Just when I think that the United States Postal Service has reached bottom, they manage to come up with something new. The latest one, just discovered today, is that they have contracted out Express Mail delivery in Canada (and probably lots of other countries as well) to a courier company that can’t deliver to Post Office boxes, because they’re a private company, not Canada Post.
That’s right, you can’t send Express Mail to a PO box in Canada. Only the USPS could come up with a way that you can’t send mail to a PO box.
If there was ever, ever, a government monopoly that should be privatized, broken up, and sold off for scrap, it is the USPS. (Yes, I know that technically the USPS is a private company, but as long as the Private Express Statutes granting them an effective monopoly on letters are on the books, they’re effectively a government agency.)
It’s not the unions; UPS workers are in the Teamsters, and they make postal unions look like complete wimps. It is not the universal service commitment; UPS and Fedex both deliver to more delivery points than the USPS. It is stupid management, pure and simple; a classic example of how a long-term monopoly can rot the competitiveness of an organization.
E-mail is killing the USPS, and I for one will not cry to see it gone.
posted 13:05 | trackback