Off-Topic Forum

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No doubt, we have the greatest postal system in the world, sadly it looks like it is becoming a political pawn :(. 

Me seeing this thread starting to get political.

I'm not interested in scoring political points, making the discussion partisan, or converting anyone to anything. 

But I do want to observe the following, and wonder if others agree. 

1. We are a community joined by a shared love of collecting trading cards. 

2. Our community relies on public resources, most obviously the US postal service. 

3. We value the work of postal service personnel and want them to be safe on the job and fairly compensated. 

4. Any threat to the efficiency of the postal service, is potentially harmful to our community. 

5. As stakeholders who rely on the postal service we affirm the value of the USPS, and want to protect it from any threats that may undermine its tradition of excellence.  

Is this fair? Are any of these propositions off-base?

This post is fine. You've been asking legit questions and making valid, unpoliticized points. That's all I'm reminding us about. Keep it level-headed and it will adhere to the forum guidelines (which has a link on every forum page).

Some other important things to know:

1. The USPS is not a business that can "fail", it's a service described in the Constitution
2. It's self-funded and receives zero tax dollars
3. It's one of the largest employers of veterans in the country
4. It's cheaper for many services than FedEx and UPS
5. It also offers delivery to locations those services don't, especially rural areas
6. It's a crucial service for those that rely on it for delivery of prescriptions because they don't have a nearby pharmacy

A key question to ask is, if the USPS was disbanded for some reason, would FedEx and UPS be able to handle the volume, and if so, would their prices be affordable? Right now, everything points to "no."

I've dealt with almost all my mail getting heavily delayed here in Michigan, largely due to COVID hitting some of the distribution centers hard. But nothing I receive in the mail (especially cards) is life and death, and I'm fine to wait for things to get better once that's under control. That said, the changes that are being implemented are obviously detrimental to the service. So without getting political, please keep all of this in mind in November.

I forgot to mention in the last post;

2 packages are sent the same day and time, as 1 package had a larger card in it, so I sent it on its own regular 1st class.

Package 2 had over 200 cards in it, and priority mail made sense .I paid the priority price.

Package 1 has made it, package 2 has been " delayed" .

** BTW looks like we are in for a " temporary" package price increase in October - Dec.

Postal workers at an Iowa facility have reported that equipment is being removed from the plant which is causing a backup of mail (This was equipment that they were currently using to process and sort mail). The reasoning given by the powers that be : "to save cost". 

Yep, this is happening all over the country. Mailboxes are also being removed in a number of areas. The sorting equipment thing is scary because it's so expensive and in some cases they're scrapping it, making replacing it a costly possibility.

I agree with Dan and others this can get very political very fast.   

You can say  "it's a service described in the Constitution

"  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Service    read this

 I do not go back that far but I do remember back in the 60s.    It appears about every 10 - 15 Years it gets blown out of portion and the PO keeps going NO matter what chage is done.

The time frame and service is slower at the PO just like any other store now.