USPS Rescue Plan: More Junk Mail!

The US Postal Service is like a damsel in distress. Severe distress. The rise of email and the Great Recession, coupled with bad management and its high labor (and labor's retirement) costs have caused the institution to be near collapse.

But, like the analogy goes, there's a white knight! Here's how the Post Office plans to rescue itself from bankruptcy: more junk mail for everyone!

Many consumers are irked by the catalogs, credit-card pitches and other "junk mail" they receive. But the U.S. Postal Service loves it—and wants to deliver more.

The agency, beset by historic losses and a plummet in first-class mail, is running promotions, easing rules and planning television and radio ads to encourage more businesses to send pitches by standard mail, the official term for bulk mailings used by marketers to prospect for customers.

"What we want to do is to make standard mail more interesting for customers so we can grow the total volume," Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said in an interview. "We don't call it junk mail—it's a lucrative avenue for anyone who wants to reach customers."

Link

The Postal Service crisis is an invention foisted on the U.S.P.S. by politicians who wanted to break their union and privilege the business. Juan Gonzalez wrote about this fraudulent scam for the Daily News...
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2011/09/28/2011-09-28_you_dont_have_mail_bogus_postal_service_crisis_deserves_to_get_a_return_to_sende.html
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Sheesh. Here I was hoping that they might _raise_ bulk mail rates to something approaching first-class rates to drastically jump the per-piece profit _and_ reduce the amount of rubbish in our mailboxes. Wishful thinking, obviously.
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Come on now folks. Imagine a world in which you would be missing the excitement of a REAL letter! Where else for a 47 cent stamp(or whatever they charge these days), a piece of paper, an envelope, and some ink can you send a friend a real letter telling them how things are going in your life? We should set aside one day a month and sit down and write a real letter to 5 friends or family. To hell with Facebook, Skype, iPhone calls et al.
Did anyone ever calculate the true cost of each message you send by those other methods?
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I agree with Jim, I love getting real mail. As do the 252,800 members of Postcrossing from all over the world. The idea is: send a postcard to someone, get a postcard back from someone else. Result: real mail in the mailbox, and business for all the postal offices involved. Since the project started about 8,735,438 have been received, and that number is growing dramatically every day.
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dan beat me to it. i work in a business where the mail is frequently sent and received, 200-300+ pieces a week. if the usps goes under we're essentially screwed because no one can afford to send a letter for $15 standard fedex or ups. was $140 a week will become $3000+
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I love getting my birthday, Valentine's Day, Easter, Christmas & Halloween cards. Saturday delivery can stop, if staff reductions are done via attrition or early retirement offers, not layoffs.
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