On The Wing

Editor’s note: Ellyn Benning likes to rant and rail. She told me so.

She writes mostly angry tirades about things that really make her mad hoping other people will become mad too.

Ellyn Benning takes truth over love, the scary open over the cozy closed, and the ugly over the phony almost every time. She has no blog, she would rather hunt than be hunted. She would rather search than be found. She would rather be in your living room instead of her own.

Post Office, Heal Thy Self

by Ellyn Benning

First of all, if I ran the Post Office I would charge more for people who send out mass mailings, not less. Why? Because a certain amount of those, some mysterious percentage, are destined to a short life between printing and landfill. Many will be sent to old addresses, many will be sent to people who do not want them, and so on. So I would work in a penalty for that fact, right off the bat.  Let’s call it an idiocy and environmental recklessness tax.

Then we take that and we use it to pay for our Saturday delivery, which we actually already paid for when we bought that first class stamp but hey, who’s keeping track?

I’m no expert on the United Stated Postal Service, but there seems to be this vibe of “or else!” extortion going on here with the new demands that they will soon make to Congress.  This is something people all over should be talking about because while most of us shop at a variety of department and chain stores, we ALL “shop” as consumers at the post office in one way or another- like having a chain of one business in every small town without any rivals. Sweet? I guess not.

The bureaucrats at the USPS are complaining that revenues are down, which stands to reason with email, e-statements, and online banking.  Mail is down almost 13%, which is good news for the environment but bad news for them.

They are warning that if the changes they want are not approved by Congress, the rate hikes for postage will be astronomical. Really? Then we will use the web even more, which is also better for the trees.  And what will they have accomplished? Do they think the price point of a stamp is so elastic that we will pay a buck to mail a card? Get real. It has to stop somewhere.

Oh yes, and excuse me, but didn’t postage go up last year? It seems like we keep having this discussion. A penny here or there doesn’t hurt the consumer much in a casual way, but consider what this does to a small home business where those pennies add up, or for people who don’t qualify for that bulk rate discount. (AKA subsidy to the ones with the most? Prizes For The Landfill Superstars? ) They also add up for the post office, who seem to have this way of raising rates while acknowledging that demand is down and services will be cut, not improved. Where is all the money going from the last increase?

And not for anything, but the services should be improved, there has been investment in improvements. There are computerized trackers, scanners to make packages process quickly. You can forward mail online, get post office boxes online, you can even print stamps in your house. These are career workers who make a decent salary, (40 K to toss your shit into a truck) we expect that service is professional and we don’t expect in 2010 to still be dealing with lost mail, misdirected mail, broken boxes, and ripped postcards.  Oh wait, they don’t do that.

I did look up satisfaction and reliability rates, but they were mostly listed on sites I would consider to be biased, such as from the postal workers themselves. They claim that the rates are below inflation and that they have done a great job of keeping costs down. Well, great, more power to you. Keep doing it! And don’t raise the rates again! What? You can’t hear me? Not an option, monopoly, too bad, WHAT?

I can’t understand all this.

Forget everything you were taught about business.  It isn’t about “the market” when it comes to a quasi-governmental entity. They can be irrational, they have a monopoly blessed by law and yet they can profit from tote bags and philatelic offerings. They want to approach Congress to close branches, and reduce their services. Evidently the last increase pushed on the American people wasn’t enough to make up for the fact that people send less mail. Don’t we usually call this a trend? Why don’t we expect any of these bureaucrats to keep it real, respond to changes accordingly? Maybe they could offer internet terminals in ten minute snaps for a buck so people can check email or maybe go online to do what they seem to be waiting at the window forever to do. (last time I went to the window my wait time was nine minutes. ) What about kiosks, all over the lobby, like ATM machines? Scales? Weigh it, slap on a sticker yourself? Pay me forty grand. I’ll throw your shit around three times faster. Oh, and stop sleeping in my car.

So why didn’t they do this last year, or the year before that? Why don’t they stand in front of the American people and explain that raising rates do not seem to increase the mail volume, and times have just changed. We are going in the digital direction, so let’s consolidate some services and decide how to move this dinosaur into the modern age.

But that isn’t what they are doing. They are threatening the huge rate hike as a response to opposition. They want to cut your Saturday mail, for example, and make you drive further perhaps to do your business. And if not? Well, prepare to see the price of stamps go up. (Cue scary music)

Oh wait, they did that already. They do it all the time, if you look at postage rate increases in relation to salary increases. One of the things the American people are wrestling with is the fact that the price of everything continues to climb while wages just… don’t. But that is in our heads.

If you have to, cut services. Consolidate branches.  Cut Saturday delivery. But don’t turn around and raise the price of stamps every chance you get. Don’t make people pay more for less.

If you are broken, go fix yourselves.