Once upon a time losing Saturday snail-mail delivery would not bother me at all.. then my daughter got me this Netflix subscription.. now I sometimes get a DVD on Saturdays. Sadly I cannot think of any other reason to keep Saturday snail-mail delivery. How about you? How often do you need snail-mail delivery? Apart from Netflix I would be okay with once a week.The U.S. Postal Service stepped up its campaign to end Saturday deliveries to help stem losses, but the move met with skepticism that signals an uphill battle for approval by regulators and Congress.
Postal officials sought support for a broad restructuring from a gathering in Washington on Tuesday that included big postal clients, congressional aides and postal workers' labor representatives. Without the restructuring, the agency potentially faces $238 billion in projected losses in the next 10 years, Postmaster General John E. Potter warned.
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Who Needs Snail-Mail on Saturday?
According to today's Wall Street Journal article titled Post Office Pushes Halt for Saturday Deliveries:
16 comments:
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Interesting. I was thinking losing Saturday delivery wouldn't impact me at all. But, Netflix is the sole reason I would want to keep Saturday delivery, too. I guess I'd had to plan a little better if they stopped Saturday delivery.
ReplyDeleteWould it affect your business Brian? Do you use business snail-mail on Saturdays?
ReplyDeleteIt would slow some of our delivery times by a day. We send 90% of our packages via snail mail. But, we don't ship on Saturday.
ReplyDeleteIs the USPS a better deal than the other package shippers? Seems that FedEx or UPS could leverage a no-delivery Saturday against USPS.. I can just see the 24/7 TV ads.
ReplyDeleteMost of our packages are small. The way the rates work out, it's as if UPS and FedEx don't want to handle small packages and the USPS doesn't want to handle large package. Plus UPS and FedEx charge about $2.00 more to deliver to a home. And, they both charge hefty surcharges to deliver on Saturday.
ReplyDeleteI actually love using the Post Office for our packages. No fuel surcharges, residential delivery fees or charges for delivering on Saturday. They are reliable and they are relatively cheap for packages less than 4-5 pounds.
Thanks Brian.. that last comment was very educational.. Ann and I discussed it and appreciated the info.
ReplyDeleteIMO, Saturday is only junk mail. But Brian has a good point about Netflix! I don't use it anymore but it would be day I'd love to see one of those red envelopes in the mail.
ReplyDeleteThere are DVD players and other boxes that can stream Netflix movies now and Netflix is putting more and more of its catalog into streaming format. So, one day in the not so distant future, I think most people won't be mailing DVDs back and forth anyway.
ReplyDeleteThe need to communicate hardcopy is getting less and less. I get most of my bills by email now and I pay all of my bills electronically. About the only thing I get through snail mail is junk mail. I'd estimate 80% of what comes in my mailbox is thrown away without me ever reading it.
We stream a lot of movies (via Netflix, the Media Center on our PC and HDMI cable) to our HDTV- but the streamable movies and TV shows are still comparatively low. I would pay a lot more each month to get everything streamed.
ReplyDeleteDoes your Mac have something equivalent to Media Center?
I'm not familiar with Media Center and I don't currently have any way of streaming to my TV. I do have an Apple TV that connects to my Mac. I use it mostly for pictures and music. I can buy movies/TV shows from iTunes and show them on the Apple TV. But, I don't.
ReplyDeleteThere is a box that is pretty cheap that I could use to stream Netflix to my TV. And some DVD players have the capability. Someday in the not too distant future I'll probably do that. Netflix hasn't given me a lot of incentive to do it yet since the price is the same for streaming and I can get my Blu-Ray discs here in two days anyway.
@Brian - Media Center is one of the great apps for a Vista or W7 enabled PC.. but even if I did not have it I could simply bring up Netflix in a browser and stream movies/shows to the PC. Even before I had a HDMI connection I used the component/s-video connections on my PC to stream to my TV from the PC.
ReplyDeleteI would think you could do something similar from your Mac using the Safari/Chrome browser?
I'm sure I could run a (very long) cable from my Mac to my TV. Just haven't had the occasion to do it. I've watched a couple of Netflix movies on the Mac (ones the family's not really interested in). It'd be kind of a hassle controlling the Mac from the basement where my TV is. There's a box called Roku that's only about $80 (maybe cheaper than a cable) that I could install on my TV and control my movies from there. I might do that someday.
ReplyDeleteOh.. you must have a desktop.. thought you had a laptop. I did find an 18' HDMI cable at Walmart online for $19.. pretty easy to connect.. use it all the time.
ReplyDeleteNetflix is the only thing reason for saturday mail too. Netflix instant view is very limiting in its selection
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry to see it go. One thing that the US does better than Japan is snail mail. We kick their butts in terms of delivery time. I can mail a letter from Knoxville, and it will get to family members in Atlanta the next day. It would take 2 days to cover the same distance in Japan. It would probably take a week if the Japanese post office was going to try to cover the distance from New York to California. They are terribly inefficient. The price is about two times higher, too.
ReplyDeleteI do have a laptop. Funny. I never thought of connecting it to the TV.
ReplyDelete