Tech experts, including Google, to discuss future of the USPS(washingtonpost.com) |
Tech experts, including Google, to discuss future of the USPS(washingtonpost.com) |
I also would love a premium service where I get one address (just like Google Voice) that I give out and then the mail is actually forwarded to my new location if/when I move. UPS provides something like this, I believe, but why not USPS?
I think we should combine some of the ideas:
If your neighborhood has community mailboxes, then you get mail every day. If you have personal mailboxes, then you get mail 3 days per week. If you want mail everyday, then organize your neighborhood to have a community mailbox.
USPS does offer that, NCOA.
The funny part of that is, that is the inverse of how it is now. The post office charges for PO Box rental [0], but delivers to your house for free. Keep in mind that most post offices do not have sufficient PO Box numbers to cover all teh points they currently deliver to.
[0] the exception being those places with insufficient density to justify street/rural delivery. In those places the customers must travel to the post office to collect their mail, and they get the PO Box for free.
USPS should have transitioned toward providing digital identity services for citizens and government at least five years ago. They were perfectly positioned to do this, and yet completely missed the opportunity.
You just have to pay for both storage and forwarding.
★ Edit in response: Only some of the same problems are being solved. If the USPS let everyone choose an ID, it wouldn’t be long before websites let (US) customers enter “tcollins12” instead of “Tom Collins, 145 Main St., Somewhere, ST 12345” during checkout… it wouldn’t be long before your public wishlist said “ship it to USPS address ‘alanh’” without giving away your residence… it’s not just an alias, it’s a paradigm shift. (With the UPS offering you linked, your address still takes the form of an address.)
One of the reasons that USPS is a national monopoly is that it provides an important piece of national infrastructure. I don't see how that is going to be replaced, as many features of federal and local government depend on systems for reliably sending citizens messages, such as censuses, legal notifications such as court summons, drafts, various aspects of voting and elections, information and notices from local governments, etc.
Most of these depend on every citizen being reachable by mail, which is in the USPS's charter, and which causes a lot of overhead. If the USPS goes away, private companies will not provide service to everyone. I have no idea how these systems will continue function (e-mail is, for various reasons, not an acceptable solution at the moment).
I would love for USPS to develop alternate forms of income in order to essentially "pay for" traditional mail delivery. I'm not sure it's in their DNA though.
If the post office acted like a "letter carrier" and not a package/spam carrier, I think they could do alright. Let UPS etc handle shipping actual packages, drop the spam and drop delivery to 4-5 days a week tops, they would save alot of money.
Do any of the private companies get within a factor of 10 of that price?
I also wonder how a world with a much smaller post office would look. I know there are already several startups operating in this space, but it seems like there will be a large opportunity in "replacing printed mail" in the near future.
Dead tree mail isn't dead just yet; they definitely have enough time to figure out a plan.
[1] http://www.usps.com/communications/newsroom/postalfacts.htm
Traditional printed mail (flats, letters, etc) will not go away until every person has an iPad (or equivalent) and has broadband. Many many areas of the US are still without broadband access.
In other words, where electronic mail won't work, USPS could handle parts of the delivery that make sense and how its done shouldn't matter.
As far as delivery 6 days a week, I think most people could get by with delivery 2 or 3 times a week.
Delivery of commercial could be scheduled to arrive just before delivery days so they could avoid storing too much mail.
USPS or private equivalents could also accept and store electronic bills for you as a trusted third party so you can access them as long as needed. It could certify that bills have actually been paid.
There are a lot of things that could be done to leverage its "official" position. But to do so, it actually must become technically competent. At the moment, it cannot even put the mail into the right box consistently at my house.
This makes as much sense as removing commercials from TV shows because people can now go to the network website and watch the commercials there. The problem isn't "how do we continue to provide junk mail cheaply?" it's "how do we continue to provide regular mail cheaply without being subsidized by junk mail?"
"Of particular concern has been the decline in the lucrative first-class mail, largely consisting of personal letters and cards, bills and payments and similar items. First-class mail volume fell 6.6 percent in 2010, 8.6 percent in 2009, and 4.8 percent in 2008. Traditionally, this mail has produced more than half of total revenue.
Volume for standard mail – advertising and similar business items – improved somewhat, indicating some signs of economic recovery, but generates less income."
From http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/12/post-office-lost-bi...
How curious, I imagine this is how people described fax machines in the early 70's...
Are there items that are time critical (need less than two weeks round trip) AND must be sent physically AND would be prohibitively expensive to send through private mail services?
Considering the items I have in my mail pile right now I can't think of any.
Yes, it doesn't reduce mail volume. That's been collapsing all on its own, as has the effort to sort it.
That's the problem with enforced monopolies. If we had many competing companies, some can move into the future unrestricted. And those who don't want to change, other companies could continue to charge more for less value. Unlike now, where it takes an act of Congress to change the delivery schedule.