The Postal Regulatory Commission is currently looking at the inherent social value of a healthy Postal Service.
One thing they are looking at is the value of an address. It seems like a simple thing, but look at how important an address is to the fabric of our society. Emergency response, pizza delivery, city planners, newspaper delivery, utilities and researchers all use the street address as a core component to their business.
Even our competitors use the addresses that we maintain to deliver their parcels.
What would our life look like without addresses? Should we get compensate for this work? Got a comment? Click here.
The PRC's proposal summary is here.
10 comments:
My Post Office is box section only. I get panic calls from customers because the competition will not deliver to a PO box, and the only street address listed is the Post Office. So not only to other companies use the address and zipcode, you just don't exist if you have a PO Box.
It used to be that you didn't need an address but that was 100 years ago and there weren't as many people back then. I have a penny postcard that the US government sent to my 4th great grandmother letting her know that she could have her deceased husband's Civil War pension amount. It was 12 dollars. The card was addressed to her and the town she lived in and that's it. We should have patented the address system - maybe we wouldn't be in the mess we are in. My comment on the PO box - send it Priority mail it will get there and we get the business. I don't buy from companies that don't send their product thru the Post Office.
Most people assume the Postal Service assigns the street names and addresses but that isn't true. It is the city and county that determine street names and the numbering system and they are the ones who change it when implementing "911 addresses" in areas that were formerly "RR # Box #" addresses. Postal employees often take the heat for those changes, though. As for the previous comments, I also work in a small office with only box delivery. Most customers aren't willing to insist that companies send everything by USPS so I tell them to give the companies both their street and their PO Box addresses. That way even when the company says "we ship by UPS and need a street address" and then it shows up through the postal service, it has the correct address. I also remember sending mail to my grandparents in a small town in ND when you just put their name and the city, state, zip - and that was in the 1970's! Actually I still see an occassional piece of mail addressed that way to one of the customers here and we still deliver it if we know where it goes.
Just recently, an elderly couple in my town mailed a card to a neighbor with just his name and "Local" written as the address, which used to be common practice. Luckily, they put their return address on it, so it came back to my office. Since I recognized the name, I was able to put it into the correct PO Box.
When I was growing up, we lived in a small town with only PO Box service. I didn't even know what my street's name was until our 4-H club painted new street signs as a community project...and I was in high school by that time!!
I live in a small rural town. The post office will not deliver to my home address but only to a PO box. I should get a discounted rate since I deliver my own mail. People sending me mail pay the same price and I do half the work.
My sister lives in Garland TX, a large suburb of Dallas. She has an in-home business and receives alot of mail. Recently, one of her clients mailed something to her with only her name and Zip Code, and it was delivered; we're pretty good!
To the writer who thinks he should get a discount for PO Box service because he "delivers" his own mail: PO Box service is a premium service. In larger communities people & businesses are willing to pay for it so getting it free or at a low cost is a benefit. PO Box mail is available earlier in the day and is more secure than having mail delivered to a mailbox. And it provides you with more privacy if you don't wish to give someone your physical address.
I'm confused here. If the post office will not deliver to his home address then shouldn't he be an e-box?
The E(no-fee)box is available to customers who do not have another form of delivery available. If a rural carrier - even from another town, drives by their house (normal route)- they pay for the box. City delivery offices do not have E-boxes.
In the past, offices collected fees for updating mailing lists. There are still charges for updating mailpiece addresses, depending upon class and endorsements.
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