How to Save the USPS

Two years ago, the leadership of the USPS decided to raise rates for international shipping by as much as 500%. For a small business such as our internet store, the result was an immediate 50% reduction of international sales. Since those sales represented 30% of our overall sales, that hurt and still does hurt our business’ bottom line.

Of course, the leadership also raised domestic rates, including the use of a clever tactic termed Flat Rate Priority Mail. Often, the flat rate costs substantially more to ship an item than normal calculated-by-weight priority mail. In order to even offer an item for sale, we must not only weigh the item, but also determine which rate to use.

The leadership also authorized the purchase of priority mail boxes that would be free to consumers. These boxes should be eliminated.

The rate for the service termed delivery confirmation was increased by 100+percentage from $.35 to $.75. For us, as small business owners, that meant we could no longer afford a service we had previously used on every package we shipped. Now, we use this service only when we ship to areas where we experienced a high lost-package rate, such as NYC.

USPS leadership designed several new forms for additional services. Some of these are basically duplicates of other forms needed such as insurance. There is now one form for items valued at under $200.00 and one for items valued over $200.00, even though the forms carry the same information and are virtually identical. The same is true for several other services, like customs forms (above forms should be made into one form).

Last week we had a customer visiting Canada ask if we could ship a book to arrive by week’s end. We investigated and learned the cost for global express mail would total 64.25. Surprisingly, our customer agreed and was excited she would have the book in time for her husband’s birthday last Friday.
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We took the book to post office, filled in two forms and sent it off believing that we had made a new customer happy.

Thursday, the book was returned because the USPS has an arrangement with Fed-Ex to deliver global express mail and Fed-Ex has yet a third form that needed to be used to complete the transaction.

We lost a customer, which is not something any business can afford right now. Because of this and despite the fact that we were refunded the shipping charges, we will not offer global express mail to a customer in the future.

What happened? No one at our local post office was trained in the redundant paperwork needed to be done to complete this transaction. Three different employees confirmed they they’d never before seen that third form.

Here is another way to fix USPS: use one form for everything. Surely, there is someone clever enough to design such a form and include on it data that works for Fed-Ex too. As they are now, most forms ask exactly the same information: sender, recipient, contents and value.

Of course, an additional way to save USPS money would be to eliminate layers of high and middle management. Many post offices have several supervisors along with a postmaster. None of the supervisory staff work the counters when customers are lined up waiting for service.

Simplification of forms, elimination of duplication, elimination of free shipping boxes, and a reduction of top-heavy management will all help bring USPS into the black.

However, there is one more ingredient, lower prices! Internet sales are the future of business. All of us business people using the internet depend on services such as USPS, and lose customers every time those service providers increase the cost of shipping. We lose, you lose.

We can only afford to absorb a certain amount before we are forced to pass on rate hikes to our customers. As far as I am concerned, I do not think we should have to absorb a penny of those costs since the increases have to do more with paying salaries such as the $850,000.00 for the Postmaster General, and all of the other items I have described above.


<--------------- Combine into one form.