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The real issue here is the fact that the USPS is overloaded and requires extra government attention. If you don't properly fund and support you public postal se

The real issue here is the fact that the USPS is overloaded and requires extra government attention. If you don't properly fund and support you public postal service, you don't get on-time mail deliveries. Maybe that is the issue. This has little to do with Amazon. Amazon is paying the USPS according to their contract. If the contract from 2013 is unsatisfactory, then it should be renegotiated by USPS. I wouldn't be surprised if it is a 10-year deal, and has hefty fines for late deliveries. A journalist should be able to request the contract and see why USPS is now overloaded: Is it because USPS is not receiving enough funding from the government, or because the contract with Amazon is really bad for USPS. It sounds like the fact that Amazon is shipping so many parcels is a symptom, not the (systemic) cause of why parcels aren't shipped on time. If the USPS is to blame, then who made this deal and what were their reasons? Was it a national deal? Why is it a problem now? Why wasn't this anticipated? And how can it be avoided in the future? Aren't contracts of the government with private parties publically accessible? I mean, you, the taxpayer, pay for the contract so you should have access to it, as well be able to check on the government's workings. At least, that's how we do things in europe.

_AzMoo 6y ago
In Australia often contracts between Government and a private-entity are declared commercial-in-confidence to prevent disclosure of information that could affect the private entity. I wouldn't be surprised if this is common in the US as well.
- microcolonel 6y ago
  In Australia (and in Canada) the government's post office has been corporatized (in Canada, closer to privatized) in a way which tends to have it set postage such that it covers its own costs. The USPS is complicated in this respect, it is partially corporatized, but it often runs deficits.
  - Ensorceled 6y ago
    Canada Post is still a Crown Corporation, as it has been since it was "corporatized" the early 80's; so "closer to privatized" doesn't really make any sense.
    - wolco 6y ago
      You have to understand the difference between a crown corporation and part of the government. A crown corp has government representives on the board. A crown corp could get funding from the government but it also could act privately and get it from profit. The books are not open the same way (annual review vs always accessible) Here is an article with more details. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.1135699 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.1135699 The point that they are now profit seeking private or not is true.
      - Ensorceled 6y ago
        I totally understand how Crown Corporations work, please do not accuse me of ignorance here. There is a massive difference between a Crown Corporation running as a for profit enterprise where any profits return to the Crown and a privately owned company, especially one that was "spun off" and privatized at pennies on the dollar.
- nomercy400 6y ago
  Protecting the rates and fines made through a bulk deal as 'affecting private entity' sounds a bit hypocritical as that same deal 'affects' that private entity massively in a positive way for being the only one with that big government-type of deal. Wouldn't you, as a taxpayer, like to know why that private entity got the deal, and how it is affecting society? In Europe we have this system where public deals above a certain cost are open for everybody. If you meet the requirements best, you win the deal. Problem with this system is that the requirements are rarely written down properly, causing half-baked solutions meeting bare minimums and extra costs to fix them. For example, that is why we Europeans are unable to produce proper governmental IT systems, or buy new trains that won't break down due to cold weather.
SamReidHughes 6y ago
If the USPS is getting lots of business, why would they need more funding? The issue here is simply a temporary Coronavirus situation combined with how the USPS runs their business.
- lexicality 6y ago
  John Oliver did an interesting video on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoL8g0W9gAQ&t=4s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoL8g0W9gAQ&t=4s TL;DR: Deliberate government action to defund them has resulted in them having way less money than you would expect.
  - nemacol 6y ago
    It has been a while since I have seen that one, but if I recall the two main points were 1 - Forced to save billions over a short period of time for retirements benefits. 2 - Inability to set their own prices, like a business would. The extra business from Amazon should have been a massive boon to USPS. But it seems the ridiculously low rate they got into, plus the couple factors above (and I am sure many others - like being required to maintain rural routes at a loss) has put them in a bad situation.
    - nybble41 6y ago
      They should just spin off the USPS as a purely private enterprise—no more monopoly on letter delivery or bureaucratic micromanagement regarding prices—and instead periodically solicit bids from all the carriers (including the former USPS) for the core services. Whoever wins the bid would commit to flat-rate nationwide delivery of first-class letters and receive a negotiated subsidy for each delivery depending on the route.
- michaelmcdonald 6y ago
  Did you not read the part about how they have to fund their retirees health program up through 2054? That's millions to billions of dollars that they have to set aside for potential future costs decades away. No other government program or service is required to do this.
grasshopperpurp 6y ago
Except for bailouts - like the one currently being proposed - USPS is self-funded and does not receive money from taxes. One problem is that USPS is meant to be a service (congress has to approve rate increases), but it's treated like a business. This wouldn't be such an issue if people weren't trying to sabotage it so that they could privatize it. I've heard the deal with Amazon is bad, and the new Postmaster General is trying to renegotiate it. In my experience, no Priority or First Class packages were delayed in favor of Amazon packages, but the flood of Amazon packages did overburden the system causing some delays. From what I understand, USPS is receiving more Amazon, because more people are shopping online (Covid) and because Amazon is (was?) dealing with a labor dispute. A couple weeks back my station got absolutely hammered - received about triple the typical Amazon volume on back-to-back days. The clerks have to sort each package to the appropriate routes, and then the carriers have to deliver all those packages. As they're out delivering, they're picking up packages to bring back to the station, and those are the packages that were subject to delays. In general, everything goes out every day, and even if one package is left behind, someone has to drive that package to the plant. From a business standpoint, this doesn't make a lot of sense, but it's part of the service culture at USPS, and clerks and carriers are horrified and mortified to hold up mail, which is why you see complaints like the one from the carrier in the article. At the same time, USPS was rolling out some new policies, and they're missing a lot of people due to Covid, so a lot of factors converged to make the situation difficult. But, at my station, no mail has been delayed for weeks. I can't speak for the plants, but the vast majority of Amazon packages are delivered to the stations as drop shipments, so if the plants are having issues with volume, it's not because of Amazon. During Covid, letters and flats had been down in volume (businesses being closed = less advertising) by somewhere between 25% and 40%, but they appear to be back to normal, and parcels had been up something like 60% overall. I think that's most of the pertinent information. But, I'll say that this is typically the time of year where many USPS employees exhale a bit. The overtime dwindles, and the pace slows. Instead, much of this has felt like Christmas - anyone on the OT list and any non-career employees are working lots of hours to keep up with demand, and sometimes they're even compelling people not on the OT list to work OT. So, it feels like the holiday season never stopped, and we're all pretty exhausted. Of course, we feel lucky to have been able to work through the pandemic, but it's taken its toll, as well.
codingdave 6y ago
> Aren't contracts of the government with private parties publically accessible? Yes, you can submit a FOIA request to the USPS requesting the contract. https://www.foia.gov/ https://www.foia.gov/
- metalliqaz 6y ago
  since 2013 that contract must have been foia'd by now
  - anoraca 6y ago
    You know what they say about assumptions...
- sp332 6y ago
  The request was denied. https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/amazon-sunday-delivery-contract-usps-10598/#file-228447 https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/ama...
  - jagged-chisel 6y ago
    > The release of the existence of such a relationship or of the material terms of any such agreement, should it exist, with a particular business entity could harm the Postal Service's commercial interests in obtaining competitive rates with a variety of business partners in the future. Understandable reason. Redacting only the "necessary" bits might well render the document unreadable.
coronadisaster 6y ago
> If you don't properly fund and support you public postal service Raise prices for shipments? Or make them "free" using covid-19 "free" money
- untog 6y ago
  Or fund it with an increased level of taxpayer revenue, the same way other public services are funded?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - coronadisaster 6y ago
    Fuck that... That is the same as taxing the middle class (because you must know that taxing essential services affects everyone equally no matter how much money they have and that poor people get tax credits for it)
    - untog 6y ago
      Taxing does involve taxing people, yes. It's not a universal sin.
- julianlam 6y ago
  John Oliver did an informative segment on why the USPS no longer makes a profit, and what can be done about it. One facet is reintroducing banking services.
- devwastaken 6y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Accountability_and_Enhancement_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Accountability_and_En... More like if you let your legislature run wild and artificially cripple your own services. USPS is a service that warrants a bailout, and repealing of these acts. They have been self profitable for a very long time, but cannot sustain their operation in this way.
TheJoeMan 6y ago
As far as I can tell, before the deal USPS did math along the lines of “10% of our trucks deliver packages and 90% letters” so then they laid out the pricing for packages. But then did a deal with Amazon so that now the trucks are 30% packages. Not projecting into the future and instead trying to hold the pricing ceteris paribus was either a major oversight or corruption
Spooky23 6y ago
You could do all of that, or you could take note that USPS halted overtime during one of the busiest periods of business in recent history. UPS is renting UHauls in my area to replenish delivery trucks in the field. Drivers are working OT as late as 9PM. USPS isn’t backfilling positions or using OT hours!
- bsanr2 6y ago
  This is at the direction of a Trump appointee. Career USPS workers are not happy about it and their union is exploring options, last I heard. Unions: They're Actually A Good Thing.
  - caseysoftware 6y ago
    We're 4 months into the pandemic and their workload is only going to get worse if we have nationwide mail in ballots. If they're going to do something, they should get on it instead of letting their members suffer.
    - whatsmyusername 6y ago
      They are doing something. Screwing up the system is the goal. They tried, 'Poll numbers got you down? Just start a war!' but it didn't work because no one is interested in fulfillment Bolton's wet dream of starting WW3 with Iran. So now it's, 'Poll numbers got you down? Just cheat!'
    - sergers 6y ago
      Not sure about USPS specifically, but our canada post is just finally catching up now. They explained it was basically christmas holiday load, without the extra staff, with less staff on a non busy time (people taking covid related time off for sickness and family).
      - starky 6y ago
        While I definitely had a couple packages arrive late in the April/May timeframe, since June I've had a couple packages actually show up before the delivery date Canada Post gave.
jellicle 6y ago
Seems like you didn't read the article. The issue, according to the article, is that USPS management is intentionally delaying regular mail in favor of Amazon deliveries.
- nomercy400 6y ago
  Yes, I've read how the article blames USPS to favor Amazon. I've also thought about why they are doing this. Why is the USPS of Portland doing this? Are they being influenced by Amazon? By the national USPS? By the government? The problem with the mail is the symptom, like a headache. But what is the cause, like a blunt to the head or migraine or a hangover?
peruvian 6y ago
USPS is understaffed from COVID and the new Postmaster (installed by Trump) tells people to not work overtime and just leave the route when their shift is over, which means more mail gets backed up.
ptero 6y ago
> The real issue here is the fact that the USPS is overloaded and requires extra government attention. I agree with this, and this attention needs to come in more ways than extra $$. As others said, USPS is stuck in a weird state: need to be self-funded with no authority to set prices. So the gov't needs to either subsidize some things or let USPS compete. However, to fix USPS some of that attention needs to come in the form of hard kicks and forced reorgs. USPS is a dinosaur with a lot of inertia against improving efficiency and modernization. That causes problems, costs a lot of money and drives customers away. USPS is also notorious for advocating for spam senders (who give USPS a lot of revenue) and against people they are supposed to serve. Those are all problems that external "attention" should resolve. As an anecdata, I was occasionally involved with field testing campaigns which include significant shipping for next day delivery a couple of thousand miles away (something would break or some new hardware would be needed and will be shipped from home ASAP). This provides a non-insignificant revenue to the shipper. We tried USPS, but it just did not work. With FedEx we get accurate, near real time package tracking, so the minute the package is dumped at our hotel we see it and someone can drive out and pick it up. With USPS, their system was showing delivery at the end of the following day. Maybe something changed in the last few years, but I doubt it.
- dd36 6y ago
  There was huge consolidation “for efficiency” in the past decade. They shut down lots of distribution centers. Local mail that used to be delivered over night wis now delivered in 3 days at best.
- dkuntz2 6y ago
  USPS is efficient and self-sufficient, congress has just done everything possible to make it look like they're failing. If they didn't have to prepay pensions (something no other government agency, or private company in the world is required to do, or does), they'd be in great shape.
  - erichocean 6y ago
    > If they didn't have to prepay pensions (something no other government agency, or private company in the world is required to do, or does) That's…not true? https://www.forbes.com/sites/ebauer/2020/04/14/post-office-pensions--some-key-myths-and-facts/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/ebauer/2020/04/14/post-office-p...
rossjudson 6y ago
I've had a Prime membership forever, originating from when it actually meant something to have it. Prime changed from being "We're going to have the package to you in two days" to "We'll get it to you in two days, if we feel like it and it's convenient and inexpensive for us to do so". Repeatedly, lately, I've bought items based on delivery times only to receive updates a few hours later pushing the delivery times back by days. It's one thing to have an exceptional circumstance during delivery, and quite another to change the committed (was it really?) delivery time within a few hours of the purchase decision. Yeah, COVID, I get it. But it's not just COVID.
- vkou 6y ago
  Do they still refund your month's prime if you complain about this, or is Amazon at the point where it will happily tell the customer to pound sand? I often go out of my way to avoid Amazon for my online purchases now.
  - dawnerd 6y ago
    Not recently, they just blame covid.
    - vkou 6y ago
      Why keep paying for Prime, then? You can also blame COVID for why you are cancelling.
      - dawnerd 6y ago
        Personally I’m not. I’ll subscribe for a month and make all the orders I need then.
  - Rebelgecko 6y ago
    The excuse I've seen is that Amazon points out that the shipping time was still 2 days, it just took them a week to start the shipping process. It seems like they're trying to minimize time in transit as opposed to trying to get the package to my doorstep ASAP
aeternum 6y ago
Is there really an issue though? Almost everyone I know only checks their mail about once a week anyway. USPS/mail is still important but not as critical as it was 20+ years ago, especially when it comes to delivery frquency. Maybe it's time to start delivering mail twice a week instead of every day.
- casion 6y ago
  Where are you located? Everyone I know checks daily, sometimes a couple times a day.
  - jasonv 6y ago
    I check my mail about once/week, but I have packages directed to an Amazon hub. It was suggested many times over the years that the USPS reduce delivery to cut costs, and that didn't seem like a bad idea, but I'd suggest that any changes to the USPS need to come from an aligned perspective and in an orderly fashion, and that's not how the USPS is being treated these days.
- nomercy400 6y ago
  It could be an issue for people who expect medication that could expire. The thing is that for priority mail, the truck still has to drive every day. Might as well load it up. Problem I read from the article is that that prio-1 mail is not handled as prio-1, but rather after other, more lucrative, mail. But to be fair, in my country we had a new mail service competing with the public mail service. The new mail service only provided twice a week, but at a reduced rate. If you didn't care about your package being delivered a week from now, then it was convenient. End result was that the public service no longer could compete with the lower prices and reduced volume, BUT in the meantime was allowed to merge(=take over/take down) with the new mail service, by grace of the government who gave them a get-out-of-antitrust-jail card. Currently the case is at the EU court, which decided the merger has to be reversed, but the damage is already done. Contracts ended, brand damaged. If you privatise your mail service, don't be surprised if it becomes stupidly expensive to deliver the same quality of service. Competition won't exist because it will be acquired by the main company. And the government will simply pay for that quality of service, as that is what the voters expect.
mindslight 6y ago
Such contracts are negotiated modulo the principal agent problem. The person agreeing to the contract has incentive to make themselves look good and otherwise personally benefit, and little incentive to make it so that the organization doesn't suffer in the long rung. That the USPS has insisted on keeping this contract private is evidence of Amazon getting a special deal that would not survive scrutiny by the public or by other market participants (UPS/Fedex/DHL). In other words, corruption. Tangentially I've heard stories of mail being purposely held back a day, to support that narrative of discontinuing Saturday delivery that was being pushed 5-10 years ago. This agency has been getting politically strangled for quite some time.
KorematsuFred 6y ago
> Is it because USPS is not receiving enough funding from the government Why is this even a painpoint ? How much funding does Fedex or UPS get from government to stay operational ? I find it surprising that USPS remains operational at such massive scale while being a cash sink for American taxpayers. Putting more money in this sinkhole is unlikely to yield better results. If US government makes it legal for other carriers to carry letters (which is illegal at this point) the need for USPS would be much lesser. USPS could then focus more on rural and underserved communities and negotiate contracts with Fedex/UPS etc.
- triceratops 6y ago
  > How much funding does Fedex or UPS get from government to stay operational ? The government also doesn't set Fedex or UPS's rates, or appoint their chief executives, or pass laws about their pension funding. So it's not a fair comparison.
- thephyber 6y ago
  This comment completely misunderstands the USPS's problems. The USPS doesn't get public funding, but its pursestrings and business model is micromanaged by Congress (which has no business placing most of the mandates on the USPS that it does). This is roughly equivalent to having an environmental conservation group being given a majority of board seats on a real estate developer. These micromanaging mandates include schedule of delivery, the breadth of service area (which frequently must include the least profitable places to deliver), micromanaging of every price increase, and restrictions that the USPS can't move into other businesses that might encroach on their lobbyist-buddies clients (eg. paycheck cashing, which USPS used to do). I can't make sense of how much the 75-years pension prepay is catching up from insufficient coffers (perhaps justifiable) and how much of it is just punitive to keep the USPS from running efficiently and being able to use more of its debt for capital improvements. According to WSJ, UPS added delivery surcharges in May due to COVID's impact. The only reason USPS can't do the same to manage the supply/demand curve changes is because Congress is somehow allowed to micromanage USPS price changes.
pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
He is no Adam Curtis and HN readers probably dislike him^1, but Ken Loach's most recent film (2019) is about delivery services and the "gig economy". It is called "Sorry We Missed You". 1. His last film in 2016 won the Palm d'Or at Cannes if that means anything.
burtonator 6y ago
The GOP wants to kill anything related to the government that's functional. They want to turn it over so that private industry can have it. Further, private carriers can search your mail. The USPS can't but FEDEX can...

_AzMoo 6y ago

In Australia often contracts between Government and a private-entity are declared commercial-in-confidence to prevent disclosure of information that could affect the private entity. I wouldn't be surprised if this is common in the US as well.

microcolonel 6y ago
In Australia (and in Canada) the government's post office has been corporatized (in Canada, closer to privatized) in a way which tends to have it set postage such that it covers its own costs. The USPS is complicated in this respect, it is partially corporatized, but it often runs deficits.
- Ensorceled 6y ago
  Canada Post is still a Crown Corporation, as it has been since it was "corporatized" the early 80's; so "closer to privatized" doesn't really make any sense.
  - wolco 6y ago
    You have to understand the difference between a crown corporation and part of the government. A crown corp has government representives on the board. A crown corp could get funding from the government but it also could act privately and get it from profit. The books are not open the same way (annual review vs always accessible) Here is an article with more details. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.1135699 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.1135699 The point that they are now profit seeking private or not is true.
    - Ensorceled 6y ago
      I totally understand how Crown Corporations work, please do not accuse me of ignorance here. There is a massive difference between a Crown Corporation running as a for profit enterprise where any profits return to the Crown and a privately owned company, especially one that was "spun off" and privatized at pennies on the dollar.
nomercy400 6y ago
Protecting the rates and fines made through a bulk deal as 'affecting private entity' sounds a bit hypocritical as that same deal 'affects' that private entity massively in a positive way for being the only one with that big government-type of deal. Wouldn't you, as a taxpayer, like to know why that private entity got the deal, and how it is affecting society? In Europe we have this system where public deals above a certain cost are open for everybody. If you meet the requirements best, you win the deal. Problem with this system is that the requirements are rarely written down properly, causing half-baked solutions meeting bare minimums and extra costs to fix them. For example, that is why we Europeans are unable to produce proper governmental IT systems, or buy new trains that won't break down due to cold weather.

SamReidHughes 6y ago

If the USPS is getting lots of business, why would they need more funding? The issue here is simply a temporary Coronavirus situation combined with how the USPS runs their business.

lexicality 6y ago
John Oliver did an interesting video on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoL8g0W9gAQ&t=4s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoL8g0W9gAQ&t=4s TL;DR: Deliberate government action to defund them has resulted in them having way less money than you would expect.
- nemacol 6y ago
  It has been a while since I have seen that one, but if I recall the two main points were 1 - Forced to save billions over a short period of time for retirements benefits. 2 - Inability to set their own prices, like a business would. The extra business from Amazon should have been a massive boon to USPS. But it seems the ridiculously low rate they got into, plus the couple factors above (and I am sure many others - like being required to maintain rural routes at a loss) has put them in a bad situation.
  - nybble41 6y ago
    They should just spin off the USPS as a purely private enterprise—no more monopoly on letter delivery or bureaucratic micromanagement regarding prices—and instead periodically solicit bids from all the carriers (including the former USPS) for the core services. Whoever wins the bid would commit to flat-rate nationwide delivery of first-class letters and receive a negotiated subsidy for each delivery depending on the route.
michaelmcdonald 6y ago
Did you not read the part about how they have to fund their retirees health program up through 2054? That's millions to billions of dollars that they have to set aside for potential future costs decades away. No other government program or service is required to do this.

grasshopperpurp 6y ago

Except for bailouts - like the one currently being proposed - USPS is self-funded and does not receive money from taxes. One problem is that USPS is meant to be a service (congress has to approve rate increases), but it's treated like a business. This wouldn't be such an issue if people weren't trying to sabotage it so that they could privatize it. I've heard the deal with Amazon is bad, and the new Postmaster General is trying to renegotiate it. In my experience, no Priority or First Class packages were delayed in favor of Amazon packages, but the flood of Amazon packages did overburden the system causing some delays. From what I understand, USPS is receiving more Amazon, because more people are shopping online (Covid) and because Amazon is (was?) dealing with a labor dispute. A couple weeks back my station got absolutely hammered - received about triple the typical Amazon volume on back-to-back days. The clerks have to sort each package to the appropriate routes, and then the carriers have to deliver all those packages. As they're out delivering, they're picking up packages to bring back to the station, and those are the packages that were subject to delays. In general, everything goes out every day, and even if one package is left behind, someone has to drive that package to the plant. From a business standpoint, this doesn't make a lot of sense, but it's part of the service culture at USPS, and clerks and carriers are horrified and mortified to hold up mail, which is why you see complaints like the one from the carrier in the article. At the same time, USPS was rolling out some new policies, and they're missing a lot of people due to Covid, so a lot of factors converged to make the situation difficult. But, at my station, no mail has been delayed for weeks. I can't speak for the plants, but the vast majority of Amazon packages are delivered to the stations as drop shipments, so if the plants are having issues with volume, it's not because of Amazon. During Covid, letters and flats had been down in volume (businesses being closed = less advertising) by somewhere between 25% and 40%, but they appear to be back to normal, and parcels had been up something like 60% overall. I think that's most of the pertinent information. But, I'll say that this is typically the time of year where many USPS employees exhale a bit. The overtime dwindles, and the pace slows. Instead, much of this has felt like Christmas - anyone on the OT list and any non-career employees are working lots of hours to keep up with demand, and sometimes they're even compelling people not on the OT list to work OT. So, it feels like the holiday season never stopped, and we're all pretty exhausted. Of course, we feel lucky to have been able to work through the pandemic, but it's taken its toll, as well.

codingdave 6y ago

> Aren't contracts of the government with private parties publically accessible? Yes, you can submit a FOIA request to the USPS requesting the contract. https://www.foia.gov/ https://www.foia.gov/

metalliqaz 6y ago
since 2013 that contract must have been foia'd by now
- anoraca 6y ago
  You know what they say about assumptions...
sp332 6y ago
The request was denied. https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/amazon-sunday-delivery-contract-usps-10598/#file-228447 https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/ama...
- jagged-chisel 6y ago
  > The release of the existence of such a relationship or of the material terms of any such agreement, should it exist, with a particular business entity could harm the Postal Service's commercial interests in obtaining competitive rates with a variety of business partners in the future. Understandable reason. Redacting only the "necessary" bits might well render the document unreadable.

coronadisaster 6y ago

> If you don't properly fund and support you public postal service Raise prices for shipments? Or make them "free" using covid-19 "free" money

untog 6y ago
Or fund it with an increased level of taxpayer revenue, the same way other public services are funded?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- coronadisaster 6y ago
  Fuck that... That is the same as taxing the middle class (because you must know that taxing essential services affects everyone equally no matter how much money they have and that poor people get tax credits for it)
  - untog 6y ago
    Taxing does involve taxing people, yes. It's not a universal sin.
julianlam 6y ago
John Oliver did an informative segment on why the USPS no longer makes a profit, and what can be done about it. One facet is reintroducing banking services.
devwastaken 6y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Accountability_and_Enhancement_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Accountability_and_En... More like if you let your legislature run wild and artificially cripple your own services. USPS is a service that warrants a bailout, and repealing of these acts. They have been self profitable for a very long time, but cannot sustain their operation in this way.

TheJoeMan 6y ago

As far as I can tell, before the deal USPS did math along the lines of “10% of our trucks deliver packages and 90% letters” so then they laid out the pricing for packages. But then did a deal with Amazon so that now the trucks are 30% packages. Not projecting into the future and instead trying to hold the pricing ceteris paribus was either a major oversight or corruption

Spooky23 6y ago

You could do all of that, or you could take note that USPS halted overtime during one of the busiest periods of business in recent history. UPS is renting UHauls in my area to replenish delivery trucks in the field. Drivers are working OT as late as 9PM. USPS isn’t backfilling positions or using OT hours!

bsanr2 6y ago
This is at the direction of a Trump appointee. Career USPS workers are not happy about it and their union is exploring options, last I heard. Unions: They're Actually A Good Thing.
- caseysoftware 6y ago
  We're 4 months into the pandemic and their workload is only going to get worse if we have nationwide mail in ballots. If they're going to do something, they should get on it instead of letting their members suffer.
  - whatsmyusername 6y ago
    They are doing something. Screwing up the system is the goal. They tried, 'Poll numbers got you down? Just start a war!' but it didn't work because no one is interested in fulfillment Bolton's wet dream of starting WW3 with Iran. So now it's, 'Poll numbers got you down? Just cheat!'
  - sergers 6y ago
    Not sure about USPS specifically, but our canada post is just finally catching up now. They explained it was basically christmas holiday load, without the extra staff, with less staff on a non busy time (people taking covid related time off for sickness and family).
    - starky 6y ago
      While I definitely had a couple packages arrive late in the April/May timeframe, since June I've had a couple packages actually show up before the delivery date Canada Post gave.

jellicle 6y ago

Seems like you didn't read the article. The issue, according to the article, is that USPS management is intentionally delaying regular mail in favor of Amazon deliveries.

nomercy400 6y ago
Yes, I've read how the article blames USPS to favor Amazon. I've also thought about why they are doing this. Why is the USPS of Portland doing this? Are they being influenced by Amazon? By the national USPS? By the government? The problem with the mail is the symptom, like a headache. But what is the cause, like a blunt to the head or migraine or a hangover?

peruvian 6y ago

USPS is understaffed from COVID and the new Postmaster (installed by Trump) tells people to not work overtime and just leave the route when their shift is over, which means more mail gets backed up.

ptero 6y ago

> The real issue here is the fact that the USPS is overloaded and requires extra government attention. I agree with this, and this attention needs to come in more ways than extra $$. As others said, USPS is stuck in a weird state: need to be self-funded with no authority to set prices. So the gov't needs to either subsidize some things or let USPS compete. However, to fix USPS some of that attention needs to come in the form of hard kicks and forced reorgs. USPS is a dinosaur with a lot of inertia against improving efficiency and modernization. That causes problems, costs a lot of money and drives customers away. USPS is also notorious for advocating for spam senders (who give USPS a lot of revenue) and against people they are supposed to serve. Those are all problems that external "attention" should resolve. As an anecdata, I was occasionally involved with field testing campaigns which include significant shipping for next day delivery a couple of thousand miles away (something would break or some new hardware would be needed and will be shipped from home ASAP). This provides a non-insignificant revenue to the shipper. We tried USPS, but it just did not work. With FedEx we get accurate, near real time package tracking, so the minute the package is dumped at our hotel we see it and someone can drive out and pick it up. With USPS, their system was showing delivery at the end of the following day. Maybe something changed in the last few years, but I doubt it.

dd36 6y ago
There was huge consolidation “for efficiency” in the past decade. They shut down lots of distribution centers. Local mail that used to be delivered over night wis now delivered in 3 days at best.
dkuntz2 6y ago
USPS is efficient and self-sufficient, congress has just done everything possible to make it look like they're failing. If they didn't have to prepay pensions (something no other government agency, or private company in the world is required to do, or does), they'd be in great shape.
- erichocean 6y ago
  > If they didn't have to prepay pensions (something no other government agency, or private company in the world is required to do, or does) That's…not true? https://www.forbes.com/sites/ebauer/2020/04/14/post-office-pensions--some-key-myths-and-facts/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/ebauer/2020/04/14/post-office-p...

rossjudson 6y ago

I've had a Prime membership forever, originating from when it actually meant something to have it. Prime changed from being "We're going to have the package to you in two days" to "We'll get it to you in two days, if we feel like it and it's convenient and inexpensive for us to do so". Repeatedly, lately, I've bought items based on delivery times only to receive updates a few hours later pushing the delivery times back by days. It's one thing to have an exceptional circumstance during delivery, and quite another to change the committed (was it really?) delivery time within a few hours of the purchase decision. Yeah, COVID, I get it. But it's not just COVID.

vkou 6y ago
Do they still refund your month's prime if you complain about this, or is Amazon at the point where it will happily tell the customer to pound sand? I often go out of my way to avoid Amazon for my online purchases now.
- dawnerd 6y ago
  Not recently, they just blame covid.
  - vkou 6y ago
    Why keep paying for Prime, then? You can also blame COVID for why you are cancelling.
    - dawnerd 6y ago
      Personally I’m not. I’ll subscribe for a month and make all the orders I need then.
- Rebelgecko 6y ago
  The excuse I've seen is that Amazon points out that the shipping time was still 2 days, it just took them a week to start the shipping process. It seems like they're trying to minimize time in transit as opposed to trying to get the package to my doorstep ASAP

aeternum 6y ago

Is there really an issue though? Almost everyone I know only checks their mail about once a week anyway. USPS/mail is still important but not as critical as it was 20+ years ago, especially when it comes to delivery frquency. Maybe it's time to start delivering mail twice a week instead of every day.

casion 6y ago
Where are you located? Everyone I know checks daily, sometimes a couple times a day.
- jasonv 6y ago
  I check my mail about once/week, but I have packages directed to an Amazon hub. It was suggested many times over the years that the USPS reduce delivery to cut costs, and that didn't seem like a bad idea, but I'd suggest that any changes to the USPS need to come from an aligned perspective and in an orderly fashion, and that's not how the USPS is being treated these days.
nomercy400 6y ago
It could be an issue for people who expect medication that could expire. The thing is that for priority mail, the truck still has to drive every day. Might as well load it up. Problem I read from the article is that that prio-1 mail is not handled as prio-1, but rather after other, more lucrative, mail. But to be fair, in my country we had a new mail service competing with the public mail service. The new mail service only provided twice a week, but at a reduced rate. If you didn't care about your package being delivered a week from now, then it was convenient. End result was that the public service no longer could compete with the lower prices and reduced volume, BUT in the meantime was allowed to merge(=take over/take down) with the new mail service, by grace of the government who gave them a get-out-of-antitrust-jail card. Currently the case is at the EU court, which decided the merger has to be reversed, but the damage is already done. Contracts ended, brand damaged. If you privatise your mail service, don't be surprised if it becomes stupidly expensive to deliver the same quality of service. Competition won't exist because it will be acquired by the main company. And the government will simply pay for that quality of service, as that is what the voters expect.

mindslight 6y ago

Such contracts are negotiated modulo the principal agent problem. The person agreeing to the contract has incentive to make themselves look good and otherwise personally benefit, and little incentive to make it so that the organization doesn't suffer in the long rung. That the USPS has insisted on keeping this contract private is evidence of Amazon getting a special deal that would not survive scrutiny by the public or by other market participants (UPS/Fedex/DHL). In other words, corruption. Tangentially I've heard stories of mail being purposely held back a day, to support that narrative of discontinuing Saturday delivery that was being pushed 5-10 years ago. This agency has been getting politically strangled for quite some time.

KorematsuFred 6y ago

> Is it because USPS is not receiving enough funding from the government Why is this even a painpoint ? How much funding does Fedex or UPS get from government to stay operational ? I find it surprising that USPS remains operational at such massive scale while being a cash sink for American taxpayers. Putting more money in this sinkhole is unlikely to yield better results. If US government makes it legal for other carriers to carry letters (which is illegal at this point) the need for USPS would be much lesser. USPS could then focus more on rural and underserved communities and negotiate contracts with Fedex/UPS etc.

triceratops 6y ago
> How much funding does Fedex or UPS get from government to stay operational ? The government also doesn't set Fedex or UPS's rates, or appoint their chief executives, or pass laws about their pension funding. So it's not a fair comparison.
thephyber 6y ago
This comment completely misunderstands the USPS's problems. The USPS doesn't get public funding, but its pursestrings and business model is micromanaged by Congress (which has no business placing most of the mandates on the USPS that it does). This is roughly equivalent to having an environmental conservation group being given a majority of board seats on a real estate developer. These micromanaging mandates include schedule of delivery, the breadth of service area (which frequently must include the least profitable places to deliver), micromanaging of every price increase, and restrictions that the USPS can't move into other businesses that might encroach on their lobbyist-buddies clients (eg. paycheck cashing, which USPS used to do). I can't make sense of how much the 75-years pension prepay is catching up from insufficient coffers (perhaps justifiable) and how much of it is just punitive to keep the USPS from running efficiently and being able to use more of its debt for capital improvements. According to WSJ, UPS added delivery surcharges in May due to COVID's impact. The only reason USPS can't do the same to manage the supply/demand curve changes is because Congress is somehow allowed to micromanage USPS price changes.

pwdisswordfish2 6y ago

He is no Adam Curtis and HN readers probably dislike him^1, but Ken Loach's most recent film (2019) is about delivery services and the "gig economy". It is called "Sorry We Missed You". 1. His last film in 2016 won the Palm d'Or at Cannes if that means anything.

burtonator 6y ago

The GOP wants to kill anything related to the government that's functional. They want to turn it over so that private industry can have it. Further, private carriers can search your mail. The USPS can't but FEDEX can...