[HN Gopher] International Mail Service Suspensions
___________________________________________________________________
International Mail Service Suspensions
Author : tigerlily
Score : 157 points
Date : 2021-10-02 02:15 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (about.usps.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (about.usps.com)
| jhugo wrote:
| The linked article focuses on New Zealand because it's from a New
| Zealand publication, but service is actually being suspended to
| 22 countries.
|
| It would probably be better to link to the USPS notice directly,
| which is mentioned but unfortunately not linked to in the RNZ
| article: https://about.usps.com/newsroom/service-
| alerts/international...
| tssva wrote:
| The list has been updated to include New Zealand but service to
| many of these countries has been suspended for quite a while.
| robocat wrote:
| Originally linked article:
| https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/452764/united-states-pos...
| Factorium wrote:
| https://about.usps.com/newsroom/service-alerts/international...
|
| Afghanistan
|
| Guadeloupe
|
| New Zealand*
|
| Tajikistan
|
| Australia *
|
| Laos
|
| Reunion (Bourbon)
|
| Timor-Leste
|
| Bhutan
|
| Libya
|
| Saint Pierre and Miquelon (Miquelon)
|
| Turkmenistan
|
| Brunei
|
| Martinique
|
| Samoa
|
| Yemen
|
| Cuba
|
| Mayotte
|
| South Sudan
|
| French Guiana
|
| Mongolia
|
| Syria
|
| How much of this has to do with Australia and New Zealand
| maintaining closed borders?
| irrational wrote:
| Outside of Australia and New Zealand, I can understand most
| of these (gee, I wonder why Afghanistan?), but what is going
| on in Samoa that prevents mail delivery?
| angry_octet wrote:
| Very few flights due to COVID and no vaccines.
| smnrchrds wrote:
| Saint Pierre and Miquelon is less than 20 km from the coast
| of Newfoundland (Canada). It shouldn't be that hard to get
| stuff delivered there.
| gao8a wrote:
| I am Canadian and I just learned about this, wow
| mig39 wrote:
| When Prohibition was active in both the US _and_ Canada,
| St. Pierre & Miquelon was the place buy smuggle booze
| into Canada (and the USA).
|
| In recent times, it was the source of tax-free, cheap
| Canadian cigarettes and Canadian booze. Neither of which
| the local French population consume, but are more than
| happy to sell it to Newfoundlanders visiting :-)
| smnrchrds wrote:
| People always think Canada has only one international
| border: with the US. But in reality, Saint Pierre et
| Miquelon is so close to Newfoundland that there is no
| international water between them. So in addition to our
| land and maritime borders with the US, we have a maritime
| border with France. Also one with Greenland (Denmark),
| but that's too arctic for anyone to care about.
| notatoad wrote:
| I doubt that "too hard" is really the issue here. yeah, if
| USPS wanted to figure it out, i'm sure they could. but what
| actually happens is that the USPS contracts somebody else
| to figure it out for them, and that contractor charges USPS
| a price for that.
|
| if the price is worth it, USPS pays. if the price isn't
| worth it, then USPS stops delivering there.
| tdeck wrote:
| Also Samoa is right next to American Samoa, which is a U.S.
| territory.
| markdown wrote:
| American Samoa has had tight border restrictions,
| including from the US mainland.
|
| Samoa even more so, given they had a high death toll from
| a measles epidemic there two years before covid struck.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| More directly, Samoa is only allowing one cargo flight
| per week right now and it doesn't go to American Samoa.
| mig39 wrote:
| That doesn't make much sense. USPS can just deliver to
| France and let them deal with it. Or drop it off in Canada
| and they can forward it.
|
| There's a ferry that runs between St. Pierre and
| Newfoundland a bunch of times every day. It's still
| running. Regular flights to St. John's, Newfoundland, even
| Paris, France are still happening.
|
| I don't understand this at all -- it's not like USPS was
| literally flying a plane to St. Pierre, was it?
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| I guess the closed borders mean significantly less flights
| into those countries, therefore significantly less room in
| the cargo holds for mail. My guess is cargo planes are still
| flying in goods, but they cost a lot more so that USPS has
| decided it's losing too much money...
|
| As far as I know, passenger flights find out the weight of
| their passengers and luggage, and then sell the remaining
| space/weight allowance for cargo, I wonder if that's how most
| overseas mail are delivered. For time-critical or heavy stuff
| this system is a bit random, obviously, so if you want to
| deliver something heavy you'd buy space in a cargo plane
| instead...
| petschge wrote:
| French Guiana is where ESA launches rockets from. Anybody
| willing to bet if JWST is going to get a tiny little extra
| delay because the US can't get paperwork down there?
| shakna wrote:
| Australia has to do with Australia Post and the backlog.
| They've closed down intake for October, to try and clear the
| backlog, and introduced new customs requirements.
| paranoidrobot wrote:
| Domestic delivery for Australia Post is backlogged
| significantly[1]
|
| There's reports that AusPost's parcel facilities have so
| many packages to process, that they're queued up outside
| (in some kind of undercover area) waiting to be processed.
|
| I only have anecdata to support this, but my own parcels
| from even one or two suburbs away have taken over a week. A
| parcel from Newcastle to Sydney sat for two weeks in one of
| the major parcel facilities with no updates, presumably in
| the aforementioned pile-up.
|
| A parcel from Germany showed being processed outbound in
| Germany in late April, and then complete silence until it
| turned up in an AusPost facility in early September.
|
| It's all very random, though, and not consistent - two
| packages from the same seller in Melbourne sent two weeks
| apart arrived in reverse order one day apart - one taking
| one week, the other three. They passed through the same
| processing facilities in tracking.
|
| I've now given up having any idea how long things will take
| to arrive.
|
| [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-01/expect-parcel-
| delays-...
| jareklupinski wrote:
| I was about to ask "why Timor-Leste?" but answered my question
| by checking the state dept page:
|
| > Country Summary: Timor-Leste has seen isolated instances of
| police responding to protests with force and the use of tear
| gas. Stone throwing attacks on vehicles can occur during gang
| conflicts and periods of unrest. Gender-based violence is high
| in Timor-Leste, and sexual harassment is fairly common.
|
| https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/...
| Symbiote wrote:
| That's not normally a reason to suspend delivery. It's Timor
| Leste's postal service's problem to do the final delivery.
|
| I can still send mail there from the UK (which seems to have
| no restrictions) or Denmark.
|
| https://www.postnord.dk/en/service-
| interruptions/reopening-o...
| jccooper wrote:
| If you keep going down the page, you get actual narratives
| about the problems. For Australia, for instance, Australia Post
| has closed the office that handles incoming mail. New Zealand
| is more vague, but is basically turning down mail processing
| due to COVID restrictions.
| blincoln wrote:
| The asterisks for Australia and New Zealand indicate that
| mail sent using "Priority Mail Express International" (the
| service that essentially the entire rest of the world outside
| the US calls "EMS") is still going through. If anyone really
| needs to get something from the US to those two countries, at
| least it's an option, and IMO it's much more reliable than
| typical mail.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| USPS implies it is because of COVID restrictions. NZ Post is
| accepting mail, but there is a shipping capacity crunch and
| very little air cargo capacity.
|
| Another way to look at it is USPS did not anticipate a crunch
| by buying capacity in advance.
|
| NZ Post allows us to ship packages from the US to a US
| warehouse which then ship to NZ. This is still operating with
| delays. Amazon seems fine with deliveries not being delayed
| at this point.
| pkaye wrote:
| Do people in NZ normally buy stuff through the US Amazon
| website? Is that because there are more options/better
| pricss?
| lostlogin wrote:
| Amazon just isn't that good here. The shipping is either
| impossible and requires you to use a third party service
| which gives you a US postal address, or shipping is
| outrageously expensive.
|
| It's one of the things that happens when you live too far
| away I guess.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Last few orders I made was something like 8.99 for some
| random shoebox size of items (worth maybe 50-100 usd). So
| basically far from expensive. NZ local shipping is
| probably half that price.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| The cost of living here is very high. Goods, especially
| electronics, cost a lot more than the USA. Electronics
| costing 50% more here than in the USA is common.
|
| I disagree with the comment left by lostlogin, I have
| found most products on Amazon ship to New Zealand,
| including products sold by third parties, though I would
| agree fewer independent stores are shipping to New
| Zealand. I think this is partly due to prices increases
| from the likes of Fedex and USPS.
|
| Amazon Australia ships to NZ but the product selection is
| very poor.
| Taniwha wrote:
| International AirMail mostly travels in the holds of
| international passenger planes - those are just not flying
| - package deliver to NZ (DHL/Fedex/UPS) is mostly OK, but
| plain old mail, not so much
| jhugo wrote:
| I count four widebodies between Auckland and California
| (LAX/SFO) in the air just as a random check on FR24 as I
| write this, so there's certainly capacity for some mail
| if USPS want to buy it.
| phinnaeus wrote:
| AusPost has a similar service which I've found to be
| basically useless since most of the packages I want to use
| it for don't come from a retailer and instead are sent by
| family.
| blondin wrote:
| there was an announcement earlier this week saying domestic
| delivery will be delayed in some areas as well. if i recall
| correctly, this is due to some internal changes and not
| entirely due to the pandemic.
| techrat wrote:
| It's due to DeJoy's ratfucking. Let's not obfuscate this.
| potiuper wrote:
| The board shares in the guilt.
| Bud wrote:
| The board is all Trump appointees. The board and DeJoy
| are basically one and the same.
|
| The goal here is to intentionally degrade USPS until it
| can be killed. This then makes mail delivery an entirely
| private business, and also allows easier Republican
| ratfucking of vote-by-mail going forward.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| There are three Biden appointees on the board.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Downvoters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Board_of_Govern
| ors_of_the_Unit...
|
| Two of Trump's nominees were Dems, too, because:
|
| > No more than five governors may belong to the same
| political party.
| SllX wrote:
| So, something I've been wondering here. USPS cites an
| unavailability of transportation as the reason, and apparently
| rental car companies are having a rough time of it as well.
|
| Is there a lot of deferred maintenance on vehicle fleets that's
| catching up to us now? Lack of parts? Maybe some tie to the chip
| shortage of all things seeing as how automobile manufacturers are
| also having to shut down plants due to a lack of chips?
| bombcar wrote:
| I doubt many cars are driving to New Zealand even for mail.
|
| So whatever planes normally carry the mail must be unavailable,
| as it doesn't appear to be saying the countries are refusing
| it.
| toast0 wrote:
| > Is there a lot of deferred maintenance on vehicle fleets
| that's catching up to us now? Lack of parts? Maybe some tie to
| the chip shortage of all things seeing as how automobile
| manufacturers are also having to shut down plants due to a lack
| of chips?
|
| Lack of mechanics might be bigger than lack of parts; I haven't
| heard of any unusual service parts shortages (I had a long wait
| for a replacement door chime, but seems within the usual FCA
| tom-foolery), but my local dealer is down several mechanics.
| And my local independent service shop is booked out quite a bit
| farther than they were in 2019.
| jnsie wrote:
| This article [0] may shine some light on what is impacting
| rental car companies.
|
| [0] https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-09-13/car-
| rental...
| vharuck wrote:
| I liked how another poster explained rental car business
| models, and how the pandemic royally screwed them:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28568896
| judge2020 wrote:
| In most cars you don't often see anything that would require
| replacing a computer chip-enabled part. From BLS, "air-
| conditioning repair/electrical system repair" and "Vehicle
| audio and video equipment" accounts for <4.5% (presumably based
| on rounding to 0%) of all vehicle repairs, with <0.5% being
| attributed to audio/video equipment.
|
| https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-3/americans-aging-autos....
| jdavis703 wrote:
| I'm assuming transportation either refers to ocean liners
| (doubtful since they're slow), but most likely air travel.
| Airlines sell unused cargo space. With decreased international
| travel I assume airlines have less unused cargo space to sell.
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| >Lack of parts
|
| I'm not sure if the situation has improved or not since last
| month, but lack of replacement air lines required by trucks has
| been a brewing problem for the freight and transportation
| industries.
|
| Previously discussed:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28476934
| kpasv wrote:
| Lot of issues. Different countries , airports and ports have
| different vacination/quarantine requirements. That keep
| changing from day to day. Imagine most of your ships, planes,
| pilots or seafarers getting sick or stuck in quarantine
| somewhere or the other for almost a year now.
|
| Things get better as govts wake up to such non uniform
| policies. In the mean time expect all kinds random break downs.
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| A lot of industries got hit by whiplash. They were assuming a
| pandemic would spark a massive recession and contraction in
| demand, so they cancelled orders for supplies, shut down
| production, and battened down the hatches. But due to truly
| historic government intervention, and reduced demand for in-
| person services, consumers actually had a huge amount of money
| to spend on manufactured goods and demand very quickly shot up.
| Combine this with ongoing disruption of the supply chains due
| to outbreaks, and we have an unbelievable clusterfuck in goods
| with deep, global supply chains.
| reilly3000 wrote:
| This is part of DeJoy's wider cost-cutting plans that were
| approved in March and are coming into effect now. The are
| transitioning towards ground transportation vs air mail,
| increasing postage costs, reducing office hours, automating some
| processes, and more. It's all to mitigate a projected $168b loss
| over the next 10 years. This wouldn't be needed if they weren't
| mandated to pre-fund their retirement accounts or buy separate
| health insurance, but that is up to Congress to fix.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| "This wouldn't be needed if they weren't mandated to pre-fund
| their retirement accounts"
|
| Retirement account funding is a cost of employing today's
| employees. It should be paid out of today's revenues.
|
| If not, you could easily end up in a situation where your
| retirement benefit expenses exceed your revenues (let alone
| profits) and you have no way to pay.
| RedShift1 wrote:
| No other company has to do this. They created this rule
| specifically to make the USPS run at a loss so they would
| have a reason to gut it. And that's what they're doing now,
| gutting it.
|
| John Oliver had an episode about this:
| https://youtu.be/IoL8g0W9gAQ
| rsj_hn wrote:
| > No other company has to do this. They created this rule
| specifically to make the USPS run at a loss so they would
| have a reason to gut it.
|
| This is a _great_ reason to not get your news from John
| Oliver, as everything you have said in this comment is
| false (except I 'm sure the link works).
|
| "Prefunding" a retirement account is the only way a private
| retirement account is ever funded. Normal people call it
| "set aside" or "fund". The alternative is to
|
| 1) not have a retirement benefit,
|
| 2) a social security pay-as-you-go system, which is not
| legal for any private company to have. In a pay-as-you-go
| system, there is no pension fund but workers get paid
| benefits from the company's general revenue. You can
| understand why that may be legal for the government, but
| not a private business (which can go bust). Private
| businesses are forced to set aside money for retirement
| benefits as the liabilities accrue. Obviously this creates
| a pain point when an arm of the government is privatized.
| But that doesn't mean we allow private companies to pay
| pensions out of general revenue just because they used to
| be public in the past.
|
| Even those companies which no longer offer defined benefit
| plans but only make some 401K contributions still make
| those contributions to a fund in the worker's name _each
| year_ , _before the worker retires_. They "prefund". All
| private companies "prefund". Have you heard of the phrase
| "pension fund"? That's the fund into which companies must
| make payment _ahead of retirement_ when a worker is working
| and then the worker draws those down when he retires.
| Forcing companies to set those funds aside ahead of time
| for each worker is how we fight the temptation to skimp on
| those contributions and kick the can down the road.
| Companies that do skimp on pension fund contributions are
| committing fraud and this creates a big mess as the
| government has to bail them out or workers end up not
| getting their retirement checks.
|
| What's interesting is where this misinformation came from
| as it's so popular on the left. There are all sorts of
| conspiracy theories about "gutting" the post office, but
| what I think is the key problem is the refusal to
| acknowledge there might be a tension between the generous
| retirement benefits negotiated by the postal workers union
| and the fact that the post office is facing financial
| shortfalls. And instead of acknowledging these real trade
| offs, it is some supposed unfair accounting rule that is
| causing problems for the post office and not, you know, all
| the money they are promising to pay workers when they
| retire.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Right. Generous retirement benefits for public sector
| employees are a trick played on taxpayers by politicians
| and those responsible for negotiating the contracts
| (those representing the govt, and unions representing
| current govt employees).
|
| Most people think government employees are paid much less
| than they would be in the public sector, but that's
| because it's not obvious to most of us:
|
| a. just how much it costs to fund a defined-benefit
| pension scheme, when asset yields are so low
|
| b. how early people can retire with a 'full pension'
|
| c. the low performance bar and difficult of firing a govt
| employee, even for cause
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| "No other company has to do this."
|
| This is false. Every private company has to do this.
| notatoad wrote:
| do you have a source for this? the USPS claims "Unlike
| any other public or private entity, under a 2006 law, the
| U.S. Postal Service must pre-fund retiree health
| benefits. [1]" and everything else i've seen on the topic
| agrees that this is a requirement unique to the USPS.
|
| [1] https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/financials/annual-
| reports/...
| cperciva wrote:
| Private companies have to fund retirement benefits. The
| US government doesn't -- which is why there's arguments
| over why the US debt is around 20 trillion (current bonds
| outstanding) or over 100 trillion (including unfunded
| social security benefits).
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Also, unfunded US govt retirement benefits come in two
| forms:
|
| A) future pension and medicare costs, for people who are
| alive today, and
|
| B) future retirement benefits for current and former govt
| employees
|
| IMO (B) should be prefunded (or at least have an
| actuarial value on the govt balance sheet) because it's
| an actual liability.
|
| But whether or not (A) should be treated the same way
| depends on whether the benefits are fixed as of now, or
| whether they can be reduced/eliminated if they take too
| large a part of the total budget at the time they're due
| to be paid.
| cperciva wrote:
| Agreed, although (a) the fact that social security is the
| "third rail of politics" suggests that while it's not a
| contractual obligation like employee retirement benefits,
| it's effectively an unavoidable obligation; and (b) even
| if the future value of benefits to be paid out isn't
| recorded as a liability, the social security taxes paid
| should probably be treated as "deferred revenue" since
| that revenue is at least theoretically being gathered for
| the purpose of paying the future benefits in question.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Yes, taxes collected by govt effectively go into a single
| pool. The money is not ringfenced for particular
| purposes.
|
| Both in the UK (where I'm from) and in the US (where I
| live now), there are separate taxes ('social security' in
| the US, 'national insurance' in the UK), but the AFAICT
| this is just a trick to obscure the true rate of
| payroll/income taxes.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| There are two separate things:
|
| 1. pensions (what I was talking about)
|
| 2. retiree health benefits (what you are talking about)
|
| For #1, all private companies have to pre-fund them.
|
| For #2, private companies don't usually have to pre-fund
| them because (i) most companies don't offer medical
| insurance for retirees, and (ii) even if they do, they
| are discretionary (i.e. unlike the pension, the benefits
| can be cut/eliminated).
| rsj_hn wrote:
| Correct. The 2006 law being referenced was trying to lock
| in retirement health benefits to USPS workers that were
| generally not available to private sector workers. It was
| one of the many pieces of union pork in that bill, and
| there is no end of irony that it is being portrayed as
| some nefarious Republican plot to kill the post office.
| It is not about how the benefits are funded but that
| congress mandated these benefits that disadvantages the
| post office by raising their labor costs.
|
| Of course the post office is advantaged in many other
| ways -- e.g. it is _illegal_ for a private agency to
| deliver mail, only the USPS is allowed to do that.
| Fortunately, the post office is magnanimous enough to
| allow private courriers to deliver mail if they purchase
| a stamp and then cancel it! Why must they purchase a
| stamp and affix it to the letter? Because it is illegal
| to place anything in a mailbox (even if you own the
| mailbox) without postage and only the USPS can collect
| postage. The USPS is also the only company that it is
| illegal to undercut by offering letter delivery for less
| than the USPS charges. IIRC, you have to charge at least
| six times as much, thus FedEx will never be able to
| outcompete the USPS on letter delivery as it 's only
| allowed to operate under the "extremely urgent" mail
| loophole which requires higher charges mandated by law.
|
| "The USPS actually enforces these rules from time to
| time. For example, Equifax learned a terrifying lesson in
| 1993. Armed USPS inspectors raided the company's Atlanta
| headquarters to determine whether or not the letters the
| company had been sending via FedEx were indeed "extremely
| urgent" as required by the Private Express Statutes. The
| letters didn't pass the test, and Equifax ended up having
| to pay a $30,000 fine."[1]
|
| You can read more about the Private Express Statutes on
| wikipedia:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Express_Statutes
|
| See also the American Letter Mail Company, which was a
| private rival to the post office that was outlawed by the
| government.
|
| [1] https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/26424/why-cant-
| you-start...
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| "it is illegal for a private agency to deliver mail"
|
| At least there's some rationale for this. National postal
| agencies typically have monopolies, but the flip side is
| they have universal service obligations, i.e. they have
| to deliver mail to even unprofitable locations, e.g.
| rural areas.
|
| This is analogous to taxi regulation: in theory, the
| monopoly granted to medallion holders has a flip side:
| rates are fixed, and they can't discriminate between
| riders based on destination.
|
| In practice, taxis in NYC skirt these regulations pretty
| often.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| Yeah, I understand the logic. But I was pointing out that
| yes, while Congress does mandate retiree health benefits
| for postal workers, it also advantages the USPS in other
| ways. It is a weird monopoly, with all sorts of carve
| outs. I am not advocating for some kind of drastic postal
| reform one way or another.
| op00to wrote:
| Is it? I have been trying to send mail to Reunion for over a
| year, and it was stopped during COVID. Dejoy is worse than
| human shit, but ... I don't know that this is his doing.
| coryrc wrote:
| Everyone should be mandated to pre-fund their retirement
| accounts. Not doing so is part of why we get so many fewer
| government services while paying ever higher percentage of GDP.
| maweki wrote:
| Don't forget, it's a service. It doesn't lose money, it costs
| money. Otherwise please always say "lost" instead of "costs"
| for all military spendings, and all other government agencies.
| cs2733 wrote:
| I agree with the sentiment but for all intents and purposes,
| pretty much any organ within a State is run like a for-profit
| corporation. Their "income" is taxation, fines, etc.
| hansel_der wrote:
| i don't see how that's relevant
| jpmoral wrote:
| This doesn't sound right. It's a pretty big claim.
| mpyne wrote:
| I suspect the claim is along the lines of stories like
| this https://news.usni.org/2021/09/22/navy-plans-to-
| cut-1000-civi..., where the U.S. Navy is working to fire
| 1,000 civilians due to budgetary pressure.
|
| Even government agencies (even the military!) can't spend
| inordinately, they have to fit within a topline like
| private companies have to.
|
| There are differences of course but there's a lot of
| similarity as well.
| maweki wrote:
| I believe the stark difference is, that a private company
| can spend what it earns _, while the budget of government
| agencies or the military is basically arbitrary
| (committee-decided). Usually we would weigh agency
| spending against the value their service directly or
| indirectly provides. While a company 's spending is
| weighed against its direct earnings.
|
| _ incredibly simplified
| mpyne wrote:
| Well, a private company can raise capital, so it can
| spend beyond what it earns, similarly to how the
| government budget can exceed tax receipts by issuance of
| debt and other methods.
|
| The military budget is decided by a sort of committee
| (many of them, in fact, and not just Congress), but
| private companies all have ways of parceling out a budget
| as well, it's not as if most staff are _literally_ paid
| out of their own personal direct sales. And the way that
| budget is decided almost invariably involves committees.
| The current DoD funding model was actually taken from
| what Ford Motor Co. used in the 60s.
|
| When we were at risk of government shutdown earlier in
| the week, our office within the agency was relatively
| immune to the potential shutdown as our civilian staff
| are nearly all paid out of 'working capital' funds which
| are modeled after a direct earnings model, rather than
| being paid out of 'appropriated' funds which would have
| been at risk absent action from Congress.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| A service for advertisers and salespeople to put paper
| products in a special box I have in front of my house?
| reilly3000 wrote:
| > Most of the quasi-confusion can be traced back to the 1971
| Postal Reorganization Act, which eliminated the old Post
| Office Department, replacing it with the US Postal Service.
| The act was intended to make the USPS self-financing from its
| own revenues, and to make it an independent, non-political
| public service. Prior to the PRA, postmasters (including the
| postmaster general) were political appointees; rates were set
| by Congress, and the POD had to go through the appropriations
| process to get the money it needed to operate.
|
| USPS is a special case of government services which is
| neither a traditional agency nor a government-owned
| corporation. Its got a weirdly specific charter that was
| carved out to protect private shipping companies- for example
| they cannot buy their own planes. They simultaneously have to
| deliver mail to all US addresses with uniform pricing 6
| days/week AND be operate without tax dollars. I use the term
| loss here because that is what they use, for example in their
| annual report: https://about.usps.com/what/financials/annual-
| reports/fy2019...
|
| https://postalnews.com/blog/2015/05/09/postal-myths-2-the-
| us...
| sangnoir wrote:
| What a boondoggle: the private shipping companies use the
| USPS to deliver to unprofitable routes as they have no such
| mandate. Imagine if NASA were similarly kneecapped to
| protect private space companies - it'd be awful.
| thekingofravens wrote:
| Knowing our government you may have predicted a future
| reality.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| NASA's been kneecapped by Congress, several presidential
| administrations, and itself for decades. If private space
| corporations like SpaceX eat NASA's lunch in the next
| decade or so, it'll be in spite, not because of them.
| cyounkins wrote:
| > Otherwise please always say "lost" instead of "costs" for
| all military spendings, and all other government agencies.
|
| I think you might have reversed your suggestion?
| oh_sigh wrote:
| What does not pre-funding a retirement account look like?
| Social security I guess? And we all know that's a great system.
| heisenbit wrote:
| What on earth has DeJoy (I'm really not a fan) to do with
| service disruptions in Germany due to flooding there to give
| one example linked on that page? The USPS is handing off
| parcels and some countries struggle to deliver them for various
| reasons, Covid being one of them but if you check out the
| different countries there are a wide range of events that can
| disrupt deliveries.
| gnarbarian wrote:
| do we need the USPS anymore?
| bl4ckneon wrote:
| Do you still want mail? USPS is obligated to provide mail to
| every place in the USA no matter how far away or small the
| communities might be. So yes we still need them.
| KingMachiavelli wrote:
| 'Provide mail' can mean different things and its certainly
| not ever 'place'. It is very common in mountain towns to not
| have mailboxes at least not residential so you have to go to
| a post office 5-15 miles away. Meanwhile Fedex & UPS will
| deliver to your door.
|
| That said the USPS is certainly an essential service and
| probably does serve certain niche locations better than UPS &
| Fedex.
| Symbiote wrote:
| USPS charges the same, low (55C/) rate to send to these
| remote locations.
|
| FedEx won't tell me the cost without an account, but for
| UPS a domestic, ground letter (<1 lb) costs between $8.76
| and $11.01, or $32+ for Alaska/Hawaii etc. Added to that,
| "remote areas" have a surcharge which is about $4 in the 48
| states, $10 in Hawaii and $32 in Alaska.
|
| https://www.ups.com/assets/resources/media/en_US/daily_rate
| s...
|
| https://www.ups.com/gb/en/shipping/zones-and-rates/area-
| surc...
| dylan604 wrote:
| Honestly, I don't know that I really do want mail any more.
| It's pretty mind boggling that for <$1 I can send an envelope
| anywhere in the country in a matter of days. That's cool and
| all, but I can't think of the last time I even thought that
| would be necessary. Important bills are electronic now a
| days, and I haven't received a holiday/birthday card with $5
| from relatives in decades. I frequently forget to even check
| the mail box, and when I do, it is filled with traditional
| junk mail and the random politician solicitations. Oh, and
| the random mail for previous residents at this address.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| I think this is an extremely bubbled view of how mail works
| in the United States and the relative access of the
| internet. A good chunk of the United States doesn't have
| reliable internet, but will have consistent mail service.
| dylan604 wrote:
| The question posed: Do you still want mail?
|
| I responded no. You come back with some out of scope non-
| sense about thinking outside of me. That's not the
| question.
|
| If the question was "should the mail system be
| abolished", we can have the discussion you want, but
| maybe you should ask that question. The original question
| as actually posted followed with "yes we still need
| them".
| op00to wrote:
| Wow cute response.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I love when people ask me a question, and then someone
| tells me that's wrong because I had a different response
| than theirs. It's not a "what's your opinion" type of
| question. It was a simple yes/no question directly
| targeted to the reader. My no response in no way
| suggested that nobody else anywhere ever should no longer
| receive mail. The response I received was just trying too
| hard to twist things.
| smallerfish wrote:
| The problem is that rural USPS is _not_ reliable (source:
| have lived in multiple rural locations). USPS is reliable
| in cities. Internet is also reliable in cities.
|
| Most people have phones. For those who don't, alternate
| infrastructure that leverages the internet could easily
| exist, and would be way more efficient than the USPS
| network.
|
| Watch this get downvoted, because people really
| emotionally _care_ about USPS.
| op00to wrote:
| How would we deliver absentee ballots without a postal service?
| satronaut wrote:
| you'd go to the polling location and vote
| kube-system wrote:
| This would disenfranchise many disabled and those who must
| travel for work.
| satronaut wrote:
| not really. Everything they offer, private industry offers a
| better version of. Who sends letters? Email is way faster and
| cheaper Sending a package? Amazon, ups, or fedex Need a
| passport? USPS shouldn't handle this, since they're so
| incompetent at handling passport applications
| kube-system wrote:
| Private couriers have no obligations to provide service to
| anyone. One of the important things about the USPS is that
| they have an obligation to support the continued operation of
| basic public services, and they're organizationally held
| accountable through their governance structure.
|
| Public services that our government provides are done so
| without regards to people's ability to use email, electronic
| banking, or drive to the nearest FedEx/UPS store in the
| closest city.
| smallerfish wrote:
| It's amazing how passionate some people are about the mail
| service. Any question like this _will_ get downvoted.
|
| I always hated USPS when I lived in the US. Service at the post
| office was usually terrible, clerks were clearly coasting on
| the fact that they were hard to fire (customer service was
| poor), and delivery rates were hit and miss (whereas somehow
| the private carriers always managed to delivery.)
|
| Now I live in a country with no mail service. It's fine. I do
| everything online. If I need to order something, I pick it up
| from the DHL store in town. The one time that something was
| sent via certified delivery, a motorcycle messenger delivered
| it.
| 57844743385 wrote:
| The USA like a third world country can't afford a global mail.l
| system.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| > Effective October 1, 2021, the Postal Service(tm) will stop
| selling international postal money orders destined to Anguilla,
| Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, British Virgin Islands,
| Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Montserrat, Saint Kitts and Nevis,
| Saint Lucia, as well as Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. A
| customer who wishes to purchase an international postal money
| order destined for these countries must do so before October 1,
| 2021.
|
| I know there's a lot of talk in this thread about commercial
| flight disruptions and supply chains, but what's up with this?
| That's almost the entire non-US Caribbean that you can't send
| money to through USPS.
| swiley wrote:
| Probably to discourage people from fleeing whatever comes after
| the vaccine mandates.
| URfejk wrote:
| It said military and diplomatic mail would not be affected,
| unless noted.
|
| What a joke.
| op00to wrote:
| The military and diplomatic service have their own couriers
| that handle their mail.
| kodah wrote:
| Someone can correct me, but generally I think the military
| receives mail in the US and delivers it via their own planes.
|
| I'm also not sure why that'd be a joke even if it wasn't the
| case.
| cheschire wrote:
| Relevant: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_mail#U.S._
| Military_...
| DarkmSparks wrote:
| Peak oil predicted this sort of thing, given whats also happening
| in the UK atm with petrol availability and natural gas prices,
| this is smelling more and more like the 70s only without an OPEC
| to bribe our way out of it.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Natural gas price increases are due to reduced delivery from
| Russia.
|
| Reduced petrol availability in Great Britain (note: no problems
| in Northern Ireland) is due to Brexit.
| p2t2p wrote:
| I don't see how oil is relevant to post offices closed and air
| traffic stopped due to COVID restrictions
| pengaru wrote:
| > Peak oil predicted this sort of thing, given whats also
| happening in the UK atm with petrol availability and natural
| gas prices, this is smelling more and more like the 70s only
| without an OPEC to bribe our way out of it.
|
| There's a global pandemic disrupting everything, it's been in
| the news, maybe you've heard about it?
| DarkmSparks wrote:
| not sure that explains why saudia basically halved oil
| production in 2019 or north sea oil peaking in 2004 and now
| all but at zero production.
|
| Saudia Lying about their oil reserves seems a lot more
| plausible to me.
| pengaru wrote:
| You're the only one talking about oil, I never said it
| explains anything related to oil. TFA makes absolutely no
| mention of oil, you're completely off the map.
|
| The port of LA had a queue of container ships 40+ deep
| waiting at sea unable to unload for _weeks_ ~a month ago.
| Are you going to say peak oil caused that too? It 's not
| like those ships were out of fuel.
| DarkmSparks wrote:
| It mentions "lack of transportation issues" It doesn't
| specify the cause, you know what causes transportation
| issues in New Zealand? 5 year high oil prices and no sign
| of increasing production with north sea oil down from
| 10mn barrels a day to 1mn a day and Saudia oil production
| down from 20s to 10s.
|
| Im saying the whole thing smells like an oil crisis.
|
| But yeah, downvote me for thinking just maybe there is a
| lot more to this story than we are being told.
| cinquemb wrote:
| I doubt it would be like that if all the bailoutistan
| operations hadn't happened or the global lockdown
| olympics in response to something that has become
| endemic.
| pengaru wrote:
| What I want to know is: at what point did HN turn into
| reddit?
| cinquemb wrote:
| I'm not on/never used reddit so I wouldn't know.
| satronaut wrote:
| don't forget how the biden administration is kneecapping
| domestic oil production because of politics
| avs733 wrote:
| No ones Parking brand new airplanes in the desert because of a
| lack of gas, they're doing it because of a lack of passengers
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > Peak oil predicted this sort of thing
|
| You very much haven't explained how.
|
| > in the UK atm with petrol availability and natural gas prices
|
| Petrol is cheaper than it was a decade ago.
| rocqua wrote:
| I figured the gas prices were largely Russia pressurinh Europe
| to accept Nordstream 2.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| > It said this was due to "impacts related to the Covid-19
| pandemic and other unrelated service disruptions".
|
| I think it is time that the causality of the pandemic is re-
| evaluated. Covid-19 didn't cause any significant loss to the
| workforce. The cost-benefits analysis of the public-health
| measures needs a serious update.
| qwertyuiop_ wrote:
| This is due to supply chains choking. Lack of truck drivers,
| containers spots on air cargo. If they is choice to pick up food
| or mail, I guess is other contractors and logistics partners are
| picking transporting food and medicine instead of mail.
| chris_wot wrote:
| They have also suspended deliveries to Australia.
| sen wrote:
| Yeah I couldn't figure out why my US deliveries were failing to
| show up until I checked my junk mail and noticed messages
| saying all my orders had been cancelled (from multiple online
| stores) and I had to contact each one separately to arrange
| refunds.
|
| Online shopping is a clusterfuck lately of no stock and
| shipping issues, and unrelated-but-relevant, Gmails spam
| filtering lately is atrocious.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Probably gmail wants you to click on "not spam" for each, so
| they can verify you actually have a relationship with each
| miscategorized(on purpose) email sender.
| peterburkimsher wrote:
| More data points from New Zealand, 2021:
|
| 36 parcels delivered, 11 parcels undelivered
|
| Packet loss rate: 23%
|
| From the US, 3 months: SparkFun: I placed an order on
| 2021-05-23, it arrived on 2021-08-16. Worse, the NS73M FM
| transmitter and the Raspberry Pi Zero W inside don't even
| work.
|
| From the US: Nooelec: I ordered an SDR on 2021-06-09, and it
| still hasn't arrived.
|
| From the US: 4 parcels from eBay sellers were delivered.
|
| From China: From AliExpress, out of 31 orders, 5 of them have
| not been delivered. I tried to appeal one of them, AliExpress
| insist that it was delivered and refused to refund. Therefore
| I now have no recourse but to write negative feedback when
| parcels aren't delivered before the 90-day feedback deadline.
|
| From China: From eBay: 4 undelivered (order dates between
| 2021-07-31 and 2021-08-14), 2 delivered.
|
| From Hong Kong: From eBay: 1 undelivered (order date
| 2021-06-28)
|
| From Germany: From eBay: 1 undelivered (order date
| 2021-07-06)
|
| From Lithuania: From eBay: 1 delivered (order date
| 2021-02-05, delivered before 2021-03-19)
|
| From Taiwan: a Christmas present arrived from my girlfriend
| in about 3 weeks. A birthday present from my girlfriend
| arrived very quickly, in about 10 days!
|
| From France: a birthday present from parents arrived after
| about 3 weeks, thankfully just in time. Another parcel from
| them included an eBay order from France to France that was
| delivered quickly.
|
| From Switzerland: another birthday present from parents,
| arrived after 6 weeks. They'd taken it to Geneva airport
| because they thought it would be quicker.
| philsnow wrote:
| > Gmails spam filtering lately is atrocious.
|
| I've gotten 3-4 emails in my inbox in the last week that all
| are 'from' a different Russian / eastern European woman, have
| body text == the very short subject line, and have a pdf
| attachment. It feels like 2003 levels of spam filtering, but
| I haven't looked in my spam folder to see what it _is_
| blocking.
| 101008 wrote:
| Same case here. Also as if they shared a Google Doc with me
| and left a comment tagging me and so I received an email.
| dustintrex wrote:
| This is because Australia currently prohibits Australian from
| leaving and drastically limits the number of people allowed to
| enter, meaning that flight capacity has been slashed
| accordingly.
|
| They're planning to finally start opening up (to citizens only
| for starters) in November.
| richardatlarge wrote:
| That's not news worthy! I'm from the US, living in NZ, and let me
| tell you, unless the delay is more than 6 months, the average
| time it takes won't change significantly. My mother still sends
| me b/day cards and has learned to send them on my b/day, but for
| the following year !
| mdoms wrote:
| I'm a kiwi and get things shipped from overseas all the time.
| Your post is simply untrue. Why are you spreading
| misinformation?
| richardatlarge wrote:
| overseas? well that's a lot of places; USPS to NZ can be
| insanely slow, everybody knows that
| PostOnce wrote:
| It's normally about 2 weeks for me, USPS from east coast
| USA to NZ
| richardatlarge wrote:
| I was only making a joke, because my experience is a
| shocker, but then again, I'm referring to letters being
| mailed, on a stamped envelope. If you look at something
| like shipments from Amazon, that's a whole different
| story. But I'm not sure they're the norm.
| cmod wrote:
| Japan postal service stopped shipping to most of the world last
| year and are still (I believe) not fully back to world-wide
| shipping. Supposedly because of JAL contracts and a lack of
| commercial flights on which they'd usually piggyback.
| bjornstar wrote:
| I was going to comment about this as well. We've been unable to
| ship packages from Japan to the US for the past 20 months. I
| heard that as of yesterday we are now able to ship again, but
| all custom forms & address labels must be printed rather than
| hand-written.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Is that for legibility or are they fearful that you might
| smudge covid-19 onto the labels? (Which is pretty backwards
| given how rare contact transmission is).
| bjornstar wrote:
| My assumption is legibility, should be a nice cost savings
| when you don't have to read handwriting.
| AnssiH wrote:
| My guess is that it is because electronic customs info is
| now mandatory (e.g. US STOP Act), and the printed labels
| come from a system that can transmit this info.
|
| With handwritten labels the postal service at the shipping
| end would have to read them and push the data to an
| electronic system manually.
|
| In Finland handwritten customs labels are still allowed,
| but you need to register the customs data online since Dec
| 2020 (or the cleark can do it at the counter).
| EE84M3i wrote:
| I have had no problem sending packages to the US the last
| month. You need to use the new online tool to create the
| label though.
| 3np wrote:
| I think that this has mostly been US (and maybe other countries
| as well?). From experience with me and friends, Europe and Asia
| has mostly been fine (though sometimes in periods with
| exceptional delays and a small number of lost/disappeared
| ones).
| usr1106 wrote:
| Finland had around 70 entries on the list of unreachable
| countries about a year ago. Haven't checked recently. But I
| noticed that letters to central Europe which took 2-3 days
| pre-pandemic, nowdays regularly take close to 2 weeks.
| AnssiH wrote:
| Back in March 2020 the Posti allowlist was 32 countries,
| the rest were suspended. The list was gradually expanded
| with more countries (with 64 allowed countries in Oct
| 2020), and the allowlist was replaced with a list of
| unreachable countries early this year.
|
| Currently (https://www.posti.fi/en/customer-
| support/sending/country-inf...) there are 20 unreachable
| countries due to COVID-19 (AU and NZ are not among them).
|
| Your experience with letters matches mine, they take 2
| weeks to Europe regularly now.
| herbst wrote:
| I run a small online shop in Switzerland and from my POV it's
| only the US. We have lost more than 50% of shippings to the
| US about a year ago. Typical arrival time was way over a
| month even thought its quotet at 10 days for light letters.
|
| As we mostly ship letters we just sent to every place, even
| if they are currently not 'open'. ~95% arrived within 1-2
| months or so in those critical places.
|
| No idea what's going on over there. The rest of our shipping
| just got a few cents more expensive but on average just got
| faster the last 2 years.
| [deleted]
| angry_octet wrote:
| This is just cost control.
|
| I just had FedEx deliver a package from the US to Australia, it
| took 48 hours (and four days for the warehouse in Sydney to send
| me an email about customs inspections fees) and cost US$32 for
| several kilos of electronics. So freight is expensive but the
| expense depends more on the volume of the shipper.
| op00to wrote:
| Where is your proof? This has been like this since COVID
| started. Dejoy is destroying usps but this ain't his doing.
| angry_octet wrote:
| Do you want a receipt? A tracking number?
| throwawayswede wrote:
| Wth is going on with Australian and NZ governments I don't know,
| what I do know is that people need to vote those suckers out...
| Don't listen your politicians and do say hi to your neighbors.
| lostlogin wrote:
| How does this comment relate to what the story is about? I'm
| missing something.
| paranoidrobot wrote:
| Care to elaborate why you think the AU and NZ governments
| should be voted out?
|
| Given that the governments are very different from each other,
| I don't see much in the way of commonality there.
| sonthonax wrote:
| I think it's the smug xenophobia of their zero Covid policies
| that people are irked by. It's effectively calling the rest
| of the world unclean.
|
| It's eventually going to spread and take hold, but until
| then, their leaders get to bask in technocratic adoration.
| paranoidrobot wrote:
| You're not the person that I was replying to.
|
| > xenophobia [...] unclean [...] technocratic adoration
|
| That's some emotive language, and projecting viewpoints
| that I don't think represent the beliefs or thoughts of
| most Australians or New Zealanders.
|
| > their leaders get to bask in technocratic adoration.
|
| That you're saying this about Australia indicates you're
| not aware of the political situation at a state or federal
| level in Australia.
|
| Governments at all levels have been criticised broadly and
| constantly over their actions (or lack thereof) in relation
| to the pandemic.
|
| Overall the broad strategy of both countries is to limit
| the spread long enough to get the country vaccinated. The
| only way to effectively do that, is through zero-covid
| approaches. Oh, and by the way - the zero-covid strategy
| was only adopted by the States in Australia - the federal
| government didn't (doesn't) want that to be the policy, but
| the states forced it anyway.
|
| These strategies would've been even more important if a
| vaccine took the 2-3 years that most experts were
| projecting that it would take to develop, produce and
| deploy an effective and safe vaccine.
|
| For the most part, these strategies have worked, they've
| limited the number of deaths, the number of people in
| hospital.
| buzzert wrote:
| > For the most part, these strategies have worked,
| they've limited the number of deaths, the number of
| people in hospital.
|
| Uh huh... https://6761deed1591e2a2-buzzertdotnet.s3.us-
| west-2.amazonaw...
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