I’ll go out on a limb and predict double the losses if they have to pay triple time weekend differentials to the union employees.
I buy a lot of stuff on Amazon. Most of the stuff I buy that I can wait a day or two for, in fact.
I’ve noticed that a lot of things I buy originally get shipped cross-country by UPS, but get turned over to the local post office once it gets in my area. I live north of Atlanta about an hour or so, so I guess it is more economical for the USPS to deliver than UPS, especially to meet a guaranteed 2-day deliver.
Overall, if this helps the USPS, and Amazon is happy, I’m for it.
This is a great idea. It’s past time to start thinking out of the box.
“...first-class mail delivery, particularly on Saturdays, is often a money loser...”
-
I don’t understand why the author says that Saturday mail delivery
is more of a money loser than the other days of the week.
Bump
Face value it looks great.
Reality it is our subsidy that makes it happen. That isn’t a level playing field.
It boils down to actually a bit of fascism.
The Post Office really can’t be fully privatized, because much of it exists by treaty, the Universal Postal Union, that took both the British Empire and the United States to create in 1874. Today, it would be impossible to create such a treaty. It is administered by the UN, in the French language.
This means that international post goes from one nation’s post office to another nation’s post office, instead of from nation to nation.
However, that still leaves a LOT of partial privatization that can be done.
I am not an Amazon Prime subscriber.
So, when I do order anything from Amazon, orders takes up to 6 weeks to be delivered.
Thus, I order very little from Amazon.com.
Their ‘storefront’ providers have a bit faster delivery, but most time, it takes significantly longer than ordering from Newegg or TigerDirect or Walmart, etc.
I follow the online trackers. Many time, a package will sit in a location for days without showing any transport movement.
We are Prime members and love it since it is 150 miles to a big town. Need an ink pen? Get it in two days with no shipping. But we live in some geographical mystery spot where some people around us have mailboxes but we are forced to have a post office box. On Saturdays they hand out packages for 30 minutes mid-morning if they decide to open the window. Sunday delivery for us would mean we get a notification in the post office box on Sunday instead of Monday.
20 years ago, the post office bragged they were the only fed agency to be self sufficient.
I have to wonder what changed all that.
This is a great idea! Postal service makes money on package deliveries. Basically no one delivers on Sunday anyway. This offers some competition to the two big boys, which should help keep their pricing in check. Most likely, many other online stores will jump on this bandwagon, particularly once the USPS has this up and running. Any additional business would be gravy for them.
And, personally, I would love to be able to receive packages from amazon (and others) 7 days a week for my small home business.