I'm (NOT) Going Postal!

Remember, just a short time ago, to try to soften (yet another!) price hike in stamps, the U.S. Postal Service developed the "Forever Stamp"?

Well, now I think it needs to be renamed to "The Forever-To-Get-Your-Mail" stamp.

According to the CNN News yesterday, the U.S. Postal Service is now claiming they just can't afford to deliver our mail six days a week. (Despite their many, many hikes in the price of stamps.)

Oh yeah. And they blamed it on the use of the internet. (Less income for them).

If that is the case, then why is UPS and FED EX business volumes higher than ever?

Hmm....could it possibly be the (lack of) service the U.S. Postal Service provides that may be the reason that less people are utilizing them?

The U.S. Postal Service, (still saying they can't afford to give us our mail anymore "because of the use of the internet") are now saying that they would like to stop delivering mail (and begin closing their offices) on Saturdays.

Today, CNN just said the U.S. Postal Service is also considering not delivering (or being open) on Tuesdays. (Which would mean we would only get mail four days a week).

I thought the Postal service could not get any worse.

We live in a rural area, so mail takes forever to get here or to send from here.

Consider this:
Say I drive up to my post office and mail a letter to my daughter (who lives north of Chicago) at 8 a.m. on a Monday morning. I then pull out of the post office and continue driving to her house.
Typically, with one stop to eat lunch and another stop to get gas and to have a potty break, we arrive at her driveway around 4 p.m. that day.

The letter? We are lucky if it gets there by Friday or Saturday. Four to Five days later, folks!

I don't get it.

If you give the same letter to FED EX or UPS, it arrives at her door no later than 1.5 to 2 days later. Don't they utilize the same trucks, airplanes (and perhaps trains?) as the U.S. Postal Service?

So why does it take more than double the time?

And the service?:
We once had an exchange student who went to the Post Office with her Christmas gifts to mail to her family back home in Spain. She arrived at the Post Office at 4:45 p.m. (It closes at 5 p.m.). She said there were maybe 4 people in line ahead of her.
When she got up to the window, it was about 4:55 p.m.
The female postal worker pointed to the clock and said: "You expect ME to mail these many packages out for you at FIVE minutes before five o'clock? You should have come earlier if you expected to mail this many out! How are we supposed to get home on time???"....and basically slammed her packages around in anger, as she put labels on them, etc.

Our little exchange student came home in tears, and asked me if she had done something wrong. She asked (get this) if it was "against the law" in the U.S. to arrive just before closing at a post office.

Nice service, Postal Service.

Really nice.

(Scare the shit out of an innocent foreign exchange student because you might be 5 minutes late getting home! )

FED EX or UPS, upon arrangements, would have probably come and picked them up at our home and even given her a tracking number so she could trace her gifts' journey home to her family.

That's another thing.

If you want to "trace" anything with the U.S. Postal Service, you would have to pay an outrageous fee by purchasing their "overnight" service. (Which by the way, when you go to purchase it, they outright tell you they "cannot guarantee" it will arrive there overnight!) And, sadly, it rarely does. I used to utilize this at work and it rarely got there "overnight".

I say:
Let the U.S. Postal Service go ahead and close two more days a week. Heck, they should just go ahead and close.

Period.

The government should strictly use FED EX or UPS to mail our packages and letters.
We'd get them earlier, we'd be able to "track" them on our computers, and they'd hand deliver them right to our doorstep. (Heck, if you're not home, they even put them inside your garage to keep them safe and dry!)

And, they even happily deliver on Christmas Day!

Oh, I just keep having these uncontrollable brilliant brainstorms for President Obama !!!

( Anyone out there interested in a campaign for him to list my blog site as a "favorite" on his blog list ???????!)