Post Office considering dropping Saturday

You may have heard the latest talk about the United States Post Office (USPS) wanting to drop one of the days they deliver and how it is looking to be Saturday delivery. If you haven’t, then here’s the scoop!

The USPS has been losing money, probably for many years now, and they are looking for a way to cut costs.  In these talks of how to do this, they are talking about canceling delivery on Saturday’s and raising postage, again!  USPS is projecting a loss of $7 BILLION dollars this year

Now, I can understand that the USPS is losing its customers to Email and online bill pay, but they have no one to blame but the USPS and the head people.  You keep raising the prices to mail a piece of paper and people are going to stop mailing that piece of paper.  I mean, think about it.  Back in 1975 (when I was born) it cost $0.10 to mail a letter, today it costs $0.42, which is an increase of 320% in 35 years.

My question or concern is why would they want to drop the Saturday delivery AND raise the rates?  Haven’t they raised them enough over the last few years?

First, for those of us who work 8AM – 5PM can’t make it to the post office until Saturday’s unless we either take time off work or go during our lunch (if we have enough time to do so).  So, right there you would lose more customers because these people would then either stop using the post office since it’s no longer convenient or because they can go to UPS, FedEx, or any other express service and have their packages delivered.  Yeah, it would cost more, but there may be a time when they will offer “postage rates” for letters.

Next, doesn’t the USPS take enough days off work?  They already take off for these so called Government Holidays that those of us who are not Government workers don’t get off?  I mean, come on people!  Do we really need to shut down the government offices, the ones people NEED for Martin Luther King Jr’s Birthday, Presidents Day, Columbus Day, and Veterans Day?  I know that there are many other companies that close these days too, but there are some of us who still have to work those days and we still need mail delivered to us and picked up from us.  We all know that there are other Monday’s that they are closed, but those are the Monday’s where most all other businesses are closed (Labor Day & Memorial Day) and then you have the 4th of July.  So on these weeks, not only will we lose that Monday (or the day the 4th of July falls on) for mail, but we’ll ALSO lose that Saturday, which means the mail will only be delivered 4 days that week instead of the 6 days we normally get it (5 for those holidays).

Finally, what about WE THE PEOPLE?  We still have bills that have to be delivered to us and payments that have to go out.  This means if we normally would get a bill on Saturday because of when it was mailed, we will now have to wait until Monday to get it (unless that’s one of those holidays) and this could put us behind schedule of paying that bill.  Or what about those that live paycheck to paycheck and pay their bills on Friday evenings after they get paid and have time to figure it all out?  They could be mailing their payments on Saturday, the very latest day it can go out to reach the payment center on-time, and now it’s not going to go out until Monday, which will make them late on their payment and they will endure a $35+ late fee or possible cancellation of service.

How about this for a way to save money!  How about you stop paying these mail carriers overtime?  There is NO WAY it should take a mail carrier over 8 hours to deliver their mail, especially if they put all the mail into one area like a community mail box.  We used to have a mail carrier that would start putting mail in our mailboxes (a huge box with slots for each house) and he wouldn’t be done until after 5PM.  This was uncalled for and it shouldn’t have taken him that long.  How about you also stop paying your carriers for nonessential holidays; Martin Luther King Jr’s Birthday, Presidents Day, Columbus Day, and Veterans Day?  If I don’t work on these days, I don’t get paid.  Oh wait, that’s right!  I’M NOT A UNION WORKER!  If I don’t work on any of those days, I don’t get paid.  How about you also make them pick up some of the cost of insurance (if you aren’t already).  That shit is expensive and I’m paying for it with all these rate increases!  I have a hard enough time paying for my own insurance, let alone having to pay for your insurance and all these Government pieces of garbage!  Here’s another concept!  Stop giving discounts on bulk mail and companies who mass mail bills & credit card solicitation, you know all those fliers and other crap we get in the mail that we don’t want!  Charge them the same price we pay to send out some mail.  If I have to pay $0.42 for every piece of mail I send out, they should too!