FREE NEWSLETTER
Two news items caught my attention today that I wanted to share.
One is that the postal service of Denmark has stopped door to door delivery of letters due to the digitization of communications in that country. you would need to hire a private company to process mailing of a letter.
The second is that the US post office will not guarantee the date a piece of mail is postmarked. According to the article I read, the postmark date will be the date the letter is processed which could be days after it is dropped off.
This will affect tax returns and vote by mail ballots which in some states need to be counted depending on deadlines and the postmark date.
It will also affect responses to various financial transactions that have due dates and rely on postmark dates.
I wanted to know how HD readers are dealing with these changes and what do you think the future of mail is in our country.
How many people do not have access to digital communications? I would think most people have a digital phone or access to computers either they own or perhaps at the library.
There has to be a better way to deliver things. Figuring out how to get things to those that do not have access is challenging but a solvable problem by the private sector.
USPS is trying to hang on to its business and protect its employees, but it seems to be a dying business.
I have no confidence that the USPS can solve this problem but I believe the private sector could.
After a check my wife put in the mail and was altered and cashed at the bank, I refuse to put checks or other important items in the USPS. USPS was not responsive to me when I complained about this.
Here’s the recent USPS tracking arrival dates for a package shipped to me in Charlottesville, VA on November 27th:
Chino, CA 11/27
Memphis, TN 11/29
Washington, DC 12/1
Richmond, VA 12/1 (about an hour from Charlottesville:)
Fayetteville, NC 12/3
Fayetteville, NC 12/5
Fayetteville, NC 12/6
Greensboro, NC 12/7
Richmond, VA 12/8
Charlottesville, VA 12/9
Delivered to me 12/10
Seems like there could be a more efficient way to do this.
I write very few checks these days, and when I do I always mail them at the Post Office. I also use a gel pen, which is supposed to be much harder, if not impossible, to wash off checks.
However, I am a stamp collector, and I use the mail quite a lot to buy and sell stamps on eBay and Hipstamp. I have sent several hundred orders via email and never had one lost. I buy more than I sell, and I have had a few lost over the years, some from the US and some that I purchased internationally. Of course, I don’t know if the internationally purchased stamps were lost once they made it to the US.
I have voted early since that became an option.
I submit my tax returns electronically. I am a VITA (Volunteer Income Tax Assistance) preparer, and I always tell folks who want to file a paper return that refunds are handled much faster if you file electronically. However, I rarely have a refund, because I deliberately plan to owe some so that, if someone files a fake return in my name, my refund will not be held up. (IRS will always accept your payment, but they might hold a refund.) I arrange to owe less than $1000 each year (after estimated taxes) to avoid penalties.
This excerpt is from the brookings.edu website.
The USPS employs more than 600,000 people and manages more than 31,000 retail post offices (six times as many outlets as Walmart). It handles 44% of all the world’s mail. And, it has been operating at a loss since 2007, largely driven by declining mail volume and the shift towards digital communication.
First-class mail, marketing mail, and periodicals—which together account for more than half of the USPS revenue—have seen significant declines over the past 15 years. First-class mail, a product over which USPS has exclusive delivery rights, has declined by 50%, from 91.7 billion pieces in 2008 to 46.2 billion pieces in 2023. Periodicals have fared even worse, with volume shrinking so much that the cost of processing and delivering them far exceeds the revenue that they generate for the USPS.
While not explicitly defined, the Postal Service’s universal service obligation (USO) is broadly outlined in multiple statutes and encompasses multiple dimensions: geographic scope, range of products, access to services and facilities, delivery frequency, affordable and uniform pricing, service quality, and security of the mail.
Declining letter delivery not only reduces direct revenue but also makes each delivery less profitable. This challenge is further exacerbated by the postal service’s USO in the context of an increasing number of delivery points—on average, 1.16 million new delivery points have been added every year since 2008. As USPS is required to expand its delivery network to accommodate the growing population, it must serve more addresses while handling fewer pieces of mail—placing an even greater strain on its financial sustainability.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/return-to-sender-what-privatization-might-mean-for-the-future-of-the-usps/