They may deliver your internet package purchase the same day, but they still want to ditch Saturday delivery.
Teaming up with major retailers, the post office will begin the expedited service in San Francisco on Dec. 12 at a price similar to its competitors. If things run smoothly, the program will quickly expand next year to other big cities such as Boston, Chicago and New York. It follows similar efforts by eBay, Amazon.com, and most recently Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which charges a $10 flat rate for same-day delivery.
The delivery program, called Metro Post, seeks to build on the post office’s double-digit growth in package volume to help offset steady declines in first-class and standard mail. Operating as a limited experiment for the next year, it is projected to generate between $10 million and $50 million in new revenue from deliveries in San Francisco alone, according to postal regulatory filings, or up to $500 million, if expanded to 10 cities.
The filings do not reveal the mail agency’s anticipated expenses to implement same-day service, which can only work profitably if retailers have enough merchandise in stores and warehouses to be quickly delivered to nearby residences in a dense urban area. The projected $500 million in potential revenue, even if fully realized, would represent just fraction of the record $15.9 billion annual loss that the Postal Service reported last week.
But while startups in the late 1990s such as Kozmo.com notably failed after promising instant delivery, the Postal Service’s vast network serving every U.S. home could put it in a good position to be viable over the long term. The retail market has been rapidly shifting to Internet shopping, especially among younger adults, and more people are moving from suburb to city, where driving to a store can be less convenient.
Postal officials, in interviews with The Associated Press, cast the new offering as “exciting” and potentially “revolutionary.” Analysts are apt to agree at least in part, if kinks can be worked out.
Retailers are still trying to figure out internet shopping and what the customer will respond to. Shipping — its cost and convenience — would appear to be an area ripe for exploitation if the USPS can anticipate consumer desires and be ready to respond if a market really develops.
Same day delivery sounds pretty cool but can the Postal Service really be competitive with such heavy labor costs? They say they can and more power to them if they can compete in this emerging market.
But the new service won’t nearly be enough to offset the $16 billion deficit due to the fall off of first class mail delivery in recent years. For that, the Postal Service needs a congressional bailout. And that means cutbacks in rural delivery, Saturday delivery, and finding savings in labor costs.
A tracking system that actually works might be a good place to start.
What, and fire the thousands of unionized workers who neither read nor understand English?
UPS’s tracking system often shows a regular delivery package is sent to (my) region, then they sit on it for 3-4 days and kick it loose just in time for delivry on the fifth day. FedEx (AFAICT) NEVER does this, thus a five day package frequently arrives in three day, sometimes even two day, and the USPS should do likewise.
USPS does track a packages such that it’s out in the ether from just after pickup, until it hits my local post office on the day of delivery. Both FedEx and UPS send me delivery emails while the drivers is still out by my driveway, USPS sends theirs when the deliverer gets back to the PO at 4PM or so, even if she was there at 1:30.
In sum (my experience): FedEx fst service with a smile; UPS, mediocre service with a smile; USPS mediocre service with a snarl.
I think UPS does that so you don’t see all the extra handling that goes on. FedEx gives you the whole scoop, warts and all. I remember a package from Thailand that sat in Anchorage for four days waiting customs clearance, before going to Tennessee before coming to Seattle. I think this kind of stuff goes on a lot more than most of us want to believe.
– healthcare delivery.
USPS as a same-day fulfillment center….state-owned enterprises….say again why Tom Friedman wants us to be more like China?
My mother recently had a stroke, and this put me in charge of her house and its mail deliveries. She was receiving literally hundreds of begging letters a week from various bogus allegedly non-profit organizations. I suppose in view of our election result, I should have paid more attention to the Campaign to Impeach Obama, but alas, I had never heard of it anywhere else. The disclaimer in the envelope, deliberately printed in impossible to read type, said that your donation would be used for general purposes and “not necessarily” for the reason shown.
The sales pitches were insane. A good example was an organization who sent a postpaid envelope as though that was something special. (Actually the organization sent hundreds of them, often multiple copies of the same pitch on the same day.) Sample sales pitch: “We sent you this envelope in good faith to show our desire for you to understand how urgent our situation is, Ms [mother's last name],” It was designed to take advantage of people’s inherent feelings of guilt, and worked amazingly well on my mother – in the two months before her stroke, she gave away about $7,000 to these organizations. I was shocked, since if I had received the same mail she had I doubt I’d spent $1 on any of those organizations. That, of course, is why I receive almost no mail, and why she was receiving so much mail her mailbox was crammed full with two or three days worth of letters.
So, there is a very simple way to balance the budget of the postal service and more: Eliminate the insanely low rates for non-profit mail, that enabled bogus organizations to send multiple copies of their begging letters PER DAY to my mother, and no doubt hundreds of thousands of other people whose minds have been declining in vulnerable ways. It would be good for the senior citizens who would get fewer bogus sales pitches, better for the postal carriers, who wouldn’t get hernias carrying all the stuff, and the only people who would suffer are those who created bogus and phony organizations that exploit seniors.
Non-profits should pay the same amount everyone else pays. Period. The more of my mother’s mail I saw, the less respect I had for charitable and political organizations of all stripes. I doubt that I will contribute a cent to charity, ever, after the disgraceful fundraising practices I’ve seen.
D
Coming next month: Post Office announces price of First Class stamp the go up 740% on Jan 1st…