10:38 – I remember when headline writers used to do their best to sum up the actual news story in a few words. At some point, they turned sleazy and gave up accuracy in favor of sensationalizing mundane news stories. Here’s an example: Postal Service looks to end at-your-door mail
That’s bogus, of course. USPS isn’t eliminating home delivery to existing homes. What they’ve done is require new developments to install Cluster Box Units, something they should have done years ago. And they’ve finally started to enforce a long-standing rule that when you buy a home you’re required to install a curbside mail box if there’s not one already there. They don’t require people who are already getting delivery to their door to install curbside boxes. Of course, if Issa has his way, they will eventually require everyone whose home isn’t served by a CBU to have a curbside box, but that’s by no means settled.
No matter what they eventually do, it won’t have much effect on us. We ship a lot of Priority Mail boxes, and even on days that we don’t have a PM box to ship we often receive boxes via USPS. So, one way or another, the USPS delivery person is going to end up coming to our door most days.
They don’t require people who are already getting delivery to their door to install curbside boxes.
Such is not the case. In Oak Ridge residents who get delivery to the door received a letter from the local postmaster informing the residents that they must install curbside mailboxes. Doorstep delivery is being terminated.
Of course this caused an uproar. Many of the homes, if they were to install a curbside mailbox, would have do so in the sidewalk as the sidewalk butts against the curb. Since the uproar I have heard nothing else on the issue.
It does appear to me that the USPS wants to eliminate doorstep delivery where possible.
they turned sleazy and gave up accuracy in favor of sensationalizing mundane news stories
This was confirmed and reinforced during the Zimmerman/Martin circus.
That’s not what I was told when I asked our postmaster recently. He said that current policy is that existing porch mailboxes are grandfathered in until the house changes hands. (Interestingly, you’re not allowed to replace your existing porch mailbox. If you do, you’ll get a letter telling you that USPS will not deliver to your new box and you have to install a curbside box.) USPS also waives the curbside box requirement for elderly and disabled people.
“(Interestingly, you’re not allowed to replace your existing porch mailbox. If you do, you’ll get a letter telling you that USPS will not deliver to your new box and you have to install a curbside box.)”
Um, how would they know?
The carriers are intimately familiar with their regular routes. Believe me, they’d notice a replacement mailbox immediately.
He said that current policy is that existing porch mailboxes are grandfathered in until the house changes hands.
None of this was mentioned in the letter that Oak Ridge residents received. Many of the residents are from the Manhattan Project era and are getting up in years. The ability of these people to make it to the curb and back in less than 16 hours was a major concern.
There were a lot of problems with the letter from the postmaster of Oak Ridge, one being the elderly access, another having a mailbox in the sidewalk and the third was problem of parked vehicles. Many homes in Oak Ridge have no parking on their lot and have to park on the street. Streets are too narrow to allow parking on both sides so the parking space alternate. If a house is located where parking is allowed how are the carriers going to get to a curbside box if it is legally blocked by parked vehicles?
Yeh, there were a lot of upset people. Since I have heard no more about the issue I suspect the postmaster got slammed by the city and perhaps his boss.
I know that many of the postal people are clueless about what is happening in the next post office. It becomes particularly evident in my company’s dealings with the post office. We get conflicting statements and requirements almost every month depending on who you talk with in the post office. And we are dealing with regional center managers.
So it would not surprise me if the local postmaster floated an idea he had no authority to propose or if your local postmaster has no knowledge of changes being proposed.
Do you have to let the USPS know (online, I presume) that you have packages to pick up, or is it just assumed? In my former business I almost exclusively received packages, now my very rare outbound shipping is of the go to the PO variety.
So, one way or another, the USPS delivery person is going to end up coming to our door most days.
They deliver most of my boxes to the CBU general oversize box. The others get launched from the USPS jeep in a flat spin and usually land close to the front door. Or at least that is what it looks like to me. I wonder if USPS people use telekinetic powers to ring the doorbell?
You can request a pick-up on-line, but after the first time or two I didn’t bother. You had to put the request in by 0200 of the day you were requesting the pickup, which didn’t work out at all for me.
However, that may change. Last week, Danny Hughes, our regular mailman, showed me his nifty new technology device. He’d been carrying a barcode scanner for years, but it was all batch mode. He’d scan the packages he delivered and picked up, but the data didn’t go into the system until he got back at the end of the day and uploaded it. Now, he has a real-time cellphone link, so when he picks up a package and scans it, it goes into the system immediately. I’m not sure if that works the other way as well, but if it does I may be able to request a pickup right before he’d normally arrive.
As it is, I just clip a sign to our mailbox to say there’s a package waiting for pickup.
Couple of problems with curbside boxes. One, they often get bashed, mostly I guess by teenage boys that are bored. Two, theft. There has been a rash of that lately in my neighborhood. I really don’t think I want one of those heavy duty secure boxes I’ve seen some put up. I’ve heard of break ins on cluster boxes too so I’m not sure that’s a fix. If I’m home I try to get the mail before it sits too long.
As for parcels my carrier walks them up to the door and leaves them on the porch which is out of sight of the street. I almost always get immediate alert via dogs when that happens.
The USPS really could care less about mail theft. We had some mail, including a box of new checks, stolen from a porch mail box. We had a description of the lady and even one gas station attendant that said they had video of her. We followed the USPS procedures for reporting stolen mail and their response was basically, “Get a PO Box.” They didn’t even try to catch her and they weren’t even interested in what the local police dept had discovered or done.
For that, and a long list of other reasons (that I won’t rehash here), I’ve become a real USPS hater over the last 10 years or so. I go out of my way to not use them for parcels. Even if it costs me more. As for letter service, other than bills and junk mail, who uses it anymore anyway? So, as far as I am concerned the APWU and the USPS can both fuck off. Their faithful clientele is pretty the same as the AARP’s, so I give it one generation before the USPS is gutted.
“… Now, he has a real-time cellphone link, so when he picks up a package and scans it, it goes into the system immediately.”
This seems to have been already the case for UPS and FedX deliveries that we’ve been getting for the past year or so; my cellphone tells me within minutes that something got delivered.
Yes, I got an IPhone 4, free of charge, from Verizon. So fah so good. All security apps loaded immediately. iTunes via the computer to do stuff works good. Mrs. OFD got herself a Samsung Galaxy III and likes it. We also got her a like-new Sony Vaio laptop at the local secondhand/recycle shop down in Burlap for a couple-hundred bucks, running Win 7 and 4GB of RAM. Says it runs fast and is like a tank. Then when she inevitably bashes the crap out of it like previous laptops and cell phones, no great loss.
Some guys just don’t learn:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-07-24/weiner-bid-for-ny-mayor-seat-hit-by-new-sex-scandal/4839518/
The article says he is likely to win the Democratic nomination, against a woman, and that women prefer him to his Y chromosome challenged opponent. I guess women just like
weinerswieners… 🙂The “solution” is for the post office to go to alternate-day delivery. Fire half of the letter carriers, and double the route size for the remainder. Half the route gets mail on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, while the other half gets mail Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. They could offer daily delivery to the “cluster” unit every day, and alternate days for to-the-door delivery.
Frankly, the only things I get in the mail are bills and junk, and Netflix DVDs. It wouldn’t really hurt me all that much to receive them a day later. I stopped PAYING bills by mail 10 years ago, and have gone over a year on the current pad of 25 paper checks in my checkbook.
Not only is Weiner running in the Bagel but also Elliot Spitzer, remember him? And when they go out to press the flesh, so to speak, among the NYC crowds in the streets, they are treated like royalty; everybody loves ’em! They’ll be in like Flynn; the dipshit cretins of our Northeast Megalopolis and its cities have always loved a rogue. Like James Michael Curley, the Kennedy’s, and Buddy Cianci down there in Providence.
I haven’t been to NYC in many years and if I never go again it will be too soon. Boston and Woostuh I can take in small, brief doses, but that’s it, and I haven’t been to either one of those places in years, either. Going three miles up the road into the city (8k) of St. Albans gives me the willies. Too many people, too much traffic, too much noise.
Off to have a nice two-hour chat with a Fed investigator tomorrow down at the Fed Building in our Queen City, so-called, of Burlap. (Burlington). Then back to mow the lawn, whack weeds, water the veggies and flowers, and burn rubbish.
You’ve got a cool guv’ner in S.C.:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/07/22/gun-fans-will-love-these-pictures-of-s-c-gov-nikki-haley/
I want my own personal gun range so bad. Just a 15 yarder would be good enough for me, I can’t shoot worth a hoot any further than that. And A/C and massive ventilation fans.
She’s pretty cute. Not as goddess-like as Sandra Bullock, but better looking than the average politician… 🙂
Mr. Haley should not be deploying outside SC; if we had even one governor in this country with the guts to stand up to the Feds it would be wonderful thing. Guess not.