In the same stupid attempt as for Royal Mail in the UK the USPS believes that by increasing postal rates they can make up for losses. Sorry, but you’ll lose more that way...
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
A nickel boost in the first-class stamp price to 50 cents is part of the U.S. Postal Service's latest plan to stop bleeding red ink but they do not seem to understand that the more they increase the prises the fewer items of real mail people are going to send.
The Postal Service released the 5-year business plan to Congress recently in part to push Congress to pass legislation to help them get through ongoing financial woes. Due in large part to declining first-class mail volume, the service recorded a $3.3 billion loss in the final three months of last year, which is usually a profitable period.
This decline, as far as I would suggest, is very much due to the fact that they keep raising the prices and people opting for email instead. When they cannot even guarantee delivery for the special items of the guaranteed third day delivery then who is going to pay for it?
The Postal Service says that, if nothing is done, it faces $18 billion in losses by 2015. Lawmakers have been working on different plans for months, but all of them have controversial aspects and are stalled.
Among the plans to cover its losses the USPS suggests this price hike to 50cents from 45cents for First Class but also, so it seems, a cut in home delivery from six days a week to five and the closure of thousands of post offices and mail processing plants. And the service also considers slowing down the delivery of first class mail by a day.
In addition to that they propose serious cuts in employee number cutting the workforce by 155,000 by 2016 , mostly through pushing some of the 283,000 eligible to retire.
All that that is going to do, aside from costing lots of people a job, is even less, as I have said already, letters being sent.
Who, in their right mind, if they can, is going to send a letter by USPS which will take four to five days to reach its destination, including just up the road, when they can send an email which will be in the hands of the recipient, or at least his email service, within seconds? I know that I would not.
© 2012
