Sides Form Over Threat to Saturday Mail Service
Excerpt:
Some, like Donald J. Hall Jr., chief executive of Hallmark Cards, said that eliminating Saturday delivery and raising prices even incrementally would drive more business away from the United States Postal Service, resulting in a “slippery slope.”
But others, like Andrew Rendich, the chief service and DVD operations officer at Netflix, said five-day delivery would be a better alternative to significantly higher postal rates. “Big rate increases will absolutely squash business and will absolutely slow growth for a company like Netflix,” Mr. Rendich said.
The post office estimates that cutting Saturday delivery would result in savings of $3 billion a year, though the Postal Regulatory Commission, which will make a recommendation to the post office on its proposal, estimates smaller savings, about $2 billion a year.
The commission begins hearings on the service changes on July 12. In addition to eliminating most Saturday deliveries, the post office has proposed cutting its work force through attrition and wants the option to raise prices above the rate of inflation for some classes of mail.
Comment: From a guy who actually remembers when first class postage was raised to 4 ¢ from 3 ¢ (
August 1, 1958 (18 days from my 9th birthday!), I vote for 5 day delivery! By the way, we are moving to every bill being e-delivered. How: EBill on Wells Fargo Bill pay, Email notifications of other bills for pick up via logging onto a website (eg our Allstate insurance, Chase, Discover). I don't have a statistic but I think that 80% of our mail is junk. The GOP and the NRA could send much less mail! Seems like at least once a week I receive a mailing from the GOP asking for money!
