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Pending Postal Service Changes Could Delay Mail and Deliveries
- coderintherye 6y agoOne thing of interest, I was very recently contacted by USPS, did a user interview with them and was subsequently put in touch with an account representative. That feels like a positive change. On the other hand, our packages (all sent via Priority Mail which is supposed to be 2-3 business days though has changed to 2-4 business days) have been getting delayed recently and in some cases taking as long as 14 days.
- gumby 6y agoYeah I recently sent something overnight to NYC. It didn’t even leave San Francisco for four days. Tried to contact the post office but no response.
- RemingtonLak 6y agoBut isn't this kinda obvious? Current WH administration is dead set to stop mailin voting. They've found a way to make that happen. I think we're all missing the obvious here.
- ars 6y agoI've seen this conspiracy theory many times, but no one has yet explained how a day or two delay will stop mailin voting. People also somehow think that the post office won't be able to deliver so much mail. Which also doesn't make sense, it's a single envelope per house, they deliver more junk mail than that. Edit: I should add I'm 100% in favor of mailin votes always, not just now. I simply do not believe that this postal slowdown is in any way connected to those who oppose it. And that's for the simple reason that it can't accomplish that.
- Avicebron 6y agoFrom what I understand this is coupled with a delay in counting of mail in votes.
- Tagbert 6y agoAnd with states having a cutoff period after which the undelivered votes will not be counts. If you can delay a significant number of votes beyond that period, you’ve managed to block someone’s votes.
- Avicebron 6y agoEspecially pernicious is that many vulnerable people who previously would be unable to vote (no car, no real social contact, etc) now theoretically would be able to vote, which could be cut off.
- rhcom2 6y agohttps://fortune.com/2020/07/24/usps-mail-delivery-postmaster-general-louis-dejoy-us-postal-service/?mc_cid=41c4bd09f7&mc_eid=9f88eec838 https://fortune.com/2020/07/24/usps-mail-delivery-postmaster...
- ianleeclark 6y agoThere's no conspiracy theory. It's historical record the lengths this country has gone to disenfranchise votes: 3/5ths personhood, poll taxes, literacy tests, multiple hour-long queues, shuttering most poll stations for large populations, warehouses left full of voting machines, and, seriously, just go look at Dan Crenshaw's district. You don't have to "stop mailin voting," you just have to make it unreliable and burdensome. There's no conspiracy here, it's out in the public for all to see.
- andor 6y agoFor comparison, it takes me about 15 minutes to go voting in Germany. That includes walking to the polling station, someone checking my id and me checking a few boxes on a paper ballot. There is usually no queue and we don't have voting machines because they can be easily manipulated, as has been demonstrated a number of times. Elections are held on Sundays, when most shops are closed, so that everyone can participate.
- djaque 6y agoI am really concerned about November with the current administration pushing a narrative of voter fraud. Now they've appointed a partisan postmaster general which I haven't heard of being done before.
- stepstop 6y agoThere’s a long history of postmaster corruption
- rhcom2 6y agoIt's not just mail in voting, their goal is to destroy the post office so the only option is privatization.
- charwalker 6y agoconservatives like running on the idea that government is broken or needs to be parted out. Then they get elected and make it so via budget cuts and hiring freezes while pumping more money into Defense.
- eranimo 6y agoIt looks like it's being setup to fail by the administration
- exogeny 6y agoYes. First, so that it can be privatized and turned over to the free market, for which I will offer no opinion. That can be argued effectively to no real end on both sides, similar to a discussion about Amtrak or farming subsidies. Second, the fact that the Postmaster is a Trump acolyte in an election year where there will be a record number of vote-by-mail responses should tell you all you need to know about what the true motivations are.
- lykr0n 6y agoThe one thing that bothers me about the vote for mail stuff: We vote in November, but the actual electoral college stuff happens in December. The certification happens a lot later then election night. There is 0 way you can slow the USPS down enough for it to matter.
- wmf 6y agoI'm imagining massive pressure on Biden to concede before mail-in votes are counted, maybe combined with a 2000-style lawsuit that delays things even more.
- xenospn 6y agoI’m imagining federal agents burning down polling stations and mail delivery trucks with help from local LEO.
- kennywinker 6y agoNot outside the realm of possible, but why do that if you can achieve the same goal in subtler ways? 2000 was a “close call” because 10s of thousands of people in primarily-black communities in florida had their voting infra degraded to the point of uselessness. Voting infra is a proven strategy to tip the scales towards the kleptocrats
- monksy 6y agoConsidering how bad it is in Chicago. I can't imagine how bad it's going to get. What really ticks me off is that it's tolerated that they're that bad. They won't even mark a package as delayed. They'll intentionally scan it as delivered right before the end of "window of delivery" and deliver it when they feel like it. Could be tomorrow could be next week.
- Firerouge 6y agoI'm in a small city of ~40k. The same sort of shenanigans are happening here. Amazon is reporting packages as handed over to carrier very early in the morning, but all packages are getting ingress scanned either right before delivery one day later, or about an hour after all the trucks depart with their delivers for that day. I haven't had a single package of about 8 be undelayed by the USPS in the last two months, and the delay had been two days on some. It's gotten bad enough that Amazon is shipping to me with UPS a lot more than they used to
- xenospn 6y agoI send hundreds of packages a month. Last two years were great - almost everything would always get there within 2-3 days with minimal delays. About a month ago it started to get really bad all at once. Packages from CA to OH routed through HI (what?), packages reported as delivered disappearing with no record, etc. we’ll see what happens in Black Friday and cyber Monday. I predict a lot of ruined christmases.
- atotic 6y agoI suspect something unusual is happening too. I've been watching a tiny package I ordered being shipped from San Mateo to Palo Alto via UPS. It has been 7 days, and for the last 4 days its status in San Leandro has been: "Package departed UPS Mail Innovations facility enroute to USPS for induction" Can't wait for that dark chocolate cocoa floss!
- m463 6y agoI've noticed the same thing (post covid). One usps package never arrived. It's been under investigation for > 1 month. One (ironically amazon) package shipped via usps came 1 month late, in a non-amazon box, with the original label slapped on a cutout where the non-amazon box label used to be. The package was 2 pairs of pants, 4 dvds and a usb gizmo. What arrived was 1 pair of pants and a usb gizmo. Everything else was just gone. Thank goodness it was an amazon package -- called them up, they refunded immediately and the replacements are on the way.
- justinzollars 6y agoI worked on a USPS integration for years. I have mixed feelings about the USPS but one thing is clear. They price incorrectly. It should have never been less expensive to ship a parcel from Beijing to Washington, then from Detroit to Washington. Many of USPS' problems could be solved simply by raising prices. The USPS clearly wins business on the last mile service level, and it would open up new opportunity for others to deliver Amazon packages if prices went up. One other little known fact about the USPS is they cut lucrative deals for big customers. Negotiated Rates (NSA) can allows companies such as Amazon to buy postage at a significant discount. These deals should be eliminated. Why should a poor person pay more for postage than Jeff Bezos to ship the same thing? From left field this is one of my ideas: Post offices could be replaced by adopting a NinjaVan model. Why can't every corner store in San Francisco be a post office? It would be amazing.
- renewiltord 6y ago> I have mixed feelings about the USPS but one thing is clear. They price incorrectly. It should have never been less expensive to ship a parcel from Beijing to Washington, then from say, Detroit to Washington. Well, that actually worked really well for a long long time since the USPS was netting a lot of money through that because the USPS was the one taking advantage of other countries on this. It was only in the last five years that it started playing against the US.
- justinzollars 6y agoTrue, but these are still small potatoes compared with the losses they realize shipping last mile parcels.
- cosmie 6y agoWhat are the losses they realize shipping last mile parcels? If you're referring to agreements like their NSA with Amazon (the example from your parent post), that shouldn't be resulting in any losses. They're not legally allowed to set rates which result in a net financial loss; taking into account potential cost efficiencies from the increased volume, at the very least the NSA rates have to break even. For other classes of parcel service, it's entirely possible they're losing money (I'm not sure). But that's because it takes a literal act of Congress for them to touch those rates. Even addressing the "cheaper to ship from China than domestically" was a situation outside of their control - it resulted from an international treaty[1] the US is a party to, and required leveraging authority beyond the USPS's purview to address the situation (in this case, by threatening to pull out of the treaty). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union
- leptoniscool 6y ago>> late-arriving mail will now be left behind by carriers and delivered the next day. Overtime will be eliminated. This is a pretty negative change, without overtime the whole system will move like molasses.
- tails4e 6y agoWhat's interesting is while this is happening I'm seeing a strong push in placed like reddit for folks to register to vote by mail. It kind of feels like election interference - intentionally slow down the mail, and at the same time encourage Democrats to vote by mail.
- ars 6y agoDoes anyone else remember maybe 10 or 20 years ago the post office did this whole restructure to significantly increase speed? It used to take 5 days for first class mail and they reduced it to 2, at significant cost, but they were trying to complete with email. Seems like we are going back to those days. But maybe it doesn't matter, do many people really rely on mail speed these days when you can send an email?
- fedorareis 6y agoSaying as 90% of my packages are delivered by USPS, yes I care about mail speed. Letters aren’t the only thing handled by the post office. Also when I need to get my credit card replaced for some reason you better believe I care about speed of delivery. I’m sure I could list more examples.
- defertoreptar 6y agoGoing to be the devil's advocate on this one. The current policy creates an incentive for unnecessary overtime. That can distort the real demand for labor. Eliminating the incentive could allow the USPS to find out the actual demand, and hire the right number of workers to get the mail out on time.
- timw4mail 6y agoThey aren't already? I've seen USPS tracking be very misleading, with Expected Delivery by 8:00PM...and the next day the same status, until finally you see Out for Delivery, which is the day it will actually arrive. Between the terrible tracking, and the occasional goofy routing detours, USPS is doing themselves no favors.
- magicnubs 6y agoThree times in the past year, I've had packages marked as "Delivered at/in mailbox" that weren't actually delivered until 2-3 days later. The most recent was particularly worrying, since it contained my new passport (which I'd already been waiting on for 5 months since passport processing had mostly been shut down due to COVID). This was at different addresses, with different local USPS destination facilities. It seems they're aware that it's an issue, since it says in their FAQ "package may show as 'delivered' but could take additional 24 hours". I assume it happens when they get behind somehow and just mark a lot of stuff delivered to meet their metrics.