Postal Service Looks To End At-Your-Door Mail

My guess would be that the whole rate structure depends on incremental costs. The "first" piece of mail, to a certain address, on a certain day, costs X, probably substantially more than 46c or whatever.

The second piece costs much less, the third piece, barely the cost of sorting. But I don't know what conclusion to draw from this theory.

I do know that I get tons of garbage from charities, sometimes paying as little as 10c for a mailing well over one ounce. I'd put a STOP to that in a hurry, a full 46c for the privilege of bothering me. You'd see those mailing lists shrink overnight. The charities I support, I contact myself, and they are enterprises that have done something for me, or for loved ones, in the past. But they have enormously powerful lobbyists, so they'll never pay the going rates.

I'd start a citizen watch group to police mail that comes in that are charged wrong, it's theft. A department in my old university that I requested a few things from seem to be getting away with it pretty well.

The junk mail scenario though, if it is incremental costs, combined with the power of buying in bulk, maybe they shouldn't be paying the full 46 cents.

However, I would like a regulation that says you can't mail things with giant ads on the envelopes for me to 'save a stamp' and not use the mail system. Seems akin to 'unethical' marketing.

What about the USPS leaving packages on your doorstep? They would have to cut package delivery altogether, wouldn't they?


-IBFS

In the cluster boxes I've had previously in a condo setting, there are typically four larger boxes at the bottom of the cluster box units. If a package is delivered to your unit, the mail carrier places a key in your mailbox. It opens the "bin" where your package is and you retrieve it. When accessing the bin, the key is "locked" in the cylinder until the mail carrier retrieves it the next day. It worked pretty well for most modest sized packages.

Some might be interested in this USPS news release to SLAA (I believe, St. Louis Apartment Association) about the installation requirements of cluster mailboxes in their area and some typical designs. Note the next to last paragraph on page 2 suggesting that there is (was?) USPS funding for the cluster boxes (and installation) right now but if, in the future, they may be required unilaterally, then the funding would be on the property owners to pay for the cost of the cluster mailboxes:

http://nmhc.files.cms-plus.com/Cont...MCLetter.pdf

I seem to remember around 25 years ago at the garden apartment complex that I lived in at the time, they replaced the small mailboxes just inside each outer front door with one of these clusters for each building. So not such a new thing.

A disadvantage was the one had to go out into the weather to get ones mail.

An advantage was the several parcel lockers that were incorporated in it. If you got a parcel that didn't fix in your mailbox (which was larger than the one it was replacing), it could be put in one of the lockers and the key to that locker put in your mailbox. Thus saving a trip to the PO to pick it up or having it left where someone could steal it.

Of course, for older folk in the countryside, if the cluster is too far away then they it might be inaccessible to them. My Mother is 84 and quite limited in how far she can walk without sitting down for a rest. And, as of this year, no longer drives.

The two advantages of apartment style centralized mailboxes:
A) The common practice of people trying to break the locks thereby giving the tenants a nice couple of weeks of picking up their mail at the PO. My local PO does not have Saturday Hours, yet the parking lot is always full in the mornings when the quick service window is open for this nice service.
B) I'm lucky, I live across from mine, but in a nice meandering giant apartment complex, it makes for a commute(not a walk) to check your mail.

As for Package Delivery, USPS is the only ones where I get my packages still. The big two enjoys not knocking at my door, nor leaving a note for me and instead giving the package to the office, where 3 weeks later I find out I had a package just by my own "memory".

Now I asked in another thread regarding cutting Saturday Mail except for parcels. If you have an apartment mailbox(mine doesn't have the large package ones, I have seen them however(always with one or two missing keys), what is the purpose of package delivery? Are you going to go all the way to the mailbox to see if you have a note telling you that you have a package when there is no mail service?

All of this seems rather stupid for me.

The nice thing about junk mail for the post office, is that one piece goes in each box. they dont have to read the address!

Given the ever-increasing size of the average American, having to walk a little farther to the mailbox might not be such a bad thing...

I see them do that, yet the oddest thing, I'm "supposed" to get the newspaper on Wednesday, which is the weekly supermarket insert day, and there must be a list, because regular mailmen know not to put one in my box, dashing all hopes for me getting 2x the coupons. Only some fill in mailpeople give me the adverts.
Which puts me in a bind last week when my newspaper didn't come, and the mailman skipped me for it too.
I hardly call it junk mail anyway, don't know why people in the lowerclass neighborhood throw away coupons to Burger King and such...

For all who are really concerned about the end to at-your-door mail, I felt I had to post this as a "smile for the day":

I would have no problem with the USPS ending mail delivery to me. The only things I ever get in the mail are bills and junk mail. I'd rather the bills just be e-mailed anyhow since they are all paid online and junk mail... they can just keep it. Any packages I get comes either UPS or FedEx, which would be unaffected. I don't really care about the post office anymore, to be perfectly honest.

I've developed an appreciation of junk mail. I save the mailings printed on card stock and use it as stiffener when mailing stamps -- no more buying file folders for that purpose!

I think either the figures in the story are wrong or misrepresented.