US Postal Service announced that it will soon drop any promises of next-day delivery for first-class letters in an effort to avoid bankruptcy in 2012. The forty per cent of the first-class mail that currently reaches people within a day will now arrive in two, or even three.
“It’s going to make the customer-service experience more difficult for people who want to send mail. It’s going to take longer. For an item that definitively needs to be there next-day, things are going to shift to FedEx or UPS,” said Jim Corridore, an analyst at S&P Capital IQ, for the International Business Times.
The cash-strapped U.S. Postal Service is looking to find $20 billion in annual savings by 2015. It sees reducing its network of post offices and processing plants as key to adjusting as consumers increasingly pay bills online and correspond by email.
“The U.S. Postal Service must reduce its operating costs by $20 billion by 2015 in order to return to profitability. The proposed changes to service standards will allow for significant consolidation of the postal network in terms of facilities, processing equipment, vehicles and employee workforce and will generate projected net annual savings of approximately $2.1 billion,” said David Williams, USPS vice president for network operations.
Besides ending Saturday delivery, the bill would eliminate door-to-door delivery for an estimated 35 million customers. Those that do not have a curbside mail box or a P.O. Box would start receiving mail at a cluster box located at street corners. Moreover, two hundred and fifty-two local post offices are being considered for elimination and 80,000 U.S. Postal Service jobs will be lost.
