Postal Service Still Can’t Run A Business

by: George Bounacos Tuesday, August 4th, 2009

: Forever may be more transient than you thought. Image by Getty Images via Daylife

When news first swept DC that the US Postal Service (USPS) was making noises about cutting delivery days from 6 to 5, the U.S. Congress knew that the fish were in the barrel, ready to be plucked out and, well, eaten(?)

There was no way that lawmakers were going to concede such a critical issue while wars rage on, the economy is ruins, unemployment continues climbing and the State of California pays people with Monopoly money.

And while the USPS can’t run their services profitably, they also do a horrible job managing their online presence. After today’s announcement that the PRC might instead seek to slash costs by closing post offices, the web site went bananas. In short, the PRC’s site was inaccessible from almost every possible access point.

How did I finally get in? I went to Google, typed the agency’s name, found a newsroom link and looked at Google’s cached copy so I could get the direct, ugly URL generated on their ASP site.

One need only look outside postal facilities to see a brightly colored FedEx box that competes with the high margin services the postal service operates. Perhaps we just ought to open mail delivery to FedEx and UPS and let the three compete in an oligopoly. Because even on the day before Christmas, I’ve never had trouble reaching a Federal Express tracking page.

The 12 page list of proposed post office closures is on our site too. It’s a PDF file, and a big one, but we wanted to post because the USPS says their IT engineers are working on the problem. The “problem” is likely the spiked demand that will likely continue another day.