying pension and benefit costs for
mail carriers that haven't been born yet. How unusual, congress screwed
something up. The cynic in me is yelling "conspiracy!"

