* They can't inspect packages without a warrant. I don't ship illegal things, but I like privacy.
* They're the only shipping company that I trust to deliver to an apartment building. Seriously. I've had nightmares with every other company delivering to apartments
This hints at the real reason the postal service is so important to hold on to. They have a mandate to deliver to every person in the country no matter what.[0] They run huge losses to do this, but it's an invaluable service subsidized by taxpayer dollars the same as any other infrastructure. A private company has no incentive to do this if it's not profitable. People in rural areas and unconventional living situations will get screwed.
[0] https://about.usps.com/publications/pub100/pub100_020.htm
If you live in a ZIP code served by an actual Post Office (there is a USPS in that ZIP code) and your home doesn't get delivery service then you're probably entitled to a free PO Box. https://about.usps.com/postal-bulletin/2011/pb22317/html/upd...
FedEx and UPS happily deliver to my front door, 25 miles and down a long dirt road from the nearest town.
What's the shipping cost, though? It's great that it's a real option either way.
Context: USPS-enforced PO Box in Wisconsin, but house-delivery by private companies such as FedEx and UPS.
No, it is, in fact, not mandated by the Constitution.
Congress explicitly empowered to create post offices and post roads by Art. I, Sec. 8, but that's not a mandate to do so.
A mandated function would be something like the decennial census.
Maybe that wouldn't be true of first class mail as it is for parcels. But we won't know as long as it remains illegal to compete with the USPS in first class.
No, they are not subsidized by tax payer dollars. From[0] - "The Postal Service receives NO tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations."
[0]https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-facts/top-10-things...
When I was in the service overseas, the USPS was a lifeline. Thanks to special arrangements between the military and the USPS, I could have anything shipped from the states to wherever I was in the world for the same rate it'd have cost to have it sent to NYC--usually with only a week or so extra shipping time added.
They have a program now where, if you have a P.O. Box, you can receive non-USPS packages at it (once you sign up, and using the address they provide you in the format they indicate). They don't have email notifications for these, yet -- they do for some other classes of mail. And sometimes at my post office, it can take a (partial) day for them to go from receiving the package to having the lockbox key or notification in your P.O. Box. However, when I looked at my local UPS Store for their comparable service, it's now gone from about double the USPS price a few years ago, to about quadrupal their price.
I also like supporting the USPS, where employees still have living wages and careers. Well, at least UPS is, last I knew, not all contractors like FedEx is. But I think their stores are franchises that handle their own employment.
(And the "USPS is going broke" rhetoric is driven by political manipulations designed to attack it, forcing it to book future expenses its competitors and other businesses don't, rather that current P/L and "normal" accounting. Not that they shouldn't look for new opportunities -- such as but not only this package handling -- when they are not hindered in same by same or similar external control; perhaps explaining the continued lack of email notification for non-USPS packages, for which there is a ready and minimally demanding physical solution already in place for triggering same for other types of mail that I noticed and confirmed with my local post office employee.)
Anyway, I don't have to worry about Amazon et al. packages sitting out on my front stoop, tempting thieves and the rain. Without breaking the bank. Also gives me a street address for some sidelines.
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/03/us/postal-service-confirm...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_Isolation_Control_and_Tra...
You can see this for yourself by signing up for "Informed Delivery":
https://informeddelivery.usps.com/box/pages/intro/start.acti...
Receive these e-mails in your Inbox every morning for a few months to be reminded of just how much "metadata" can inform on your daily life and activities.
I once worked for the USPS in a Middle Eastern country, and it was our job to assist local customs officials as they scanned / inspected every piece of inbound mail.
They ran each piece through an x-ray, and whenever they spotted a banned item (liquor bottles, sex toys--hell, they even inspected optical discs to make sure they weren't porn), they opened the package and confiscated it.
We cleared about 1 mail truck of mail every night, and it took 5-10 hours. No way that's sustainable on the scale of domestic mail throughput.
The downside is that if you commit a crime and there is a nexus with the mail, you’re facing a serious felony. Politicians submit ethics paperwork via hand delivery for this reason.
Letters cannot be opened without a warrant, but it sounds like they could be subject to scans.
In general though, almost all laws (especially with respect to privacy) were written with physical privacy in mind, not virtual. The statutes around opening a letter is much more well defined those around recording unencrypted emails.
Because it has an actual, written in law, government-enforced monopoly on first class mail, standard mail, and mailbox access.
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/t/why-does-amazon-al...
It's a well known fact that Chinese sellers are using USPS to get illegal opioids into the US, fueling the fentanyl crisis
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-congress-opioids/chin...
I suspect that if there is any reason for usps being favored it’s that the us government signed a treaty that means usps has no choice but to accept mail at below cost.