Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
I said in my letter you can have them arrested under 2 categories, selling known forgeries, and using the U S Post office to deliver them as well!
And eBay has this dumb rule that they will not allow any stamps sold that come from Cuba, because it is a communist country.
I think that they should allow pre-Castro stamps to be sold!
Here is a copy of 1 email that arrived in my in box.
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I am sure they are well aware of the issue and not clear on what legal actions they are doing. Of course, printing stamps that can be easily duplicated does ot help and when you can buy real stamps below face does not help the situation,
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Seems like we're always hearing that USPS is in financial trouble. To what extent do you think bogus stamps impacts their bottom line?
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Ooooooh! I'm triggered. Isn't it supposed to be postperson general? Or something.
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USPS has been in financial trouble for a decade or more, the biggest part of it being congressional mandates forcing them to pre-fund retirement accounts for 75 years in advance. I believe that was recently rescinded, although the money probably remains in their retirement coffers, untouchable.
I have long suspected that the true aims of some politicians has been to kill USPS to both access these huge retirement bonanzas and to create a hole into which other services can jump.
The complete lack of faith in the USPS by Americans that has developed under deJoy is, in my view, not accidental.
The counterfeits are just one more notch, but since few actually use postage stamps, I suspect it's minimal hurt.
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"The complete lack of faith in the USPS by Americans"
I share that sentiment. I believe that the USPS is in a death spiral. Poor service leads to fewer people using the USPS which in turn leads to lower revenues. USPS is actually advising people NOT to mail checks because of the high risk of theft.
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It's probably worth looking at countries where the postal service has been privatized to see how well it works in the hands other than government control. Then again Louis DeJoy has a lot going against him. He is a political appointee as he was funding a certain politician, he has no experience in the USPS except for owning companies that still have contracts with the USPS, and worst of all for running an organization like the postal service, he is an accountant. Accountants running manufacturing companies are often the death knell of such companies. Still if you think it's bad in the US, just look at the UK with a privatized postal office.
Having said that it's good to see the new CEO of Boeing has a mechanical background and will be based close to the manufacturing plants in Seattle rather than the Boeing HQ in Washington DC.
This is not a political post, I'm just questioning how public infrastructure should controlled. I am lucky having lived most of my life in Thailand which usually has terrible politicians but a has very good publicly owned postal service even if stamps I buy from outside the country have a good chance of being pilfered.
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The USPS was losing a lot of money before DeJoy and despite all the efforts (raising stamp prices, consolidation) it is still losing money. We were told the pre-payment was a key aspect to financial success factor (in the 10 year plan) but did not seem to have that much affect. Service standards for first class and packages were reduced (move goal post) since we were told all that air shipment of first class mai; was expensive and resulted in inconsistent delivery. I sometimes mail a letter to my dad (NC to Miss) and it can take 4 or 5 days. It used to 3 days max.
Linn's had an article of DeJoy's congressional review recently and even the PRC and Congress do not get to see all the financial details showing how the distribution consolidation will help the USPS since consolidatipm affects those near centers closing by adding at least a day to delivery.
They measure delivery standards in fractional days but for us recipients it is whole days so not end to end and only covers a portion of the time in the USPS possession.
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Al's comments are spot on
"Service standards for first class and packages were reduced (move goal post) since we were told all that air shipment of first class mai; was expensive and resulted in inconsistent delivery."
DeJoy has essentially reduced the speed of delivery and increased rates faster than any previous PMG. His consolidations have done nothing to improve performance or the bottom line, instead often creating immense bottlenecks as facilities are stuffed to the gills with unsorted, undelivered letters and packages. I've heard one respected postal observer defend DeJoy, but in general terms. What I see is purposeful destruction or utter incompetence, although both could be in play.
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Let's face it, the guy is incompetent.
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Fewer distribution centers can mean greater disruption if there is some issue at one center which is what is happening as they aggregate. A more diversified approach can lead to a more resilent system. I can see on paper how someone could believe that makes sense and while the USPS had an inefficient system the new system will have challenges.
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"the new system will have challenges"
I believe many of those challenges are already visited upon us, and many of them are from factors outside the any consolidation of the distribution centers.
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Looks like DeJoy had a tough day up on the Hill. When you're in a public forum like that and you cover your ears, you lose ALL credibility regardless of your message and/or position. You just can't do that.
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Let's see if it takes 11 days now to go 11 miles first class mail Stockton Ks. to Plainville Ks by the way of Wichita Ks. to Alanta Ga. and back to Plainville Ks. Is that an improvement over the Pony Express? Must be saving money somewhere. I think I may have been fired if I worked that efficient.
Keep on Stamping
Richard
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I think this Discussion gives me the opportunity to vent.
I very recently sold a large Stamp Album. I placed it in a LARGE Priority Box and off to the P.O. I went. With at least 20 customers lined up behind me, a couple of them getting verbally abusive, the clerk proceeded to weigh the Box. I thought you could put up to 70 lbs. in a LARGE Priority Box. She then proceeded to carefully measure the Box. Gee, the dimensions are clearly printed on the Box. She then overcharged almost $3 to mail the Box. My wife asked if I complained. "No", why bother? My complaint will come in the form of never going to the P.O. I buy my US Postage Stamps online - including recently from India, Ireland, and Canada. For larger items I look at what other Sellers are quoting on EBay etc. I then take a wild guess at what I should charge. The strange thing is that I have never had an item returned for additional postage. I assume that it really doesn't matter.
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Vent away!!!!! I shy away from getting into post office discussions because of my opinion of the post office and some of their employees. If you are mailing out packages, at the very least you should use USPS click and ship and hand the package to your carrier, NOT show up at the post office with package and ask them to put a label on it. Going to the PO with a labeled package is fine, but why not give it to the carrier and save the trip? There are benefits to this that I will not go into....
Better, if you have a paypal account, use shipstation (paypal.shipstation.com) It is a free service if you have paypal account. You pay for only the labels and the savings is amazing. I have no idea how they are able to do this. I mail out a lot of cookie gifts and the cost of a 2lb box was about a $4 savings just sending it from PA to South Carolina. We send out about 20 boxes of cookies for Christmas so it adds up.
"The strange thing is that I have never had an item returned for additional postage. I assume that it really doesn't matter."
Correct. When it is pre labeled, it is scanned. Period. My old carrier in Stroudsburg once asked me this question. "when you hand me a package what is the one thing your package never sees?" A scale. She hated the PO as much as I do.
I buy scrap postage from many places on line. The stranger the denominations the better. I never pay more than 70% face value, and once again, there are serious benefits to this if you understand the mail system and how it works. I will not go into that, but when you mail out sometimes 75 first class letters in a week, its a significant savings to use scrap postage vs forever stamps. I won't buy the fake ones only because I don't trust the sellers that send off the emails I get in my inbox.
I see as do many the drop off in physical Christmas cards this year, being replaced with emails. It will be worse next year with no doubt two more price increases. The hard decisions about the mail and the ways to cut costs will never be addressed, starting with once a week first class home mail delivery (except for drugs and such). Want daily mail, get a box. Our PO has NO carriers. You want mail, a box or wait for the truck to come once a week from another city. Instead of making a choice like that they will keep raising the price of a stamp and increase parcels 10-20% a year. I'll just keep creating my own labels and using scrap........
Greg
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Thank you, Greg! You make several good points.
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I saw on the news this morning that Trump wants to privatize the USPS. Big Surprise! Postmaster General DeJoy was appointed by Trump and has been working on destroying the USPS since he took over.
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Her Majesty's Government gave the go ahead yesterday for Royal Mail to be sold to a Czech Billionaire.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTd_73Sl ...
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Greg,
Thanks for mentioning the PP mail system. Sounds great to me and will be signing up later today!
Mike
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Mike, I just generated 20 labels via Shipstation for cookie gifts. While I won't say for certain, I probably saved at least $80. I looked at the labels and they say stamps.com, so apparently they work in conjunction with them. You can also generate UPS labels even cheaper than USPS, but I don't know if UPS would pick up, though you can drop off. I used to think that you needed a business PP account (I have one of each) but from what I read, you do not. It's certainly worth looking into
Greg
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These counterfeit "Forever" stamps are a threat to more than the USPS, in my opinion. They are a threat to the entire philately hobby world.
Based on the number of people who claim to buy and used these counterfeit stamps and the USPS' inability to detect their use ... how is one to accumulate a collection of new and used Forever stamps with any assurance the stamps are legitimate?
It seems fruitless to collect, sell, trade or auction any US collection of new or used issues post 2020 or so.
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"Postmaster general to step down, asks for replacement"
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/postmaster-general-to-step-down-asks-for-replacement/ar-AA1ziX1P?ocid=winp2fptaskbar&cvid=b8c996a3f2ea4892ac2f8afd844764e1&ei=154
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The revenue from first class mail isn’t the USPS biggest cash cow. Presorted mail, which UPS and FedEx seem to find profitable to sort, generate more revenue than first class mail.The USPS is also delivering the last mile for FedEx and UPS. All that crap stuff bought online from China is also being delivered by the USPS the last mile. The last mile is the most expensive leg of a delivery.
Stop subsidizing FedEx, UPS, Amazon and Temu and see where their shipping prices go. None of these companies are going to take on mail delivery and if they did the cost to mail anything would be cost prohibitive on purpose. Free shipping isn’t really free either.
The USPS is a service it was never intended to be run like a private business or to generate a profit. Instead of focusing on better service De Joy gutted the supply chain infrastructure to reduce cost.
Besides eliminating the subsidies De Joy should have suggested to Congress to raising the USPS rates to reflect the real costs.
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Few of our amazon deliveries arrive via USPS "last mile" delivery.
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Can someone explain how "last mile" delivery works? Does Amazon get it to your local post office and then USPS puts in with the local carrier's daily work?
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I've shipped last mile before.
Basically, you ship it with ups first.
Then ups gives it to the post office to delivery during normal mail delivery to arrive at your home.
They usually do this in areas where it would cost more to not give it to usps.
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I've just received an Order from Pikesville, MD, Shipped by Pitney Bowe, which was a 1st time and a bit unusual. Tracking was all over the SE, but fast.
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Did they used to do eBay?
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01:41:16pm
I have sent to the address shown on the USPS web site information asking them to investigate people that are selling, on eBay and Esty and even by sending out emails counterfeit US Forever stamps!
I said in my letter you can have them arrested under 2 categories, selling known forgeries, and using the U S Post office to deliver them as well!
And eBay has this dumb rule that they will not allow any stamps sold that come from Cuba, because it is a communist country.
I think that they should allow pre-Castro stamps to be sold!
Here is a copy of 1 email that arrived in my in box.
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re: What is wrong with the Postmaster General?
I am sure they are well aware of the issue and not clear on what legal actions they are doing. Of course, printing stamps that can be easily duplicated does ot help and when you can buy real stamps below face does not help the situation,
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re: What is wrong with the Postmaster General?
Seems like we're always hearing that USPS is in financial trouble. To what extent do you think bogus stamps impacts their bottom line?
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09:24:40am
re: What is wrong with the Postmaster General?
Ooooooh! I'm triggered. Isn't it supposed to be postperson general? Or something.
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re: What is wrong with the Postmaster General?
USPS has been in financial trouble for a decade or more, the biggest part of it being congressional mandates forcing them to pre-fund retirement accounts for 75 years in advance. I believe that was recently rescinded, although the money probably remains in their retirement coffers, untouchable.
I have long suspected that the true aims of some politicians has been to kill USPS to both access these huge retirement bonanzas and to create a hole into which other services can jump.
The complete lack of faith in the USPS by Americans that has developed under deJoy is, in my view, not accidental.
The counterfeits are just one more notch, but since few actually use postage stamps, I suspect it's minimal hurt.
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re: What is wrong with the Postmaster General?
"The complete lack of faith in the USPS by Americans"
I share that sentiment. I believe that the USPS is in a death spiral. Poor service leads to fewer people using the USPS which in turn leads to lower revenues. USPS is actually advising people NOT to mail checks because of the high risk of theft.
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re: What is wrong with the Postmaster General?
It's probably worth looking at countries where the postal service has been privatized to see how well it works in the hands other than government control. Then again Louis DeJoy has a lot going against him. He is a political appointee as he was funding a certain politician, he has no experience in the USPS except for owning companies that still have contracts with the USPS, and worst of all for running an organization like the postal service, he is an accountant. Accountants running manufacturing companies are often the death knell of such companies. Still if you think it's bad in the US, just look at the UK with a privatized postal office.
Having said that it's good to see the new CEO of Boeing has a mechanical background and will be based close to the manufacturing plants in Seattle rather than the Boeing HQ in Washington DC.
This is not a political post, I'm just questioning how public infrastructure should controlled. I am lucky having lived most of my life in Thailand which usually has terrible politicians but a has very good publicly owned postal service even if stamps I buy from outside the country have a good chance of being pilfered.
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re: What is wrong with the Postmaster General?
The USPS was losing a lot of money before DeJoy and despite all the efforts (raising stamp prices, consolidation) it is still losing money. We were told the pre-payment was a key aspect to financial success factor (in the 10 year plan) but did not seem to have that much affect. Service standards for first class and packages were reduced (move goal post) since we were told all that air shipment of first class mai; was expensive and resulted in inconsistent delivery. I sometimes mail a letter to my dad (NC to Miss) and it can take 4 or 5 days. It used to 3 days max.
Linn's had an article of DeJoy's congressional review recently and even the PRC and Congress do not get to see all the financial details showing how the distribution consolidation will help the USPS since consolidatipm affects those near centers closing by adding at least a day to delivery.
They measure delivery standards in fractional days but for us recipients it is whole days so not end to end and only covers a portion of the time in the USPS possession.
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re: What is wrong with the Postmaster General?
Al's comments are spot on
"Service standards for first class and packages were reduced (move goal post) since we were told all that air shipment of first class mai; was expensive and resulted in inconsistent delivery."
DeJoy has essentially reduced the speed of delivery and increased rates faster than any previous PMG. His consolidations have done nothing to improve performance or the bottom line, instead often creating immense bottlenecks as facilities are stuffed to the gills with unsorted, undelivered letters and packages. I've heard one respected postal observer defend DeJoy, but in general terms. What I see is purposeful destruction or utter incompetence, although both could be in play.
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re: What is wrong with the Postmaster General?
Let's face it, the guy is incompetent.
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re: What is wrong with the Postmaster General?
Fewer distribution centers can mean greater disruption if there is some issue at one center which is what is happening as they aggregate. A more diversified approach can lead to a more resilent system. I can see on paper how someone could believe that makes sense and while the USPS had an inefficient system the new system will have challenges.
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re: What is wrong with the Postmaster General?
"the new system will have challenges"
I believe many of those challenges are already visited upon us, and many of them are from factors outside the any consolidation of the distribution centers.
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re: What is wrong with the Postmaster General?
Looks like DeJoy had a tough day up on the Hill. When you're in a public forum like that and you cover your ears, you lose ALL credibility regardless of your message and/or position. You just can't do that.
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re: What is wrong with the Postmaster General?
Let's see if it takes 11 days now to go 11 miles first class mail Stockton Ks. to Plainville Ks by the way of Wichita Ks. to Alanta Ga. and back to Plainville Ks. Is that an improvement over the Pony Express? Must be saving money somewhere. I think I may have been fired if I worked that efficient.
Keep on Stamping
Richard
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re: What is wrong with the Postmaster General?
I think this Discussion gives me the opportunity to vent.
I very recently sold a large Stamp Album. I placed it in a LARGE Priority Box and off to the P.O. I went. With at least 20 customers lined up behind me, a couple of them getting verbally abusive, the clerk proceeded to weigh the Box. I thought you could put up to 70 lbs. in a LARGE Priority Box. She then proceeded to carefully measure the Box. Gee, the dimensions are clearly printed on the Box. She then overcharged almost $3 to mail the Box. My wife asked if I complained. "No", why bother? My complaint will come in the form of never going to the P.O. I buy my US Postage Stamps online - including recently from India, Ireland, and Canada. For larger items I look at what other Sellers are quoting on EBay etc. I then take a wild guess at what I should charge. The strange thing is that I have never had an item returned for additional postage. I assume that it really doesn't matter.
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re: What is wrong with the Postmaster General?
Vent away!!!!! I shy away from getting into post office discussions because of my opinion of the post office and some of their employees. If you are mailing out packages, at the very least you should use USPS click and ship and hand the package to your carrier, NOT show up at the post office with package and ask them to put a label on it. Going to the PO with a labeled package is fine, but why not give it to the carrier and save the trip? There are benefits to this that I will not go into....
Better, if you have a paypal account, use shipstation (paypal.shipstation.com) It is a free service if you have paypal account. You pay for only the labels and the savings is amazing. I have no idea how they are able to do this. I mail out a lot of cookie gifts and the cost of a 2lb box was about a $4 savings just sending it from PA to South Carolina. We send out about 20 boxes of cookies for Christmas so it adds up.
"The strange thing is that I have never had an item returned for additional postage. I assume that it really doesn't matter."
Correct. When it is pre labeled, it is scanned. Period. My old carrier in Stroudsburg once asked me this question. "when you hand me a package what is the one thing your package never sees?" A scale. She hated the PO as much as I do.
I buy scrap postage from many places on line. The stranger the denominations the better. I never pay more than 70% face value, and once again, there are serious benefits to this if you understand the mail system and how it works. I will not go into that, but when you mail out sometimes 75 first class letters in a week, its a significant savings to use scrap postage vs forever stamps. I won't buy the fake ones only because I don't trust the sellers that send off the emails I get in my inbox.
I see as do many the drop off in physical Christmas cards this year, being replaced with emails. It will be worse next year with no doubt two more price increases. The hard decisions about the mail and the ways to cut costs will never be addressed, starting with once a week first class home mail delivery (except for drugs and such). Want daily mail, get a box. Our PO has NO carriers. You want mail, a box or wait for the truck to come once a week from another city. Instead of making a choice like that they will keep raising the price of a stamp and increase parcels 10-20% a year. I'll just keep creating my own labels and using scrap........
Greg
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re: What is wrong with the Postmaster General?
Thank you, Greg! You make several good points.
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re: What is wrong with the Postmaster General?
I saw on the news this morning that Trump wants to privatize the USPS. Big Surprise! Postmaster General DeJoy was appointed by Trump and has been working on destroying the USPS since he took over.
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11:44:09am
re: What is wrong with the Postmaster General?
Her Majesty's Government gave the go ahead yesterday for Royal Mail to be sold to a Czech Billionaire.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTd_73Sl ...
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re: What is wrong with the Postmaster General?
Greg,
Thanks for mentioning the PP mail system. Sounds great to me and will be signing up later today!
Mike
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re: What is wrong with the Postmaster General?
Mike, I just generated 20 labels via Shipstation for cookie gifts. While I won't say for certain, I probably saved at least $80. I looked at the labels and they say stamps.com, so apparently they work in conjunction with them. You can also generate UPS labels even cheaper than USPS, but I don't know if UPS would pick up, though you can drop off. I used to think that you needed a business PP account (I have one of each) but from what I read, you do not. It's certainly worth looking into
Greg
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re: What is wrong with the Postmaster General?
These counterfeit "Forever" stamps are a threat to more than the USPS, in my opinion. They are a threat to the entire philately hobby world.
Based on the number of people who claim to buy and used these counterfeit stamps and the USPS' inability to detect their use ... how is one to accumulate a collection of new and used Forever stamps with any assurance the stamps are legitimate?
It seems fruitless to collect, sell, trade or auction any US collection of new or used issues post 2020 or so.
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re: What is wrong with the Postmaster General?
"Postmaster general to step down, asks for replacement"
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/postmaster-general-to-step-down-asks-for-replacement/ar-AA1ziX1P?ocid=winp2fptaskbar&cvid=b8c996a3f2ea4892ac2f8afd844764e1&ei=154
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re: What is wrong with the Postmaster General?
The revenue from first class mail isn’t the USPS biggest cash cow. Presorted mail, which UPS and FedEx seem to find profitable to sort, generate more revenue than first class mail.The USPS is also delivering the last mile for FedEx and UPS. All that crap stuff bought online from China is also being delivered by the USPS the last mile. The last mile is the most expensive leg of a delivery.
Stop subsidizing FedEx, UPS, Amazon and Temu and see where their shipping prices go. None of these companies are going to take on mail delivery and if they did the cost to mail anything would be cost prohibitive on purpose. Free shipping isn’t really free either.
The USPS is a service it was never intended to be run like a private business or to generate a profit. Instead of focusing on better service De Joy gutted the supply chain infrastructure to reduce cost.
Besides eliminating the subsidies De Joy should have suggested to Congress to raising the USPS rates to reflect the real costs.
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re: What is wrong with the Postmaster General?
Few of our amazon deliveries arrive via USPS "last mile" delivery.
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re: What is wrong with the Postmaster General?
Can someone explain how "last mile" delivery works? Does Amazon get it to your local post office and then USPS puts in with the local carrier's daily work?
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re: What is wrong with the Postmaster General?
I've shipped last mile before.
Basically, you ship it with ups first.
Then ups gives it to the post office to delivery during normal mail delivery to arrive at your home.
They usually do this in areas where it would cost more to not give it to usps.
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re: What is wrong with the Postmaster General?
I've just received an Order from Pikesville, MD, Shipped by Pitney Bowe, which was a 1st time and a bit unusual. Tracking was all over the SE, but fast.
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re: What is wrong with the Postmaster General?
Did they used to do eBay?
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