A rate less flat
Usually you’d answer this “Yes” and be done with it:
Is there a guideline in government agencies that they should never make things easy when a more complicated process is available?
But it gets, um, complicated:
My case in point. Today I wanted to mail something via the U.S. Postal Service’s Express Mail service. At work, we had the proper labels, and I could run it on the postage meter, but we didn’t have Express Mail envelopes. At least not plain, run of the mill Express Mail envelopes. We had only Flat Rate Express Mail envelopes — the ones that you can cram as much paper into as possible and then send for the same rate. In this case, that would have been $17.50, versus $13.05 for regular old Express Mail.
Easy enough: obliterate the “Flat Rate” logo and press ahead, four bucks and change to the good.
But no:
The carrier picked up the package and a couple of hours later I got a phone call from the post office. They were holding the package there because it was in the wrong envelope. I could either run down and switch the packaging or they’d send it out “postage due”. I had until 1:30 to haul it to the post office in town.
Which she did, and then:
In the midst of switching envelopes and filling out a new label, the clerk told me that since it was past 1:30, the best they could guarantee was second day afternoon delivery.
Uhhh. The package was going on the same truck as the other ones that had come in before 1:30, so why couldn’t they still guarantee next day delivery? What, my package was going to be too far in the back of the truck or something?
[Insert gratuitous government health-care reference here]
anne »
12 August 2009 · 10:55 am
And they wonder why people are using FedEx and UPS almost to the exclusion of the USPO these days….
Cary »
12 August 2009 · 11:46 am
<—-agrees with anne
Jeffro »
12 August 2009 · 6:30 pm
Everything is “by the book” depending on who is interpreting whatever particular rule at the time. Larger post offices are run closer to the vest than the smaller ones that can and do relax the rules. Which drives the authoritarians upstairs nuts.
Closet Atheist »
13 August 2009 · 4:56 pm
Midwest City yesterday had city workers delivering temporarily-service-interruption letters to ‘customers’ in a friend’s neighborhood. “Why not mail them?”, my friend asked the city worker. His reply: “Because have us do it personally is cheaper, and we know they were delivered before the service interruption.”
When it’s cheaper to pay a city worker to hand-deliver letters than to send them thru the post office, there’s a problem.
Now as for the comparison to health care, do you have any idea what FedEx and UPS would charge if there wasn’t a ‘public option’? If the only other option was a private courier? Even an mismanaged public option forces the price down.
CGHill »
13 August 2009 · 5:26 pm
Well, “option” may be the wrong word here, since USPS has a legal monopoly on what is defined as first-class mail: FedEx and friends can only do what they do with letters because they’ve met the letter of the law regarding “urgency.” Offsetting this to some extent: (1) Congress has the actual Constitutional power to get the mail delivered, and (2) the USPS will deliver (eventually) to the farthest reaches of Snake’s Navel, Nebraska, where no one has ever seen a UPS truck.
I do hope the MWC staffers remembered that they can’t legally drop those flyers in people’s mailboxes.
McGehee »
13 August 2009 · 6:47 pm
FedEx and UPS also compete with each other, which — as Chaz’s reply alludes — has at least as much impact on their rates as the Postal Service’s rates could on the same types of service. In fact, were the USPS free of competition in those other types of delivery, it would be free to use its rates in those classes to subsidize (even more than they already do) the price of a first-class stamp.
Another point which actually weakens the health-care analogy, however, is this: because it is no longer a general-fund-supported government program, the USPS has to raise sufficient revenue within its own activities to pay its own expenses. This is because it’s a service, not an entitlement.
The ObamaCare “public option” is being offered as an entitlement, which means it will therefore be at least as expensive as the CBO estimates, and I think they’re still low-balling it something fierce.