Mailing/Fulfillment - Postal Trends

The U.S. Postal Service’s (USPS) financial problems have, of course, been big news lately, but they should hardly be a surprise. It didn’t take a genius to see this coming; here’s what appeared in Dead Tree Edition almost two years ago:

“Although the Postal Service is on track to become insolvent within a couple of years, Congress has shown no appetite for wrestling with the problems that vex the USPS. The Postal Service’s requests to stem the financial tide—by eliminating Saturday delivery and eliminating the prepaid retiree-benefit requirement, for example—will inevitably lead to a Congressional discussion of whether postal rates should

Fed up with paying about $7.3 billion annually in health care for postal workers, retirees and dependents, Patrick R. Donahoe is pushing plans that would allow USPS to spin out of the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) and establish a separate postal health care system.

During an interview late last week, Donahoe was clearly annoyed and angry with the Obama administration and Congress for not endorsing his plans to remove USPS from FEHBP—a massive program providing an array of options for life insurance and health, dental, vision and long term care based on a worker or retiree’s occupation, labor union

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) continued his campaign to overhaul the struggling U.S. Postal Service on Monday, stressing that his plan would help the agency control its labor costs. Issa, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and his Republican allies have long said that labor expenditures—which account for roughly 80 percent of the agency’s expenses—are the biggest roadblock to getting USPS on firmer fiscal footing.

The California Republican reiterated at a Monday event that he believes his USPS legislation would allow the agency to shed as many as 200,000 workers in the next few years who would already

DST Output and Zumbo announced two Georgia-based utility companies, Cobb Electric Membership Corp. (EMC) and Gas South, are now delivering digital postal mail via the Zumbox digital postal system as an additional channel that their customers can opt into.

Taradel has produced more than one million direct mail pieces for the USPS Every Door Direct Mail program since March of this year. “We just knew intuitively that this program would be successful,” said Taradel CEO Jim Fitzgerald. “The Postal Service has made it easy for small business owners to use direct mail advertising.”

USPS is willing to spend more ad dollars as new market research suggests customers still feel very secure about using and receiving paper mail...The two 30-second spots are designed to remind customers that paper mail, unlike e-mail, can’t be hacked, and that letter carriers are still providing reliable and safe deliveries to doorsteps.

“A refrigerator has never been hacked,” an announcer says in the first message as an actress pins a paper bill to her fridge.

In the other ad, an announcer reminds viewers that hand-delivered messages ensure that “important letters and information don’t get lost in thin air, or

House Republicans pushing to overhaul the cash-strapped U.S. Postal Service believe adding a prominent backer in the Senate gives their efforts fresh momentum. On Friday, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) announced that he was introducing the Senate version of legislation that Issa and others have offered in the House. The bill would, among other things, create a new oversight board to recommend cost-cutting ideas like post office closures, and supporters say it would help tame the agency’s significant labor costs.

Art Sackler, coordinator of the Coalition for a 21st Century Postal Service, said the new Senate bill may work to push lawmakers

The Postal Service is dropping a rule that requires an individual to have been deceased at least five years before being honored on a stamp. Under the new guidelines, living or recently deceased individuals are eligible for commemoration on stamps.

A year after an industry alliance helped defeat a proposed exigent rate increase by the U.S. Postal Service, the price hike may go through after all, as part of a larger plan to save the troubled institution, which is rapidly approaching insolvency...they have been dusted off by the Obama administration as a possible, partial solution to USPS financial woes.

Periodicals are one of the least profitable mail classes for the USPS, partly because of repeated rejections by the PRC of proposed rate hikes. Catalogs and other types of direct-marketing solicitation, classified as “standard,” are also less profitable than first-class mail,

Have you ever stood in a long, slow-moving line at a post office and wondered why only one employee was helping customers? The problem is the way the traditional U.S. Post Office is structured, with delivery and retail operations in the same building, according to an Inspector General’s report released today. It’s high time to separate those functions in many urban and suburban areas, says the report, entitled “Retail and Delivery: Decoupling Could Improve Service and Lower Costs.”

“A clerk’s first priority is often back room operational support activities—even if that means a retail customer waits longer in line.”