Has the USPS become irrelevant?

I think Albuquerque has laughably few post offices, in complete contrast to my last home town of 26,000 people.

I've books to sell on amazon, some worth a penny and some worth a great deal, but amazon is based on fast access re post office media mail, a serious stopper for me. There's a two day window - over a batch of miles in either direction. There's only one post office west of the river (oh, wait, one several miles south). It's a joke to me. I gather mail delivery is by some contract..


I'll add that many years ago, I used to pick post boxes for housing tracts.
If I knew then what I know now, I'd have thrown a fit. (Those were the days when fits could be useful, given data, bla bla)

Weird, we got no mail today either - and here it's raining which is a big deal
in southern California. I did see the mailman though, I know they're around
somewhere....

I ship a lot to Europe, so USPS hasn't become irrelevant in my book.

I think that it would take some serious incentives to make me wander around in snow up to my knees delivering freaking Christmas Cards! Like, I am gonna lose a toe or two so you can decorate your worthless domicile with Xmas tatt! Don't think so! As I am now in the mail game again - bills and cheques go first. Everything else is 'non-urgent'.

If you're sending stuff overseas, CJ, I hope you are familiar with the Global Priority packets. I haven't used them lately, but they used to save a lot.

Yeah, don't want your mail ending up on another globe, do you? Always good to point out that "Planet Earth' is the prefered destination - if it is directed via Uranus the consequences could be nasty.

We're pretty lucky access wise, Osso. The neighborhood recently fought a grocery store chain that wanted to remove the little post office when they were remodeling. They don't offer all the services that the regular post office does but it sure is handy.

I know they were out and about here, CJane as I saw on the news that a mailman had reported a break in that he saw happening. They weren't out and about in my neighborhood at all though. Or at Mr. B's office. Or at the houses of some friends I talked to. It just seemed wierd.

Is the mail only a bother at Christmas time, Mr. Stillwater? I agree that a lot of the mail delivered is junk but some of it is very important. I don't think I want to leave it up to my mailman to determine whether a package is Christmas tat or my neighbor's medicine.

Yes I know about global priority, roger, I am not so sure about USPS priority
though. My German friends once sent a package and wrote "United States of
America" under the address line. Well the package went to the "United Emirates" and there they opened it, repackaged everything and sent it to me,
which was darn nice. Seeing all the arabic writing on the package, it was opened again at the U.S. customs and thoroughly inspected. Weeks later, I finally
got it!

here, I have often wished for some kind of competition.

I can send a metric butt ton of mail in one month.
almost ALWAYS I get someone who says their package has not arrived

I sent something to Michigan not too long ago.. priority! It took 8 weeks

I sent something to Pflugerville.. about a 40 minute drive

Took 2 weeks

Things get lost all the time, or it is just my bad luck.

ugh

for parcels we always use CANPAR (the canadian version of UPS), cheaper than the mail and parcels arrive within days, usually the next day

In my neighborhood, USPS is the only package service I trust. It always goes in a safe box for me to grab. The other services do things like drop the package over the gate and keep going, put it on the porch and knock and be driving off by the time I open the door, bring them to neighbors' houses without informing me where they left them. I lost a Thanksgiving turkey dinner that way a few years back.

Planet Earth is superflous. Detroit in the US to Windsor in Canada goes where you send it. It might be routed through Uranus, but Windsor, Canada is where it goes.

Wow, you're right. They have 5 listed within a 5 mile radius of each other on the east side but none on the west side of the river.

http://usps.whitepages.com/post_office/search?d=5&s=nm&z=albuquerque

What about some other outlet like Mailboxes, Etc?

Oh wait, I just clicked on the other 4 pages of address listings and there are a couple on the east side. Check out that link, Osso and scroll through the pages of address locations.

I haven't looked up Mailboxes (they had one of those in my city in humboldt - but in that case a real post office was ten blocks away, that is, closer.)

Fed Ex and UPS are close but, not good for selling books by amazon. There's an in-grocery-store post office at Central and Coors, but that is not all so easy for moi.

But thanks, I'll check it out the mailboxes thing..




There's one on Paradise Road, which I consider not close. Also exciting to drive from the parking lot to the speedway street.

This has something to do with recent urban design, or entire lack of it at all here, and recent cutbacks re the USPO. In Los Angeles, it was never much of a long walk for me to the post office, nor in my Humboldt County town, in either direction. I live here in tractville, designed by robots. I despise the area, but I could fix it if I had a good blueprint to work from .. and power - not just for mail.

Sometimes I want to don my white wool suit and hit the City Offices.

Not sure of some of this stuff.

If I (non-US citizen) wishes to send an item via the 'post', I only have one choice. There is Australia Post - it used to be a govt monopoly, but now is a sort of franchised thing. However, I only deal with them - set prices, total continental coverage, PO Boxes, interesting stamps and options to send items as express or registered depending on my requirements. It used to be that the Post Office AND the Telecom Company were the same entity! Rampant socialism - I know, but you only needed to deal with the one body - they were accountable.

If I choose to send items other than the 'Post' I have the choice of some couriers (costs vary) and one other mail service. For legal items there is one alternative - a private mail system the 'DX'. Membership means that documents can be sent to private boxes without having to deal with price per unit costing.