<story><title>Amazon gets priority while mail gets delayed, say US letter carriers</title><url>https://www.pressherald.com/2020/07/21/first-class-and-priority-mail-delayed-in-favor-of-amazon-parcels-according-to-portland-letter-carriers/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dkuntz2</author><text>USPS is efficient and self-sufficient, congress has just done everything possible to make it look like they&amp;#x27;re failing.&lt;p&gt;If they didn&amp;#x27;t have to prepay pensions (something no other government agency, or private company in the world is required to do, or does), they&amp;#x27;d be in great shape.</text></item><item><author>ptero</author><text>&amp;gt; The real issue here is the fact that the USPS is overloaded and requires extra government attention.&lt;p&gt;I agree with this, and this attention needs to come in more ways than extra $$. As others said, USPS is stuck in a weird state: need to be self-funded with no authority to set prices. So the gov&amp;#x27;t needs to either subsidize some things or let USPS compete.&lt;p&gt;However, to fix USPS some of that attention needs to come in the form of hard kicks and forced reorgs. USPS is a dinosaur with a lot of inertia against improving efficiency and modernization. That causes problems, costs a lot of money and drives customers away. USPS is also notorious for advocating for spam senders (who give USPS a lot of revenue) and against people they are supposed to serve. Those are all problems that external &amp;quot;attention&amp;quot; should resolve.&lt;p&gt;As an anecdata, I was occasionally involved with field testing campaigns which include significant shipping for next day delivery a couple of thousand miles away (something would break or some new hardware would be needed and will be shipped from home ASAP). This provides a non-insignificant revenue to the shipper. We tried USPS, but it just did not work. With FedEx we get accurate, near real time package tracking, so the minute the package is dumped at our hotel we see it and someone can drive out and pick it up. With USPS, their system was showing delivery at the end of the &lt;i&gt;following&lt;/i&gt; day. Maybe something changed in the last few years, but I doubt it.</text></item><item><author>nomercy400</author><text>The real issue here is the fact that the USPS is overloaded and requires extra government attention. If you don&amp;#x27;t properly fund and support you public postal service, you don&amp;#x27;t get on-time mail deliveries. Maybe that is the issue.&lt;p&gt;This has little to do with Amazon. Amazon is paying the USPS according to their contract. If the contract from 2013 is unsatisfactory, then it should be renegotiated by USPS. I wouldn&amp;#x27;t be surprised if it is a 10-year deal, and has hefty fines for late deliveries.&lt;p&gt;A journalist should be able to request the contract and see why USPS is now overloaded: Is it because USPS is not receiving enough funding from the government, or because the contract with Amazon is really bad for USPS. It sounds like the fact that Amazon is shipping so many parcels is a symptom, not the (systemic) cause of why parcels aren&amp;#x27;t shipped on time.
If the USPS is to blame, then who made this deal and what were their reasons? Was it a national deal? Why is it a problem now? Why wasn&amp;#x27;t this anticipated? And how can it be avoided in the future?&lt;p&gt;Aren&amp;#x27;t contracts of the government with private parties publically accessible? I mean, you, the taxpayer, pay for the contract so you should have access to it, as well be able to check on the government&amp;#x27;s workings. At least, that&amp;#x27;s how we do things in europe.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dodobirdlord</author><text>In fairness, pension pre-funding should be an expectation of all government agencies and private companies with pensions. But the way it was introduced was absurd, IIRC USPS had 10 years in which to pre-fund 50 years of pensions.</text></comment>
<story><title>Amazon gets priority while mail gets delayed, say US letter carriers</title><url>https://www.pressherald.com/2020/07/21/first-class-and-priority-mail-delayed-in-favor-of-amazon-parcels-according-to-portland-letter-carriers/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dkuntz2</author><text>USPS is efficient and self-sufficient, congress has just done everything possible to make it look like they&amp;#x27;re failing.&lt;p&gt;If they didn&amp;#x27;t have to prepay pensions (something no other government agency, or private company in the world is required to do, or does), they&amp;#x27;d be in great shape.</text></item><item><author>ptero</author><text>&amp;gt; The real issue here is the fact that the USPS is overloaded and requires extra government attention.&lt;p&gt;I agree with this, and this attention needs to come in more ways than extra $$. As others said, USPS is stuck in a weird state: need to be self-funded with no authority to set prices. So the gov&amp;#x27;t needs to either subsidize some things or let USPS compete.&lt;p&gt;However, to fix USPS some of that attention needs to come in the form of hard kicks and forced reorgs. USPS is a dinosaur with a lot of inertia against improving efficiency and modernization. That causes problems, costs a lot of money and drives customers away. USPS is also notorious for advocating for spam senders (who give USPS a lot of revenue) and against people they are supposed to serve. Those are all problems that external &amp;quot;attention&amp;quot; should resolve.&lt;p&gt;As an anecdata, I was occasionally involved with field testing campaigns which include significant shipping for next day delivery a couple of thousand miles away (something would break or some new hardware would be needed and will be shipped from home ASAP). This provides a non-insignificant revenue to the shipper. We tried USPS, but it just did not work. With FedEx we get accurate, near real time package tracking, so the minute the package is dumped at our hotel we see it and someone can drive out and pick it up. With USPS, their system was showing delivery at the end of the &lt;i&gt;following&lt;/i&gt; day. Maybe something changed in the last few years, but I doubt it.</text></item><item><author>nomercy400</author><text>The real issue here is the fact that the USPS is overloaded and requires extra government attention. If you don&amp;#x27;t properly fund and support you public postal service, you don&amp;#x27;t get on-time mail deliveries. Maybe that is the issue.&lt;p&gt;This has little to do with Amazon. Amazon is paying the USPS according to their contract. If the contract from 2013 is unsatisfactory, then it should be renegotiated by USPS. I wouldn&amp;#x27;t be surprised if it is a 10-year deal, and has hefty fines for late deliveries.&lt;p&gt;A journalist should be able to request the contract and see why USPS is now overloaded: Is it because USPS is not receiving enough funding from the government, or because the contract with Amazon is really bad for USPS. It sounds like the fact that Amazon is shipping so many parcels is a symptom, not the (systemic) cause of why parcels aren&amp;#x27;t shipped on time.
If the USPS is to blame, then who made this deal and what were their reasons? Was it a national deal? Why is it a problem now? Why wasn&amp;#x27;t this anticipated? And how can it be avoided in the future?&lt;p&gt;Aren&amp;#x27;t contracts of the government with private parties publically accessible? I mean, you, the taxpayer, pay for the contract so you should have access to it, as well be able to check on the government&amp;#x27;s workings. At least, that&amp;#x27;s how we do things in europe.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>erichocean</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;If they didn&amp;#x27;t have to prepay pensions (something no other government agency, or private company in the world is required to do, or does)&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s…not true? &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.forbes.com&amp;#x2F;sites&amp;#x2F;ebauer&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;04&amp;#x2F;14&amp;#x2F;post-office-pensions--some-key-myths-and-facts&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.forbes.com&amp;#x2F;sites&amp;#x2F;ebauer&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;04&amp;#x2F;14&amp;#x2F;post-office-p...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>