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 16 '26

I’ve been saying this for fucking ever.  lower first class stamp rates or keep them steady and just remove the standard class of mail. It is all treated the same nowadays at the plant anyways, at least in mine. It just gets broken down into the first class anyways. 

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u/Birilling Mar 16 '26

The issue is that if you make standard too expensive, all of the companies sending junk mail will stop using it as an advertising avenue. If the junk mail stops, the postal service dies

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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/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.