There are small Post Offices run by people who are not Postal Employees. At least there used to be. The Post Office should remain. No matter what. If they have to reduce the unions pay to keep it. So be it. The best way would be just raise the stamp price to a level that works.

would be the ones running the show, not the workers. To suggest otherwise is buying the repuke line.

Sometimes you need to mail a letter. Not EMAIL. If it is a Dollar instead of 50 cents...OK. I don't care. As long as they don't close the Post Office. And I can mail a letter if I need to.

so many of us pay bills online and email that there is not enough mail now, but that said there are times you want to send a snail mail card or letter or bill. I would pay a dollar for a stamp to keep everyone working and have management like they said take a cut not the little guys.

I live rurally and my carrier works part time 4-5 hrs 6 days a week. She said she wouldn't mind having Sat. off she is tired of working 6 days in a row.

As much as I hate spam I would rather deal with it and sort it out with filters than have junk mail ruining the trees.

A dollar isn't much to pay to have something "hand delivered" these days. What do they think the private company is going to charge per letter. Probably over $2.00.

Last edited Sat Apr 7, 2012, 02:54 PM - Edit history (1)

People don't know that the Republicans passed a bill under Bush II
forcing the US Postal Service to fund it's pension/benefits for 10 years.
No other federal agency has to fund this ridiculous requirement.

This bill is just a poison pill designed to kill off the US Postal service.

work at the Post Office who haven't been born yet, and they have 10 years to do it. Passed by a lame duck congress in 2006.

Which they have not.

The problem is when the republicans controlled congress they required the postal service to fully fund retiree healthcare in advance. This was not done to any other business, and put a huge financial burden on the USPS. I assume the Rs did this to deliberately sabotage the usps and force its demise.

it also passed the Senate unanimously. It may not have been a wise move in hindsight but it was not a republican plot.

Then again, if we privatize the Post Office, it'll go even higher than that, FAST.

those 'running the show' are pretty much caught in the grips of the law.

That means employees who do not even work there yet. What fricking company is required to do that? Right away you jump onto the union. WTF are you thinking beside that which you posted? 5.5 billion per year for 10 years.

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/18/is-benefits-law-dragging-down-the-postal-service/

Wake up, people. The assault is bipartisan.

Occupy.

they use the money to reduce the deficit. Also, the PO is not even hiring permanent employees and hasn't for 5 years. So, paying for people who haven't been born and aren't being hired.

Hey feds, quit using the PO as a bank.

privatization, militarization and fascism going on to undermine our country and economy. I don't know who those guys other than Bernie Sanders and Dennis Kucinich are. Dennis is also about to become a private citizen leaving only Bernie behind. We are not a government of the people and for the people anymore but are being ruled by the Supreme Court and big money.

it also passed the Senate unanimously. It may not have been a wise move in hindsight but it was not a republican plot.

The bill was sponsored by Danny Davis and Henry Waxman in the House. Two of the most progressive members. Bernie Sanders co-sponsored it in the Senate. The Senate vote was unanimous and the House vote was 410-20.

get one started. We need to get this in the public eye to explain how this is harmful to them.

office and government building.

at each post office. 'Government building,' not so much.
Difficult task to accomplish this, but looks like Postal Workers unions have some funds to put into this; see their ads frequently, on tv.

show us the financials of one Fortune 500 company that funds retirement for worker for 75 years out. Repeat this over, and over, and over.

which is so effective as a means of spreading this kind of information to otherwise disengaged people via social media, please share it here.

Hell, how many stamps do any of us have to buy anyway?

And, when I have a choice, I use the USPS for packages.

Republican.

I admit that I haven't done as much as I should to fight this, so thanks for bringing it up. I am going to rethink my "strategy", which so far has included writing to both of my reps. However, I got a sinkiing feeling when neither one of them replied, not even with a form letter. They always reply. So now I will call them. Does anyone know the name of the bill I should refer to? This is depressing. I have to give kudos to Ed Shultz for covering this several times, and to the postal union for funding great commercials on MSNBC that really lay out the facts. We do need to get active and support them.

Couple of links above that I posted are taking off! Even in a fucking right to work state!

I haven't heard of any such proposal.

...and none of the Republican Leaders have proposed privatizing as a solution.

what can we do to stop it?

are such that I would prefer a for profit alternative.

The same service mistake made over and over and over. At least 20+ times that I can document and personally testify to in the last month and a half. And that is after repeated contacts with USPS to alert them of the problem and request a resolution. I actually got an email from them one day that acknowledged the error and appologized and asked for another chance - which they promptly fucked up the followig day.

I get the neighbors mail. The neighbors get mine. Sometimes it eventually makes it way to my home. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes that mail contains sensitive personal information. Sometimes it is time sensitive.

I thought I could work around the delivery problem by placing a mail hold on my mail and picking it up at the post office. I placed two separate mail holds each for a week. There was only one day that I did not have mail delivery.

Several in my neighborhood have contacted the post office and complained about service. Initially a substitute carrier was faulted. That changed when the problems continued for weeks after the regular carrier resumed the route.

Enough people in this neighborhood have complained about and documented the delivery problems that we have the name and direct phone of the postal employee designated to resolve our delivery issues. Hasn't helped much. Not yet anyway.

This is not an occassional problem. It is an almost daily occurrence. While we have had occasional delivery problems in the past, these problems have been rampant since the end of February.

One email I received from USPS customer service characterizes the delivery problems here as an "inconvenience." Meanwhile their incompetence has put some in my neighborhood at greater risk of identity theft and financial loss. The young couple next door is paranoid since their financial statements arrived pre-opened with a "delivered to wrong address and opened by mistake" notation n the envelope.

a cluster box? If it is a cluster box, there could be a labeling problem. If delivered to your home, it is always good to have your street number on the box.

Have you gone to the postmaster/manager of your local post office with your problems?

How much of your delivered mail during holds is 1st class? Bulk business mail might be accidentally delivered during a hold, first class shouldn't.

Each carrier has to memorize around 600 households. Subs have to contend with different routes, different cases, and different styles of marking the case. Some carriers think their subs are fuckin mind readers, others do what they can to make life easy for their subs.

Do take it up with the local postmaster. If he doesn't handle the situation, chew your way up the chain of command.

but the problems have continued long after the sub carrier left the route.

Our neighborhood does not have cluster boxes. Everyone has their own box on their own property. Mine has the house number posted in 4 inch lettering at eye level just above the box.

The delivered mail during mail holds included everything - and that includes bank information, tax information and other personally sensitive items. Yes, I got a confirmation number - and an email confirmation - from the USPS that the mail hold had been placed. I'm not talking about bulk mail being delivered. Nor am I talking about an oversight on a single day.

The post office has labelled our service concerns an "inconvenience" - I have that in an email as well. Apparently they don't give a shit about the quality of service - nor do they care that their poor service has put neighborhood residents at greater risk of identity theft and financial loss.

a sub would carry that day. The error rate always went up on that day due to his inexperience.

I am a USPS employee. I work in automation, so I've personally done the part of the process that sorts your mail into the carrier's walk sequence.

Since the problem is ongoing and happens regularly, it may well be that the sortplans of the machines are off somehow. The person that needs to be told about your problem is the in-plant support office for the facility that actually processes your mail. A supervisor in your delivery office- your local post office- should be able to put you in touch with that person. It sounds to me like your complaints are not making it to the right person. By all means tell them yourself; this problem cannot get fixed unless they know about it because the issue is not evident at all to the clerks processing your mail. When they are working on the machines, they don't know- literally do not know, or have the need to know- which address goes where in what route.

Since you are experiencing the problem with multiple carriers, the problem resides in the mail processing upstream of them. I strongly suggest you directly contact the processing facility that handles your mail. I suspect that's where the problem is occurring.

I'll follow up on that.

I really don't hate postal workers - but I am very frustrated with this problem. It impacts me more than some of my neighbors since I do some work out of my home.

By the way you CAN use a for profit alternative if that is the way you feel. None is stoping you.

I can - and often do - use a for profit to send items.

But I have little if any control over how things are sent to me. Some things I can opt to get online. Some things I can chose a delivery method. Some things are delivered via USPS regardless of my preference.

Seems both ups and FedEx have no issues.

The smallest violin is right at the momemt playing for you. A full section of them in fact.

they pass off the "last mile" to the post office.

single family house on a quarter acre lot on a street in a good size metropolitian area surrounded by lots of other houses on quarter acre lots. All the carriers deliver here. The USPS is the only one that consistently can't seem to match the house numbers on the items being delivered with the 4 inch house numbers that appear at eye level above my mailbox.

should do the same thing so you have some support on your complaint.

As I noted above our neighborhood now has the name and direct phone to a postal employee who has been designated to resolve this issue. So far, no significant improvement in service.

is carrying the mail. Subs don't know the route or the people on the route. Memorization is so important. I delivered mail to every home in my county over the years (I was a rural route and city carrier). Rural routes are really difficult in that the boxes aren't always marked, and some that are marked, have the old RFD number. (Box 123) You might have two boxes with that number because the route was realigned. You have to know the names of the people living and working there.

Too many people do not send in change of address notifications.

I had a post card addressed to "granny RR3 Paris Ky." It was from a guy named Danny or something like that. I knew that a woman's grandkids were on vacation and one was named Danny. I was able to correctly deliver the post card. A sub would not know that unless he actually knew the people.

that someone will request an 8 day mail hold (complete with confirmation number and email verification), have first class mail delivered on 6 of those days, contact the postmaster regarding the issue, be assured that it will not recur, place a second 4 day mail hold a week later (again complete with confirmation number and email verification) and have mail delivered on 3 of those days?

I can't say I ever had any notable issue with mail delivery during the 20+ years I lived in a rural area.

Clearly, some carriers and postal stations are more attentive than others.

source of that problem.


Rural Route is a whole different world. Many of the rural carriers I worked with were farmers.

It's a dirty, hard, and dangerous job, but I loved it. You never know what you will experience on your route. One day I had to herd cattle back into their field. Another day I flipped my jeep on an icy hill, and two drunk farmhands came along and helped me right the jeep. I was hanging from my seatbelt, so I was helpless. They righted the jeep pushed me back on the road and nearly into a ravine on the other side of the road.

I had to jump into a gully when a tornado approached. It missed me but a barn up the road got carried about 50 yards and plunked down on the road ahead of me. That same barn is memorable for the big rat snake that I saw near the barn.

Here's a photo of a bridge on one of the routes I carried. Colville Road bridge.

Never. Not one lost package or letter. Nothing arriving late, nothing broken, nada. Instead, I have mail delivered to my door daily for a ridiculously cheap rate by a friendly member of my community who is paid a living wage and in turn contributes to the economic health of our town. I encourage other DUers with similar experiences to chime in because I would bet that my experience is far more common than yours.

insuring it. More than once I've collected on that insurance.

I've had things delivered in plastic bags torn in multiple pieces (and maybe a few pieces missing) with a note indicating that the sorter had malfunctioned and damaged the item.

Had things arrive late taking four times as long as they normally o.

Lots of deliery problems.

Had no problems however when I lived in a smaller town and a rural area.

They damage, yes it HAPENS, about 1% of the mail handled. Ups and FedEx are higher. You win the lottery.

Like the person you answered to I have had zero issues. On the other hand collected on UPS.

There is more, ups employees tried to sell shipping packages, express no less, to a USN sub deployed at sea, where brown does not deliver.

however, MIL never received her gift from out of state. They had shipped it UPS, and UPS delivered it to a house that was even in the wrong city. MIL never received her gift, the house delivered to kept it.

The repug bill needs to be rescinded. It seems the repugs are intentionally attempting to bring down USPS.

other ships).

IIRC, mail is delivered to acft carriers via COD, fft to the accompanying ships.

Perhaps UPS, FEDEX, etc. deliver to APO and FPO addresses.

That was the point I was making.

They were trying to sell service, in a navy base no less, in 2002 that they coud not deliver. Think of the profits though...mail is transfered to the military at the airport oh fifteen minutes from there.

It almost cost them their location after this was pointed out to the command.

Oh, wait, an issue of Vanity Fair did arrive a bit chewed up once -- all the more tragic since Johnny Depp was on the cover.

Here's a wonderful story about a retiring mailman in Raleigh, NC:

http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/02/25/1884594/veteran-mailman-retires-after.html





I truly do not understand all the pissing and moaning about the postal service. Tonight we watch "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" -- arrived two days after "Weeds" was mailed. All my DVDs arrive two days after the previous one was mailed, without fail. Yes, I'm quite happy with the service in my area, and my mail lady "Donna"!

Will have it delivered by my mailman. My MacBook was delivered by my mailman.

in the Tulsa metropolitian area.

But I had the same kinds of delivery problems when I lived in Dallas a decade or so ago.

All the problems at the post office were created by the people who are trying to destroy it. The only reason the post office has financial problems is because the government has taken billions from them by forcing them to set aside more money than is needed for retirements.

To me, it seems radical, unnecessary, and damaging.