Stop Staples Taking Over the USPS Offices

Cost shifting: Shift wages of postal workers to minimum wage Staples' employees and shift the excess cash to profits for Staple's owners. Great for the economy. Think the cost of mail will go down? :rolleyes:
 
Another whining public service Union.

No Staples in my area yet has USPS facilities, so NO for me anyway.
 
I had always considered basic postal service to be a public good. I have never agreed with the argument otherwise, nor have I seen one that comes even close to me changing my mind.
 
Brainster said:
...Revenues were up in the fiscal year ended 9-30-13, but that was the first increase in five years...
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The economy was in recession for most of that time.

Btw there apparently is a small pilot program already started. They already have eighty-two postal counters operating inside Staples stores. The benefit for the Postal Service is to further reduce costs by closing post offices or cutting their hours. A USPS spokesperson said:

What we are doing is continuing to adapt to the changing demands of our customers. By locating postal services inside established businesses, customers save time and in most cases have the convenience of longer hours than at regular Post Offices – seven days a week in many cases. Link
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Also to consider, this was in the Wall Street Journal last month:


Staples Plans to Close 225 Stores
One of the country's biggest retailers sounded a worrying call for the future of brick and mortar: Staples Inc. is not only closing a big swath of its North American stores, but it also wants those that remain to be half the size. With more than 1,800 outlets in the U.S. and Canada...the cuts add to the 40 locations Staples shuttered last year and 40 stores that were shrunk, moves that eliminated more than 1 million square feet of floor space. Link
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Is pre-funding health care costs something that businesses in the private sector normally do?

Should Congress mandate that any private business which contracts with the government do that, if it is so important that the USPS be compelled to?
 
marplots said:
Who cares? This is a trial. If they flop, they flop. Your prediction Staples will flop is just that, a prediction. But you seem to be saying, for whatever reason, we shouldn't even do the experiment to find out.
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Isn't closing hundreds of stores sort of evidence that they're in the process of flopping as we speak?

Then they ought to track theft as part of the experiment. From a user perspective, it might require you to insure your shipments, raising the shipping costs.
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No. I don't want my $5,500 dollar guitar I bought on E-Bay, the one of a kind masterpiece I've been looking forward to, to become part of an "experiment".
 
Mudcat said:
Yes, that is so.



If they offered a service to filter out junkmail, I would pay any fee they asked even if I never used the post office for the rest of my life.
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Even after the credit card companies collude with the private postal service to "filter" their bills so they can charge you late fees?
 
NoahFence said:
Isn't closing hundreds of stores sort of evidence that they're in the process of flopping as we speak?
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It's evidence that the brick-and-mortar office supply retail market is dwindling. I don't think we can conclude too much from these closures, other than banal truth that like many other brick-and-mortar retailers, their market has been fundamentally altered by the rise of Amazon.

I'd say Staples was flopping if they'd opened their first store in 2006, instead of 1986. The fact is, they had a good run as a business, before the world moved on. Now they're moving on, too. I don't see this, by itself, as evidence of a flop.

Anyway, if Kinko's can partner with FedEx, and Mailboxes, Etc. can partner with UPS, why not a partnership between Staples and the USPS?

We do business with service-counter clerks all the time. Nobody gets the vapors because their grocery store cashiers aren't government workers. Nobody freaks out because BevMo is run by a private company. Nobody takes to the Internet in a fit of anxiety upon discovering that Jiffy Lube is not a federal agency.
 
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Anyway, if Kinko's can partner with FedEx, and Mailboxes, Etc. can partner with UPS, why not a partnership between Staples and the USPS?
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The USPS is a government entity. We already know the government is bought and paid for by large corporations. But that doesn't mean they need to shove it in our faces.
 
I asked my mail carrier about this today. She hadn't heard about it.
 
quadraginta said:
ETA:
Anyone?
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In one sense, it's already being done by employers. They contribute to social security payments and these are "pre-funding" for retirement benefits. Medicare for the medical side of things. Each of us has a social security account built up over our working years.

The system isn't outrageous, but neither is it the only way to proceed. Companies that self-insure also accumulate funds for anticipated need.
 
marplots said:
In one sense, it's already being done by employers. They contribute to social security payments and these are "pre-funding" for retirement benefits. Medicare for the medical side of things. Each of us has a social security account built up over our working years.
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Then why isn't that sufficient for the USPS as well. Why did Congress mandate such extreme extra financial obligations?

The system isn't outrageous, but neither is it the only way to proceed. Companies that self-insure also accumulate funds for anticipated need.
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Seventy five years' worth?

Example?
 
quadraginta said:
Then why isn't that sufficient for the USPS as well. Why did Congress mandate such extreme extra financial obligations?
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I don't know. Sometimes you can figure out the intent of the bill by looking at the preamble, sometimes not.

quadraginta said:
Seventy five years' worth?

Example?
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I am unfamiliar with how the USPS does it. But certainly, in some ranking, there will be the top funder and the lowest funder. If you agree the mechanism is valid (pre-funding) then it's merely a matter of predicting the future. More funding will certainly give you better odds that you won't go broke if something unforeseen happens.

But I don't know where that number comes from.
 
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