Wednesday Update:
Wow. Thanks for the fabulous response to the brainstorm. We’ve been overwhelmed by the sheer number of thoughtful responses. To give everyone enough time to comment and us a little time to read through everything, we’ve decided to extend the period for taking comments and post a blog about the brainstorm with the poll on Monday. Until then, please keep sharing your ideas. All suggestions received by Friday morning will be candidates for the poll.
Oh, a word about moderation, we moderate every comment, and our policy is not to include comments that include vulgar words (even if the words are partially obscured with other characters) or involve name calling. We have not been able to approve a few comments that were otherwise very interesting because they violated our comment policy, so please double check your comment before you submit it.
Thanks again!
Original Post:
The Postal Service is facing a financial crisis and needs to pursue every option it can to improve its net income. Pushing the Envelope thought it might be a good idea to ask for your thoughts. How do you think the Postal Service can save money or raise additional revenue?
To make this a bit more interesting, the blog team will review your ideas and pick the most popular or most interesting for a poll. We’ll post the poll on Wednesday. So brainstorm now, and be sure to come back on Wednesday to view the shortlist and to vote for your favorites.
Share your ideas in the comments below. Describe the idea, whether it involves cutting costs or generating revenue, and how much you think it could add to the Postal Service’s bottom line. Happy brainstorming!
This topic is hosted by the OIG’s Risk Analysis Research Center (RARC).
527 Comments
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Eliminate district staff. I am a lower level manager and I complete reports on the computer (on time). The district staff person in charge sends out an e mail to remind me to do it on time. I explain anything “unusual” in the comments section when I submit the report. Then the person who sent the e mail calls and asks “why” (instead of reading the comments). They then take this information and e mail to my MPOO who e mails it back to me to explain with instructions to copy the person who called me. I explain (usually with the exact same words I put on the original computer comments)—e-mail back to the MPOO and the district assignee. The next day I receive a consolidated report for the district with my comments again.
I’m sure this district assignee to this project has no other function than this.
This is only one example. One other staffer prepares a spreadsheet for this and another for that. Some we don’t know what they do.
They should be given the vacant EAS jobs instead of posting them.
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My first idea is to make all routes evaluated route times. There are far too many carriers milking their time to get into overtime or just to get more time than their route actually takes. If you evaluate the time, I guarantee they will get the route done within and in most cases in less time than the evaluated time. Case in point, a carrier may take eight and a half to nine hours to do a route on any given day. But, come Christmas eve, that route is done in six hours or less.
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I’m sure the unions would not go for this, but, selling advertising space on postal vehicles will solve ALL the financial problems. Postal vehicles are on the streets four to six hours a day and prime placement for advertising. Also, cross promotions would make it more productive. For example, a “Green” energy company. USPS could promote the energy company on the side of the vehicles saying “we are environmentally conscious and use Green energy” and the energy company can promote their service by saying “we supply Green energy to the USPS”. Plus, it would benefit the environment and save money on energy bills. Win, win.
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close 49115, 49116 and 49119. These offices have no rural delivery and have other post offices in very close proximity for people to use.
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Stop leasing buildings. The USPS is just paying for their buildings over and over again by leasing. Wasted money.
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End Saturday delivery. Who needs mail on Saturday? The work week is Monday-Friday…and if you’re in a management position its Monday-Thursday.
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Significantly increase the rate for bulk mail. Companies send out so much bulk mail that they should contribute to the financial situation. I receved a letter today and the rate is listed at $00.10. I receive so much of it that a rate increase would yield additonal revenue.
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Use internet more effectively and stop leasing buildings.
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We have lots of holidays that give the general public a chance to mail a card, however, due to electronic cards that are available through email, that has definitely decreased card sending. I think we should create something through the post office such as; “National Send a Card Week,” to someone you care about, or letter. We have crazy things like “sweetest day, secretaties day, boss’s day, which are all great reasons to buy a card, but just something like that might hit home to alot of people. Hey, “retro” is back in a big way. Let’s make sending a card or letter versus emailing some sort of “retro campaign.” I also think that field trips to the post office for day care centers across America is another great idea. A child has to bring .44 cents to school to mail mom or dad or whomever a card they made in school and it’s fun for them too and educational. I know I look forward to the class that comes into our post office. Get the word out to daycare centers. I hope these simple but fun ideas could help in some way. We also need to IMPROVE on our customer service skills. CSA staff meetings, incentive’s, whatever it takes. Some of the clerks working the windows out there are a disgrace to the USPS. Customer service is the lifeline to a business. Have a great day.
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How about getting every neighborhood fitted with a box section. No more door to door deliveries.
This way the carrier saves on time and gas and every neighborhood would have a drop off for their outgoing mail.
We have the best and least corrupt mail delivery system in the world so I would not like to see the mail system go public with non-postal employees delivering mail.
Of course the idea of raising bulk mail rates is vary apealing but I don’t know much about bulk mail.
Cut back on over time by hiring substitues that are on call. Like they do with the school system…if a teacher is absent they call in a sub. Well if you have a lot of mail…call in a sub and don’t pay over-time.
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I think similar to ATM machines and Vending machines it is feasible to have Auto Mail Box machines. This machine can be installed at large apartment complexes, so the mail man instead of opening hundred mail boxes only needs to load up one big box (loading box of the machine). The loading box can be loaded at post offices, and only be inserted to the machines by postmen). The machine should be made smart saving the postman’s time to load it. Like ATM Cards, each resident will have a Mailing card to swipe it at the machine and receive her/his mails.
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Southwest Michigan has too many offices close together. On Red Arrow Highway starting from New Buffalo PO, drive 4 miles north you come to the Union Pier PO. Drive 1 mile!.. you come to Lakeside PO. Drive 2 miles you come to Harbert PO. From there you are only 1.5 miles from Sawyer PO. From Sawyer you are 2 miles from New Troy PO. It’s insane! All of the mom & pop gas stations and grocery stores closed in this area 30 years ago because there was no population to support them. Now there are fewer people. (70% of homeowners in this area live and receive their mail in Chicago). The USPS is way behind on their office closings. If this is happening across the country, this could be the reason they are going broke. Plus they rent the buildings. When has it ever made sense to rent a house or car long term? NEVER!
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You may want to read our latest suggestion for USPS at the following link:
<a href="http://postalsanity.com/2010/06/smart-phone-apps-increase-sales-of-usps-hybrid-postcards/"Smart phone apps increase sales of USPS hybrid postcards
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Something went wrong with submitting last comment. We try again:
Smart phone apps increase sales of USPS hybrid postcards
http://postalsanity.com/2010/06/smart-phone-apps-increase-sales-of-usps-hybrid-postcards/
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I submitted an idea for the Postal Service 2000 “Ideas contest” to improve/save the Postal Service. As I am sure many thousand of others did. There should be a wealth of great suggestions, already archived. My idea was to have a computer in every Postal lobby, exclusively to order stamps, and mail order items for our customers, who either did not have, or did not want to use their credit card. They could order and pay the clerk at the window. The Postal Service would receive affiliate income from our “partners”. Also increased revenue from parcels.
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I believe the USPS should link a permanent email address to the postal customer’s physical address. Electronic mail should be addressed exactly as physical mail. The email address should remain hidden from the users, accessible to the recipient by user name and password, and to the sender by street address. Electronic mail unopened after several days would be printed by the post office and physically delivered, provided the sender paid for the service.
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Is management really care about their expenses. Two months ago we just notice that USPS San Francisco in Evans St. have more than 25 new cars (Ford Focus). Wherein half of it stayed in the parking lot for the whole day.How can employee believe that we are losing money if management doesn’t know how to spent our money wisely?Please investigate right away since the cars still have value for selling.
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REENERGIZE FASCINATING STAMPS
The Post Office can nurture a long-term love of stamps—as an artform, educational tool and habit-forming hobby. Starting with schools, provide maps of the United States and World, which have slots to be filled in with stamps for each State or Country. Designer stamps, which are linked to pop culture and contemporary hot news, can be rolled out incrementally or sold as limited edition packs.
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USPS should standardize their web pages with non-proprietary industry standards so that all customers and employees may use it’s web services without being discriminated against. For example, I am an employee and wish to access the eOPF website
https://eopf.usps.gov/eOPF/jsp/essLogin.jsp
I do not own a windows computer, nor do i want to bother anyone to use their computer, or use a public terminal which many people share and is more likely to be infected with viruses, key loggers ect.
Visiting this site results in an error saying I MUST use an ancient web technology “ActiveX” (are you serious? who uses this anymore?).
People like me who no longer trust/put-up with microsoft windows now use Linux and/or Macs are being left out from using the tools we need.
Similarly, Linux and Mac using customers are being left out.
If we non-windows users try to use USPS on-line services such as “USPS shipping assistant” which requires windows
This may not directly save money, but If you create obstacles like this, employees will be frustrated and unhappy. And this will definitely reflect in their work, ultimately costing USPS money. And happy customers will definitely come back and give us more of their business.
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its to far gone we get a new oic , 204b, supervisor, every six months, tear our office apart all for thier 991, and no one looks to see if they improved anything. there are light duty employees doing more than healthy employees buy why does light duty get rewared w/a supervisor position .
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The practice of excessive turnover of supervision is true. Twelve years in one office. Thirteen Postmasters/OIC’s.Some stay a month, one stayed 3 to get high three for retirement. What is really telling is that EACH ONE reported differently the numbers. Only thing consistant was the goal to stay “off a list”, which required misrepresenting the numbers. (some were better at staying off the list then others)
What would be more telling is if someone actually looked at the chronological order of all 991′s from those that came through this particular office. How many times can the office be so bad that each one passing through corrected all the errors? (understandably a waste of time to do, just wanted to paint a picture of the absurdity)
On a serious note, there are no retractions of web-based accesses to offices once a person leaves their assignment. A person that has access in an office should have it retracted after they leave or are removed.
Someone forgot that upper mobile people are not above sabatoging their competition in moving upward.
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