Thoughts pt's post How Makers, Hackers, and Entrepreneurs Can Save USPS, a photo by mikey and wendy on Flickr.
Wendy and I depend on the post office for e-businesses. We ship daily and are happy with USPS's performance. There are barriers to entry that the post office could repair with only minor changes. Here are my gripes. What would you like to see?
Treat volume customers as special. It is time for the post office to consider the usual silver/gold/platinum type program for volume customers. Right now they have no incentive programs for customers that spend tens of thousands dollars a year. Consider airlines and frequent flyer mile programs, or credit card companies that give a percentage back. Even UPS and FedEx have business accounts and deals.
I find it ridiculous that the international tracking is unaffordable. First-Class International and Priority Mail have minimal beyond the US. International mail is so high priced that few makers would use the service. Makers need protection too, this comes through tracking and keeps international customers from demanding refunds on packages that are soon to arrive.
I'd like to see penalties for using the Post Office in person since it demands salaries and the costs to operate buildings. Today there is a small fee for going to the post office. The fee could be based on the length a transaction takes. Eg. Filling out a international first-class mail slip for a package to Prague costs employee time. Let the uninformed customer pay for the time they need while being pointed towards information about printing labels on-line.
USPS should have an all platform system. They run on a terrible Windows only application. Currently the USPS website does not offer all the USPS services. A shipper can not choose Parcel Select for first-class international packages on the USPS site. A mac user I have to keep a account with stamps.com to print Parcel Select and First-Class International postage.
Outlaw junkmail. Nobody wants it, it has a cost on the environment and companies have plenty of other ways to broadcast to customers, enough already.
It is easy geeks who ship daily to envision a thriving USPS. When individual households are spending thousands of dollars a year on domestic and international postage how can mail volumes continue to shrink? It might just be that micro businesses manufacturing and reselling goods though venues like Ebay can produce the volume the Post Office needs to thrive.
5 comments:
so agree. Now, they have changed their delivery confirmation service on first class parcels. No Stamps.com here as my first class parcels are minimal, but if I want tracking on a first class package MUST go to the Post office. WTF!! Tracking overseas is beyond USPS capabilities, they are reliant on overseas postal services to scan into the system. They don't, and won't except in rare instances. UPS and FedEx have overseas offices
@morgaineotm:
Good point about going to the post office for first-class tracking. Anything that creates more work for the customer and the post office is clearly a lose-lose situation.
USPS does provide full overseas tracking with Express Mail and sometimes pretty good tracking with Priority Mail (that is hit or miss). Obviously the capability is there for the high end.
We do send parcels overseas, but only our kits which fit the large envelope category. Go over 3/4 inches thick, though, and international stops being worth it.
I've found that even though we don't get perks, the local post office employees know us and are extremely nice to us. We mail all of our packages there rather than online because we don't want to pay for a stamps.com account to allow us to do first class mail, and it's not easy to pay for lots of different parcels of different sizes quickly online. In the end, I think it takes less of our time to drive 15 minutes to the post office twice a week and do it there.
The real problem, in my opinion, is a that the commercial shippers have made people who can afford it believe they're better. I don't really buy that, especially given how much cheaper USPS is, but I think that's what they need to counteract before they'll get more business.
I ran a small business for over 30 years and would never rent a pitney bowes postage machine, because I could not buy it. 30 years of rent would have been ridiculous. I feel the same way about stamps.com. I do use the USPS website to print priority labels, wish I could print media mail labels on their website. They must be giving big discounts to stamps.com and other online mailing services - giving away the profits.
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