Internet Usage Boosts Post Office Revenue

setirw writes "Contrary to popular belief, the New York Times reports that Internet usage has actually boosted the USPS's revenue, instead of decreasing it. It is commonly believed that the rise of the Internet has negatively affected the Postal Service's revenue, since e-mail usage is rapidly superseding snail-mail usage. 'Six years ago, people were pointing at the Internet as the doom and gloom of the Postal Service,' said James Cochrane, manager of USPS package services. However, the widespread usage of e-commerce sites has boosted USPS revenue, since millions of packages are shipped from such sites daily."

Who cares?

[baldass_newbie]

As far as I can tell, with all of the junk mail that comes piling into my mailbox, the USPS ain't going anywhere anytime soon.
Besides, they more powers and subsidies than any other delivery corporation out there.
I highly doubt they were scared - considering the quality of service I receive in downtown Philly - job security is not an issue.

Profit...

[PinkyDead]

..is about minimising your fixed costs while maximising your variable returns.

Ok - IANAE (economist) and IANAPM (postman) - but this is probably a reasonable simplification.

With the postal service, fixed costs are about delivering a single item, where as high variable returns come from large packages. With the decline of letters and such (due to e-mail etc), and the concurrent increase in parcels (due to online shopping) - how could they not make better returns.

If a postal service is making losses and is in decline (as a number are in Europe), I would suggest that they should stop looking at environmental factors, start modernising their organizations and provide a service that complements the needs of their 21st century customer.

The Royal Mail knows this

[Don_dumb]

That is why they are just about to change the postal charges for packages to include the size of the object as well as the weight. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5231576.stm [bbc.co.uk] Previously they only charged based on weight.

Sounds like a similar story to the UK...

[Xest]

The story on the old rumour mill over here was that Amazon was almost single handedly responsible for saving the royal mail in the UK due to the massive increase in revenue it brought with postage of larger packages.

Personally, I don't beleive Amazon would've single handedly saved it, but no doubt it contributed alongside all the other online retailers. I think it'll only get better for postal services and couriers too, it's the high street that should be (Well, "is" rather than "should be" in most cases) worrying as people shift from a culture of high street shopping to having everything delivered by mail.

Re:Phishing will push it even further

[silvwolf]

The company I have my 401k (retirement plan) with lets me send them "email" through a web form, then sends me a confirmation that my message went through via email. When they reply, I get an informational message via email telling me to login to the website to read the message.

Re:Phishing will push it even further

[AceJohnny]

Could you elaborate a little further? Because with your short description, I can see the sense of the bank's position of preferring snail-mail to encrypted/signed email. Technically, encrypted/signed e-mail is a valid system, but so is snail-mail. Snail-mail has the advantage that it requires nothing extra to be installed from the consumer, who is already used to receiving smail from the bank. Furthermore, it'll cost more for a phisher (why do you think spam and phishing are so prevalent in e-mail and not in snail-mail? Because the costs to the sender are negligeable in e-mail)
Sure, encryption (by which I mean encryption or signing, mostly through the OpenPGP standard) is accepted and common in techy and specialized circles. But then, I work in a large technology corporation, surrounded by engineers and where industrial secrets are important, and even here encyption use is marginal (maybe slowed by the administrative hassle of declaring your key, granted).
I've long since dropped the idea of getting my parents or siblings to use encryption for sensitive communication. Sure, I've spooked them enough with the horror stories, but they just haven't caught on, despite me leveling the terrain.
What's worse, if they *had* caught on to using the tools, I'm 100% certain that they won't pay attention to the signature of a forged e-mail from the bank. "Oh, the signature changed. Meh, they must've updated".
Remember, don't mistake your values with those of the General Populace.

Y'know, those who prefer security to liberty...

USPS Ranked Most Trusted

[digitaldc]

Interesting to note that a survey was done recently of the most trusted Government branches/offices/operations and the USPS was ranked #1. This is in direct contrast to the Executive Branch of government.

http://www.directmag.com/news/usps-022306/index.ht ml [directmag.com]

USPS needs to become more shipper-friendly.

[argent]

There's bunches of online vendors I do business with who I have to use paypal with (if they support it) because they will only ship to my billing address and won't ship to a PO box, and I have my mail sent to a PO box because I've had too much trouble with material sent to my street address going missing.

I don't know what the underlying reasons that they only use Fedex or UPS are, I just now they're pretty damn pervasive, and I wish the USPS would make them unnecessary.

Re:USPS Ranked Most Trusted

[ottffssent]

People trust people (groups, companies, whatever) that they like. It's hard not to like the USPS. The post office is fast, cheap, courteous, and otherwise well run. Its website is well managed and contains more than enough information to efficiently use their services. The biggest downside I can find is that it's so popular that the lines are frequently long at the branch offices. This is what carrier pickup is for.