Our network of plants and transporation is designed to move First-Class Mail across the country with delivery from 1-3 days.
There's a cost associated with that and the Office of the Inspector General has concluded that by relaxing standards by a day, we could save $1.5 billion in mail processing costs.
Their white paper, Cost of Service Standards, shows the cost, especially with the narrow window that we have to process mail. Expanding the time for delivery, they conclude, would open up the window so mail processing equipment, facilities and employees could work more mail with fewer resources.
What do you think about this? Comment here.
38 comments:
I hate the idea of allowing overnight First-Class Mail (FCM) service to go to 2-3 day delivery, which is less than "first class." Short-term, it may save money, but at the risk of driving even more FCM out of the system.
Ok now they are saying that our local mail which we are now required to send out of our office might take two days! Really! I can't see why we would want to do that. Wow what is next!!
Shall we say SHUT US DOWN NOW? Really what are these people thinking. We should be looking at ways to improve our standards instead of making them worse. Maybe these people that are making these decisions should come out here and work and listen to the customers when there mail takes forever to get somewhere. GRRRRR!!!!
You want to save money - GET RID of the mystery shopper program - how much do we spend on this? The clerks really do their best to move the line and we should not pay an outside company to tell us how we are doing. Our customers tell us how we are doing.
GET RID of the EXFC scoring system - we pay millions to score this - get rid of this - do internal scoring not pay millions to an outside company to do the scoring for us. GET RID up upper management - do we really need so many MPOOS - come on shrink them not the clerks and carriers and mailhandlerls WHO MOVE THE MAIL.
I said this years ago, but as usuall no one would listen until they could claim the idea and make money off it. Oh well, I am retired and really could care less now.
Sure, just lower our delivery standards. Heck with customer satisfaction. What kind of business experience does this "OIG" suggestor have?!
Slashing customer service is the fastest way to close our company. We need to get back to basics. If someone does not sell stamps or touch mail, are they necessary?
Really? we want to relx our delivery standards when everyone is upping theirs?
The OIG needs to be downsized and given 'work' to do.
Here we go again with the suggestions to cut our service instead of looking for more products and services to offer to increase business! Why not just shut us down now, rather than causing a slow, painful death?
I agree that we should look for ways to grow our business not reduce. I knew when the pmg said he wanted a LEANER meaner post office that we would be in trouble. What type of leaders do we have that only know how to reduce. It is easy to do that.
No-No-No--we will lose more business. Haven't you noticed that we don't always receive lst class mail within the delivery standards now? We should all be striving to improve our service, not make it worse.
Now they will have a reason to call it snail mail!
I had a customer tell me that they feel that the post office is going down hill and soon won't exist. They are already beginning to move their mail to on-line bill paying, on-line banking--getting ready for "the end". If a fraction of our customers are getting this message from the media, and acting the same way, we will likely see an acceleration in the decline of mail volumes. The employees get messaging from retail about scanning performance, growing the business, and customer service. Yet everything we seem to be doing on a large scale like DUO, consolidations and suspensions are contradictory to this messaging, and what we are trying to do on a local level. Perhaps HQ should tap into it's greatest resource, it's employees, for ideas on how to save money and improve performance. No one knows the mail better than the employees who handle it every day. And thank you to everyone who comes to work and puts in 110% every day for your customers.
Now they are looking to close the USPS for sure. They don't hear the customers complain. We are a service. Let's do the best we can to keep our customers not turn them away. Lots of other ways to cut the budget, why sacrifice service?
Now as Bill Gates noted in his Information Superhighway if a company is in downward spiral it goes down fast. How many customers I mean big Fortune customers like eBay would be willing to signup for USPS if we are publicly noting if we are private organization we would be filing for Bankruptcy. We should do a upsell and stop talking doomsday and market and upsell ourselves , brandname and business and sustainability.
We need to learn to make sure how to make ourselves profitable. If we want to be modern, we need to accept technology modernizations and showcase we are top of class. If we are losing First Class mail business we should grab the business that is taking our business which is autopayment and electronic services. We can be leaders there and grab the business by having a postal bank and provide those services ourselves and get paid for it. What is noted as having less performance standards without knowing details is for First class mail. It can be delayed 2 or 3 days later and maybe double or triple the profit. If time is a constraint they have priority mail but First class does not need such aggressive timelines.
Obviously most of you have no clue how a business should run! Listen people, we are losing money. Why on earth should anyone expect 44 cents to get anything, anywhere, overnight. After reading these ignorant comments it really is no wonder that our company will fold.
Another area to look at before reducing delivery standards for first class mail is bulk mail. The deep discounts and incentives given to these mailers is unbelievable. Discount for a mobile barcode. Whoever heard of such. And that is just one of many. Remember the "summer sale"? How ridiculous for a company that is supposed to be in financial trouble. They already receive such a discount for mailing bulk. No wonder standard mail volume is up but we are still losing money. Not to mention the time the BMEU techs. spend on each mailing doing verifications. All of this is costing too much to offset what the customer is being charged. Then there are the continuous audits of the BMEU's to ensure SOX compliance. How much is the USPS paying each of these auditors to come in every month and look over our shoulders? Taking all of this into account, it's no wonder we are in the situation we're in.
This study is a bunch of horse hockey. How much did the study cost? You can make any study say what you want it to. The Postal Service reminds me of a small manufacturing company that I worked for years ago. Once it started having financial problems it started in a downward spiral and they began to make dumber and dumber decisions which evenutally lead to its demise.
I think it's a terrible idea. Another suggestion by the OIG was much better. Stop home delivery and have cluster boxes in the larger cities. People in rural communities go to the post office to pick up their mail. Why can't city people go to the end of the street? If this makes people mad, let them pay a surcharge for that service. That suggestion supposedly would save several billion.
Absolutely NOT!! We all need to write to Headquarters & OIG & voice our objections to this INSANE idea. Is FedEX & UPS giving payoffs to the dumb bunnies in Headquarters to close our doors permanently? The idea is STUPID & one of the dumbest they have come up with yet. I agree on eliminating EXFC & Mystery Shop; as well as the tremendous bundle of money we pay for Retail P.O.P. kits & promotional signage that is cluttering our retail areas. Everyday Headquarters announces a new VP of some position that is increasing the number of VP's that were supposed to have been eliminated. Lord help us all now, more than ever.
I have customers come in and ask "Oh, are you still open?. I heard they were closing this office". The media and our own PMG are killing the USPS with their negative comments and doomsday predictions. To Anonymous who thought these comments were ignorant, we do need to change and adjust, but we wouldn't be "losing" the billions reported in the media if we didn't have to pre-fund over 5 billion dollars a year in retiree health benefits (that are already over-funded to the tune of 50 to 70 billion dollars). I think most of these comments make sense and are certainly a big step toward saving our organization.
If I understand this right the local area mail would still get there the next day. It would be mail going to other states that would take longer and I don't think that's so bad for the small price of First Class. It may encourage more customers to use Priority or Express Mail, something that we make a decent profit on. Most people spend several dollars on a cup of coffee, candy, gum, lottery tickets, etc and never give it a second thought so why should they expect 3 day delivery across the country for 44c? Even our competition has 2 day and 3 day options that are charged premium rates - for less money it takes longer, period!
We need to get a new PMG in office NOW before this one runs us in to the ground!!!!! Closing all of the small post offices will not save the postal service. It just makes it look even worse.
Has anyone seen the new village post office they just open to replace the post office they closed. WOW!! a place for them to pick up a box. what about the postage, the insurance the delivery conformation? These little stores are not going to be able to do that. So guess what they still have to go to a post office that is 20 miles away. Come on PMG we can do better than that for our customers.
Hey here is an idea, why dosen't the PMG take a pay cut everyone eles had to why not him!!!???!!!
To cover the cost let us make it this way.For every 100 miles more to deliver add additional 44cents to the postage. That way we are not hiking the price but managing the realistic logistics and give it a try. Why should USPS layoff people when we are supposed to be setting the price to manage the operations cost? Since first class mail is our primary service and bread earner, we should calculate our operations cost in terms of revenue generated by First class mail and add additional surcharge based on that for the following year. All other business is jsut consider it discounts and sales.
I have had 1st class mail get here a month late. What's another day? Grrrr....
In response to comment #2 ~ I DO NOT send out our local mail out anymore. I had a power company bill mailed here by a local customer that showed up a week later! The power company is located right here in town which by then was over due. She told me she had to pay an extra $6.00 dollar late fee! To me this is totally unacceptable!!!
The saying ~ Downsizing but not our service is very untrue! : (
I like anonymous(august 23rd answer) get rid of the pooms-they expct all of us in the field to do the work that they are suppose to do, while they sit in on telecoms and think of more crap for us to do. we can bearly keep our heads out of water---
I'm a small rural office and it costs me about $250,000 a year to operate my office. Divde the cost by the number of customers...that comes to $464.00 per customer. So the idea of "free" delivery is never true. Suppose I take in 100,000 in revenue, that leaves the balance of 150,000 or 278.00 per delivery per year or $23 per month. If the community wants me to stay open...lets have them pay $23.00 a month to stay open.
I agree with getting rid of the pooms. What good are they really? The PMG is going to find out the hardway that us postmaster's and the clerks etc.. are the one's doing all of the work everyday, we are the one's that make sure the postal service is running. Take us out and watch everything to to hell in a hand basket!!!!
I really do not think we are going to get our customer's to pay anything to us a month for anything. If you look at your finance report your carrier's are the big debt problem. Most office's with carrier's in them are in the red all of the time. Most of the offices without carrier's are doing ok or do not have as much debt. I also disagree with there number's on there report's. They just do not add up. I did mine in my office and they are not even close to what they should be. They have me spending more money than what the office really dose. HUM do you think they are padding them for some unknown reason or becuase they need to close us up?
Well, we won't want to give up without a fight the flattering term of "snail mail", now, would we?!
Whats that sound" Oh, yes, - Service being flushed down the drain...
Has anyone read the email that came out in area 8 from our wonderful poom? It is about the service at a hy-vee. I guess for some reason the mail there is not secure we do not have the keys to this drop area and no one know's if the postal employee is getting the mail or if the hy-vee employee is getting the mail. They are not scanning the barcode or it is scanned really late. This type of service is what our customer's have to look forward to. Not knowing if there mail is secured or if it is going out when it is suppose to etc. We really need to rethink all of this closing the offices and putting them in these store's. i do know i will never ever use one of those for any of my mail. I want to know that my mail is secure and is going out when it is suppose to.
August 24 at 9:44am is right on the money. While we take pride in swift, accurate delivery, and feel bad when a mailpiece gets lost or delayed (at least I do), we cannot maintain the same standards with the mail volume plummeting like it is. The combination of delivering a dwindling amount of mail to an ever-growing number of households will take us down if we don't adapt, and soon.
I think we need to keep pushing the idea of retail covering costs. Right now, HQ only looks at retail revenue....and not commercial revenue in the small offices. A customer may only mail 2-3 letters a week...but might receive 15-20 pieces for which the delivery office is NOT compensated!! Instead...since I know they know the numbers already...each office should be credited with so much for each type of mail delivered. I ran the numbers and if I were "compensated" $0.02 per letter, $0.05 per flat, and $0.20 per parcel...that would show a creadit of $25,000. This added to my retail sales (or a portion) would be a truer reality.
comment #4 - way too much common sense ;)
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