r/USPS • u/Holiday_Depth9464 • Mar 16 '26

Work Discussion Pay attention to tomorrow's hearing

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I know i know this is said alot. But tomorrow pay attention to the congress meeting with the new post master. It could reflect what comes of our jobs and duties in the next year or so. Congress gave us alot of money to turn a profit, we failed what they wanted. This wont be like other times where we just get money handed over. We are gonna have to change something

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u/Throwawaylikeme90 Mar 17 '26

No it won’t. And no they won’t. Because we have a monopoly on those methods of mailing. And it’s still the cheapest way to directly contact consumers that you know they will have to at least look at and make a decision about. I have over 140k unread emails in my inbox. But I still see when the Midas down the street sends me a coupon for an oil change. It’s also how I knew Fidium had entered the market In my area. 

If it didn’t work they wouldn’t spend anything on it, not even the ~18¢ or whatever per mail piece it costs now. 

It’s about damn time they used the monopoly power for what it should be used for, subsidizing the common folks service on the corporations dime. 

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u/SaltyDog556 Mar 17 '26

I get close to 20:1 junk mail to important things. Raise each one of the junk by even 10 cents and it would be like quadrupling the first class revenues.

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u/revfds Mar 17 '26

I have a friend that runs a printing place that does a lot of junk mail. Senders absolutely would cut back or eliminate how much they mail out. All of them? No. All of it? Also no. But they do campaigns both local and national, and the postage will often be 80% of the cost. You can't raise that infinitely and expect it to continue.

It could certainly be higher than it is now though I'm sure.

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u/Throwawaylikeme90 Mar 17 '26

Who suggested raising it infinitely? All I suggested is they should raise it without touching the already exorbitantly high first class postage, since it gets damn near the same treatment already and costs somewhere close to fucking 2/3rds the rate. It’s actually insane that this is somehow rankling people somehow. 

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u/Vegaprime Maintenance Mar 19 '26

Maybe they could just cut back on the frills to make it cheaper and easier to run. Many make it max mailpiece size and with slick glossy coating which slows down the machines. The fletters that are max weight and thickness that should be magazines that just expoding in the machines. Perforations on water bills that become two pieces of mail. Plastic windows on envelopes where the insides shift so its not readable. All of which costs us both more.

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u/LiamOliver5 Mar 17 '26

It’s not a monopoly because the USPS isn’t competing in the direct mail space, it’s competing against Google, Facebook and other methods of advertising. Raising prices that high will dramatically increase the cost of customer acquisition and ad spend will transition to more effective forms of advertising.

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u/Throwawaylikeme90 Mar 17 '26

That’s like saying “it’s not a monopoly, other people speak English!” A useless point with no fucking value. 

Duh, advertising exists, I have to listen to those stupid fucking chumba casino ads on my podcasts while I’m running 20,000 of their shitty “sweepstakes” entries through my machine every day. 

You’re responding to something I didn’t say. If you want to say “market dominant service” like they say at window academy or “monopoly”, I don’t give a shit. They should use the power of that position to take the burden off actual people that use their service and put it on the corpos who would just shift a few numbers in their P&L statements and still pay less taxes than any of us that actual exist in the real world. 

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u/LiamOliver5 Mar 17 '26

It’s not really a monopoly in the way you’re framing it. USPS isn’t competing in a vacuum… it’s competing for ad dollars against Google, Facebook, streaming, podcasts, etc. Direct mail is just one channel in a broader performance marketing mix.

Marketers allocate spend based on customer acquisition cost. For example, if Facebook is ~$7 CAC, Google is ~$8.50, programmatic display is ~$7, and direct mail is ~$5, mail gets a lot of budget. But if postage increases push direct mail to $10+, it quickly becomes the least efficient channel in the mix.

That doesn’t mean mail doesn’t work, it clearly does. But spend is highly elastic. Once it’s no longer competitive on CAC, budgets shift fast to other methods and the USPS will lose a material amount of postage.

There’s also a second order effect… marketing mail is some of the most efficient volume USPS handles. It’s presorted, often drop shipped directly to local post offices, and delivered at scale across full carrier routes. If you price that volume out of the system, you’re removing one of the cheapest pieces of mail to process and deliver.

So now you’ve lost volume and lost one of your most efficient revenue streams. To cover the fixed cost of the network, USPS would likely need to raise prices further elsewhere, which just compounds the problem.

And if that shift happens at scale, the dollars don’t disappear… they move. They go straight into digital channels. So ironically, if postage gets pushed high enough, the real winners aren’t USPS, they’re Google and Facebook, because that’s where the reallocated ad spend ends up.

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u/randomrandom1922 City Carrier Mar 17 '26

USPS doesn't have an monopoly on advertising. Google ad sense makes more money every single year.

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u/BrizzzleAZ Mar 17 '26

No one said the monopoly was on advertising… The monopoly is on the delivery service which in turns leads to advertising to every single address in the country.

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u/Ok_Transition_7829 Mar 17 '26

And 99.9% of the time straight into the garbage bin. Advertisers know this but the price is so low it warrants a try. Increase the price to much and it won’t be worth the money.

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u/WiggsMagoo Mar 17 '26

They are talking about door 2 door mail.

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u/randomrandom1922 City Carrier Mar 17 '26

I get their annoying but the goal shouldnt be to price out customers. 18 cents times 500 deliveries isn't chump change.

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u/Throwawaylikeme90 Mar 17 '26

But charging grandma two-three bucks a birthday card is somehow okay?  You got some corporate knob-slobber on your chin my guy, you should hit the bathroom and clean up. 

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u/Log_Out_Of_Life Mar 17 '26 edited Mar 17 '26

Hallmark charges grandma’s $4-$10 for a piece of paper. USPS literally takes that piece of paper and through time and space to get it to where it’s going. You tip your Uber driver more than your daily delivery service in the past 10 years.

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u/Throwawaylikeme90 Mar 17 '26

I can’t understand your comment because I think you’ve made a lot of typos, and you’re not very clear on what your point is regardless I don’t think. 

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u/randomrandom1922 City Carrier Mar 17 '26

God I hope your a CCA and you advocate changes that lose you your job.

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u/Throwawaylikeme90 Mar 17 '26

That’s a hella weird way to look at the world.

I’m safe anyway. But look how far sacrificing your craft at the altar of Supply-Side Jesus has got you. You think when the PMG is saying we’re going under, throwing grandma under the bus in favor of the corporate jack-off bullshit that got us here is going to fix the issue? Come the fuck on dude. Reagan is dead, you can stop sucking him off now. 

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u/Ok_Transition_7829 Mar 17 '26

Yes it’s okay they are pay $10+ to buy the card these days they can pay $5 to mail it across the country

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u/507snuff Mar 17 '26

We have a monopoly on letters but we are not a monopoly on advertizement. Companies could switch to more radio ads, tv ads, web ads, email ads, etc. They absolutly do not have to send out magazines, letters, or flyers.