Is cutting Saturday mail self-defeating? - CNN.com
Is cutting Saturday mail self-defeating? - CNN.com
I don't think Mr. Greene understands what he's writing here... or maybe, he understands he's speaking to the choir. People who read CNN.com are already people who get their news from the internet. They're probably people who spend a lot of time emailing or a lot of time perusing RSS feeds. What they are not are people who work and live in rural areas, people who are too poor to afford a computer and internet or the elderly who do not want to assimilate into a computer centered world.
I am the last person to suggest cutbacks to keep an entity afloat, but we're not talking about a for profit company here, we're talking about a federally funded (read: tax payer subsidized) organization. If cutting a slow service day down would save money, then I say do it. As far as the article above mentions, we're not talking about closing postal offices or reducing the workforce, we're talking about cutting Saturday home delivery. As stated, people will still get their mail on Monday, just not on Saturday. If you're junk mail is so important you need it on Saturday and not Monday, then you have personal issues you need to address more than mail delivery.
And what the author did not consider was Brown's (UPS') current financial situation might push people back to the USPS. Why pay more for a business plan that doesn't work? The USPS might not be perfect, but their lost or mishandled mail percentages are really small considering the volumes they work with. I'll you Google those numbers.
Another thing he didn't bring up was customer satisfaction. Yes, the USPS is not perfect, but neither is UPS or FedEx. Actually, aside from an office environment, or being home at the right time, I've never seen the UPS guy, but I have seen the little note saying they must have missed me.
I remember once when I was home and the door-bell rang. By the time I got off th couch and walked the 7 steps or so to the door, the UPS guy was back in his truck and gone. He didn't even give me the time to make it to the door. But I had a note! I had a slip of paper telling me I could pick it up at their location within the next few days. Wow! What's the point of having door-to-door delivery if they never deliver? I called the UPS office and told them to turn the truck around which they did, but that I had to was a huge issue which could have been circumvented easily.
What's the point in the above paragraph? That private competitors to government provided services are not always better.
And then there was the Amtrak reference. Does Mr. Greene not understand the Amtrak how the American rails went nearly defunct? One of the biggest reasons for the reduction in passenger train travel is due to GM, yes, that GM. You see, GM bought out the companies that were making train engines and controlling stakes in a number of train companies. GM understood there was more money in residential auto owners than in mass transit and systematically reduced the availability of and the need for mass transit. It had nothing to do with the government controlling of the last passenger rail service.
I don't think Mr. Greene understands what he's writing here... or maybe, he understands he's speaking to the choir. People who read CNN.com are already people who get their news from the internet. They're probably people who spend a lot of time emailing or a lot of time perusing RSS feeds. What they are not are people who work and live in rural areas, people who are too poor to afford a computer and internet or the elderly who do not want to assimilate into a computer centered world.
I am the last person to suggest cutbacks to keep an entity afloat, but we're not talking about a for profit company here, we're talking about a federally funded (read: tax payer subsidized) organization. If cutting a slow service day down would save money, then I say do it. As far as the article above mentions, we're not talking about closing postal offices or reducing the workforce, we're talking about cutting Saturday home delivery. As stated, people will still get their mail on Monday, just not on Saturday. If you're junk mail is so important you need it on Saturday and not Monday, then you have personal issues you need to address more than mail delivery.
And what the author did not consider was Brown's (UPS') current financial situation might push people back to the USPS. Why pay more for a business plan that doesn't work? The USPS might not be perfect, but their lost or mishandled mail percentages are really small considering the volumes they work with. I'll you Google those numbers.
Another thing he didn't bring up was customer satisfaction. Yes, the USPS is not perfect, but neither is UPS or FedEx. Actually, aside from an office environment, or being home at the right time, I've never seen the UPS guy, but I have seen the little note saying they must have missed me.
I remember once when I was home and the door-bell rang. By the time I got off th couch and walked the 7 steps or so to the door, the UPS guy was back in his truck and gone. He didn't even give me the time to make it to the door. But I had a note! I had a slip of paper telling me I could pick it up at their location within the next few days. Wow! What's the point of having door-to-door delivery if they never deliver? I called the UPS office and told them to turn the truck around which they did, but that I had to was a huge issue which could have been circumvented easily.
What's the point in the above paragraph? That private competitors to government provided services are not always better.
And then there was the Amtrak reference. Does Mr. Greene not understand the Amtrak how the American rails went nearly defunct? One of the biggest reasons for the reduction in passenger train travel is due to GM, yes, that GM. You see, GM bought out the companies that were making train engines and controlling stakes in a number of train companies. GM understood there was more money in residential auto owners than in mass transit and systematically reduced the availability of and the need for mass transit. It had nothing to do with the government controlling of the last passenger rail service.
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