The United States Postal Service lost an estimated $3.8 BILLION in 2009. And that’s even with the increase in postage rates, most notably the raising of the 42-cent stamp to 44 cents. The USPS is hampered by a multitude of factors–the increase in things such as electronic bill pay; the inflation in costs such as fuel and healthcare; and the emergence of companies such as FedEx, UPS, and DHL–companies that can offer comparable or better service for the roughly the same price to the consumer. In fact, the largest percentage of the USPS revenue comes from Direct and Bulk Mail Marketing, not from individual consumers or private business order deliveries. The USPS is projected to lose over $200 BILLION DOLLARS by 2010!!! Because they are not allowed to close USPS facilities due to their financial state, they are exploring other options:
1) Eliminating Saturday deliveries…this would decrease the salaries you pay employees to work 6 full days, and would save the USPS an estimated $90 Billion over the next ten years.
2) ANOTHER POSTAL RATE HIKE, although that will not happen until 2011, at the earliest.
3)Moving facilities into grocery stores or department stores, which would save facility costs, and would allow them to skirt around the rule of not being able to close down facilities.
As you can imagine, all of this is not only making consumers wary of using the USPS, but also the employees themselves are becoming disgruntled and losing a great deal of motivation with their jobs (Remember this the next time you stand in a line for an hour to buy a book of stamps).
Luckily, here at Goin’ Postal Tallahassee, we use all the major carriers, so we can offer you the USPS services–like Stamps (at face value), Priority Mail, and International Mail; but we can also offer you alternatives like UPS, FedEx, and DHL. Make sure to visit us at our store in Tallahassee (5810 North Monroe Street, Suite 210A), or our website at http://gpoftallahassee.com so we can help you with all your shipping needs!
And remember, you can also connect with us on Twitter (http://twitter.com/gptally) or like our Facebook fan page!
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