Posted on 05/29/2002 7:40:45 AM PDT by Tribune7
I won't be. I have recently completed a review of all of the bills that I pay monthly and have transferred as many as I can to "online" payment.
One of these is my phone bill. I even notified the phone company that they needn't send me a bill (eliminating another piece of monthly mail). They will e-mail me to notify me that the bill is ready, I review it on-line and pay it through automatic withdrawal from my checking account.
The days of the USPS are numbered.
The USPS is actually one of the best-run government operations. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for the government doing anything right is it.
When you ask any form of government to do a job you should be prepared for failure.
The only reason that the USPS does as well as they do (again not very good) is that they have some competition. 99% of other government operations have zero competition and only exist because we are forced to use them. They would die if exposed to competition.
If I really need something to get there, I use the internet or fedex. The USPS should be shut down.
I haven't had much problem with USPS, except that they couldn't send a pkg. to my daughter overnight one time. (Priority has worked great.) She lives in Edmond, OK (a suburb of OKC), and the closest they could deliver it overnight was OKC. She drove to the OKC PO and got it with no problems.
Then, we tried another time to overnight one through UPS (which cost $18 vs. USPS $12). It got stuck half-way there, sat for 3 days, and was finally delivered 4 days later. Their tracking system told me exactly where it was, but not why it wasn't delivered the next day as it should have been. They did refund my money, but I was royally hacked.
There have also been a couple of times when I have purchased items to have been delivered the next day with UPS, and it has taken up to a week to get to me.
Overall, my experience with USPS has been better.
Take action yourself.
Don't use the Postal Service to mail anything.
Take down your mail box.
By taking just those two actions you've solved any problem you might have with USPS.
If they are "closed down" or still open becomes unimportant to you.
It is quite possible that you are one of the few, rather than one of the many.
My last experience with express(?) mail was this:
postmarked in Austin, TX on April 27,2002, arrival in Tampa, FL on May 7,2002.
11 days.
Never again.
They are what the poor PO was years ago. Friendly and reliable. UPS has not been the same since their strike a few years ago. We gunnies know that UPS stopped shipping firearms. At first we thought they had a PC Leftist agenda, but the reports later made the sad commentary that it was impossible to ship something expensive and compact UPS without it being stolen enroute, so UPS just gave up that business.
Three years ago I was very happy with Priority Mail. It was a good deal for three day service, and reliable..I would guess less than 5% broken merchandise. But something bad happened after the last rate increase. The employees, formerly friendly and joking with us, became so surly I do not even like going there to check the business PO Box.
I changed to FedEx Express Saver, and am very glad I did. My experiences with UPS ruled them out entirely, so FedEx was the only choice left to me. Today I shipped a 40 lb. box from Boston to Florida. I just checked online and saw that it has reached the airport, 3 hours after being picked up. It cost me just under $50, and I know it WILL be there Monday. So far I have had _NO_ losses or damage with FedEx. I have shipped more than a thousand units of merchandise through them to date.
Needless to say i beat them home...the post office is worthless for any thing but standard mail.
However, FedEx almost never pays out on any package insurance. So, ship FedEx, but never buy the insurance. It's a waste of money.
Most people complain about "standard" class mail, do you really mean "first class" mail?
USPS likes "standard class" mail as it brings in roughly 60% of postal revenues.
Agree...ALL insurance on these three shippers is a joke, though I never had a claim with FedEx to begin with..Yet.
Just TRY to collect for the PO or UPS!
The best insurance is to avoid the worst carriers entirely. Where I work, we had shipped an infrared pyrometer by UPS.
It disappeared, because the package felt expensive.
They gave us a check for a hundred bucks after a huge fight.
Also, I noticed that sometimes UPS and the PO have "Tantrums", if they feel the package is too heavy for them that day, and they "Punish" you. Dropping it off a cliff, or running over it, or something.
You can pay a little extra and get a delivery confirmation number for Priority Mail that you can check on their web site or by phone, but for 34 cents, first class mail is just as good and faster in some instances.
The only difference is you don't know who signed for it... If you want that pay for certified or registered mail. Your post is misleading...
Perhaps a clerk had a "hot date" she wanted to impress and sort of diverted your ear rings for a night on the town before resuming their journey to their original destination ;-)
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