United States Postal Service tries to compete with Google using fear | Hacker News Reader

United States Postal Service tries to compete with Google using fear

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86 pointsnate103 comments

If the USPS wants more usage, rather than marketing, they need to "innovate" just a tad. There is a value-add service that I really wish the USPS would provide. It is very simple too...

I would like an abstraction layer for my address. I am still fairly young and move semi-frequently -- every few years. I want a static address that I can give to my bank, DMV, anything that needs to mail me things. This address will auto-forward to my current living address. Thus I will not have to update all my services when I move. It might also be nice to have multiple addresses forwarded to the same location as well; my address and my current roommates.

The format of this address could follow PO box style, or they could even invent something new (blah@physical.usps.com).

This is something that I think would be easy for the USPS to provide (mail is routed electronically, and I am basically just asking for a lookup table). This would be more difficult for "competitors" UPS/FedEx/DHL to provide, and just might bring more use to the USPS. So why hasn't the USPS done it?

Earth Class Mail does this, but I agree, it would be really nice if that was a standard option.

Hey, while we're on USPS feature requests, this one is a bit overdue: SPAM FILTERING.

Allow me to blacklist certain senders, that's all.

Man, I've been searching for this (but I live in Europe, so across country borders, there is no hope unfortunately).

Instead what USPS could do is actually scan all this stuff and email me a PDF. 80% of the snail mail I receive I don't need to have physically anyways. For those pieces that need physical delivery -> check a checkbox and USPS could send it to my current address. (Notice how that also solves the addressing indirection?)

I'd love this too. A bit of clicking around discovered a company in the UK that does this, but it couldn't look more shady [1].

I'd happily pay USPS $50 a year for such a service, which is certainly a lot more than they'll get in stamps from me.

[1] http://www.ukpostbox.com/

Absolutely! I could have kept adding more and more too. But yes, this is a perfect one that they could turn on and I bet everyone would pay something per year to get a virtual address. And what's great is that it's a virtual address that the government knows about. So they can still serve me papers and collect taxes and all that government stuff. But I don't have to worry about some guy coming over to my house because I pissed him accidentally on Yelp and he found my address from some email footer I sent.

Good idea. Also, I'd like to be able to send electronic documents via the mail and for the USPS to introduce a legally acceptable signature they can put on the document. That way I can do all of my legal stuff easily through the mail or send that letter to grandma who's off the grid.

This is something that is very close to my family so I have a bit of experience with how the Postal Service is going.

The big sell of the postal service is that it costs the same amount to send a letter from San Francisco to Los Angeles as it does to send a letter from the bayou in Louisiana to Honolulu, Hawaii. In this, physical mail is the big equalizer.

The USPS is also required to deliver mail to even the most remote of places because if the mail system did not work for everyone then several things would start to break: collecting taxes or votes or anything that a normal citizen should require can be done through mail, at minimum.

Really, the only way to replace mail is to provide the same level of reliability and free-to-receive service for another communication medium such as telephone or internet.

No. They charge the same amount to send those two letters. It does not cost the same amount, however. Regular physical mail delivery at current prices is unsustainable. Period.

Just interpret "it costs" as "it costs the user" and use the plain English definition of cost as "asking price, market price, or selling price" and you'll arrive at the original poster's intended meaning.

I assume that for the second part of your comment, you consider "Regular physical mail" to be letter post, because we will always need packages to be delivered.

Regular physical mail delivery at current prices is unsustainable.

But it was sustainable when bulk mail and junk mail made huge profits for the postal service and subsidized the first-class prices.

It is still sustainable. The USPS is being forced to prepay its retirement benefits 75 years into the future (i.e. for people that aren't even alive yet or are just being born).

It has been profitable to the tune of a couple hundred million a year. The issue is that it can't afford to pay 5.5 billion that congress mandated that it pay each year. It is 20 billion in the hole, but only because congress made a ridiculous demand of it that no other organization, public or private would be required to make.

Citation: http://www.cnbc.com/id/45049636/Fixing_the_US_Postal_Service...

> The big sell of the postal service is that it costs the same amount to send a letter from San Francisco to Los Angeles as it does to send a letter from the bayou in Louisiana to Honolulu, Hawaii. In this, physical mail is the big equalizer.

That's also true of the internet. It doesn't cost anything to email someone who's right next to you or who is across the globe. There is very little demand for mail these days and that's pretty obvious from watching the linked USPS advertisement.

To send and receive USPS mail, you need... a mailbox. To send and receive email you need an internet subscription and a computer. Internet access can be impossible to find, or very expensive, in many areas that are serviced by USPS. Saying "It doesn't cost anything to email someone... who is across the globe" is only true if you both have the infrastructure, equipment, and service necessary.

Well, to receive USPS mail you need an address. Permanent travelers, the homeless, people in the process of moving, moving- these people are difficult or impossible to reach by mail, but any time they pop into a library or internet cafe, they have an email address. I would say that /that/ is the great equalizer, more than remote people with mailboxes in this day and age.

Permanent travelers, the homeless, etc. can receive mail at the post office by general delivery. (Letters addressed to

J. Doe

GENERAL DELIVERY

Anytown, Anystate 12345

are held for pickup at the post office for 30 days.) This was once common knowledge, but seems to be less so these days.

Wow. I didn't know they still did that.

So just by writing GENERAL DELIVERY instead of a street address, it gets held? I suppose the kick here is that the person needs to know they're getting mail. Do they need an ID to pick it up?

Maybe going to the post office was a daily routine? I wouldn't know.

It's rapidly becoming that you only need a cell phone, which would potentially make the internet much more feasible than snail-mail; owning a cell phone is far easier than owning a house and staying in a single location.

I'll grant that it's not there yet - plenty of places aren't covered by cell towers. But they're diminishing, and plenty of places aren't on postal routes either. If anything, cell towers will soon cover more area, as I can get reception miles from any road, but USPS won't deliver to where I'm standing.

Nearly all my mail ends up at addresses from my past. If it wasn't for e-bills, I would never receive (my own) bills. And I have received mountains of mail from countless former tenants at every place I've lived, mail they will never see. The post doesn't seem very reliable to me.

USPS needs to implement a form of indirect addressing. The basic premise: Assign recipients a unique ID. The physical address is then a single indirect lookup (ie. from a database, which can be altered by the recipient ad nauseum).

For obvious reasons, SSN as a unique ID is out. Given the (relative) portability of phone numbers, these might be a good option. Alternatively, allowing users to employ their email address as the unique ID would be awesome! I'd pay an annual fee to USPS if senders could just write my email on an envelope and it would get to me (bonus points for selective digitization).

I think this is one of the beauties of Google Voice service: It's indirect addressing for my phone number. If USPS took some initiative, they could really invigorate their service and bring it into the technical age.

a database, which can be altered by the recipient ad nauseum

They already have this, of course. You can send USPS a change-of-address form and they'll send mail addressed to you at your old address to your new address. https://moversguide.usps.com/icoa/icoa-main-flow.do?executio...

I did this just last month. The postal worker informed me that the forwarding only lasted for a period of one year -- that's not a very good long-term solution.

...but that's less about the postal systems than it is about people updating addresses or forwarding mail on.

I have some rubber stamps made with

    ADDRESSEE GONE AWAY
     RETURN TO SENDER

and that seems to cut down the amount of repeated post. You can dump all the post for one person in a big envelope and dump that in a post box once a month.

And how it works after that? USPS just return mail to sender with no questions asked? I recently bought a house and also receiving bunch of mails. Once - check for few hundreds of some refund from some utility company. Thanks I had contact info of previous tenant, so I could mail it to him (never got a thanks letter :))

>>And how it works after that? USPS just return mail to sender with no questions asked?

Yes, of course.

That's kind of your problem.

If you used an old email address, you wouldn't get e-bills either.

The difference is I don't change my email once every year or so.

Oye, no joke. I get more mail for former residents of my home than I do for me. We have filled out the form to stop delivering that mail. Didn't work. We have called the mail annex the carriers leave from. Didn't work. We have left the carriers a friggin note. Didn't work. Also, my sister-in-law just sent us something she made for my daughter, which USPS promptly lost and did nothing to attempt to find. Granted she didn't add delivery confirmation on the package, but should I really have to pay extra to make sure my package will actually get there? If that is the case, raise the price of stamps to cover it.

It is reliable if the address that's on the piece of mail is where it was sent to. The issue then is whoever's maintaining the address and paying to postage for sending it there.

Also mail forwarding's worked pretty well for me. Just fill the info online or drop the card in the mail.

They only forward mail for a year. That should be plenty of time to change your addresses. It seems that you don't though.

The benefit of this is outrunning junk mail.

I think you're missing the OP's point. He isn't suggesting ending postal service, but coming up with new and better services instead of trying to scare people away from email.

For many people, the post office is just an incredibly slow, junk mail delivery system. If you care about the USPS, I'm surprised you don't agree with the OP that new ideas are needed.

(One idea i'd like to see is a registered email service, so you know an email was received. The post office has the public's trust to pull this off.)

>The big sell of the postal service is that it costs the same amount to send a letter from San Francisco to Los Angeles as it does to send a letter from the bayou in Louisiana to Honolulu, Hawaii.

That's not a big sell if you're sending a letter from San Francisco to Los Angeles. I don't see any reason for rates not to reflect costs - why am I subsidizing other people every time I send a letter?

1. You always know how much a standard letter will cost, no matter where it's going. If you're mailing 100 letters to 100 locations, they all cost the same. Standard exemptions apply for rate changes every few years and for heavy items.

2. Based on the cash flow of the USPS, you're not subsidizing anyone by buying stamps :)

>1. You always know how much a standard letter will cost, no matter where it's going. If you're mailing 100 letters to 100 locations, they all cost the same. Standard exemptions apply for rate changes every few years and for heavy items.

Computers can figure this stuff out pretty quickly. People who mail 100 first class letters to 100 locations already either use an automated stamping system or they take the letters to the post office.

>2. Based on the cash flow of the USPS, you're not subsidizing anyone by buying stamps :)

Well, okay, but how do you think they're going to plug that hole? I'll be paying for it eventually, either through income taxes or through higher postage rates.

Because, in theory, you care that they can vote and mail in their taxes at a reasonable price, even from places that are economically unfeasible to have a mail delivery system. Whether you actually care is up to you, but the US government has decided US citizens care.

It's similar to the gov't money that was paid to run telephone lines to rural areas (ref: freeconference.com article from the other day).

There is a very reasonable solution to this. Offer special rates for civics activities like voting and taxes. AFAIK, a special rate with return receipts already exists for filing taxes.

>Because, in theory, you care that they can vote and mail in their taxes at a reasonable price, even from places that are economically unfeasible to have a mail delivery system.

"A reasonable price"? A reasonable price, in the long run, is what the service costs. And there aren't any areas that are economically unfeasible to deliver mail - just not for less than a dollar. I'm okay with people out in the sticks paying, say, $2.50 to send a letter. Are you trying to tell me there are people who can't afford, say, five bucks a year to send two letters (even assuming they do vote by mail)? If money's that tight in rural Nowheresville they can move to the city and get a desk job like everyone else.

>Whether you actually care is up to you, but the US government has decided US citizens care.

Sure, because rural voters have proportionally more voting power. There's no secret why the system is the way it is.

>It's similar to the gov't money that was paid to run telephone lines to rural areas (ref: freeconference.com article from the other day).

Yes, the telephones, the roads, airports, mail... still don't see why people can't pay their own way. Look, there are things I pay more for where I live. Housing, for instance. Why aren't they paying part of my rent?

In the ideal libertarian world, there is a free movement of peoples. People are free to move from one location to another in order to best optimize the system. This is great in theory but breaks down in practice. There are physical, bureaucratic and psychological barriers that keep people in one place. For instance, my father's family is largely from rural Indiana. We have had a family farm for several generations. In fact, my family has a road named after it (Hammer Road) because it was mostly occupied by members of my family that had lived there for so long. There are members of my family that will inherit that land and for several reasons will continue to farm that land for generations to come.

My family has every right to vote and do so proudly. A callous wave of the hand and saying "they should pay their own way" in order to be an equal citizen in this country is .. well, elitist, immoral and just plain wrong.

P.S. If you want to give everyone free internet or free phones (with the appropriate legislation to make contracts entered over said mediums binding, of course) then do away with the USPS. Until then you're going to have to pay for everyone's right to be a full citizen of this country by subsidizing the postal service.

>A callous wave of the hand and saying "they should pay their own way" in order to be an equal citizen in this country is .. well, elitist, immoral and just plain wrong.

There sure doesn't seem to be any shortage of people with their hands in my pocket who get indignant when I point it out. There's nothing elitist, immoral, or wrong in saying people should pay their own way. People of sound mind and body shouldn't be freeloading off their fellow citizens. I realize there's a certain lifestyle people enjoy when it comes to rural living. That's tough.

Before automation something like 95% of the population was involved in agriculture. My family was all farmers, if you go back far enough. And yet they all ended up moving where there was work when farming wasn't working out. What makes your family so special that you think I ought to be paying to maintain their chosen lifestyle?

You're not subsidizing other people in that case anyway. First class mail is subsidized by the bulk mailers.

Well, until now. But it's starting to look like that won't be the case any longer, given the deficits they're projecting.

Right, I wasn't saying anything at all about replacing mail. I was saying quite the opposite. How can the USPS succeed at getting more mail sent? And I pointed out a bunch of examples of people improving mail and using mail to send tons of awesome things. If those businesses improve, the USPS will improve.

USPS needs to not define success as getting more mail sent. The only mail I receive is junk mail, and things from the government.

If I could turn my mailbox off, I would.

> The only mail I receive is junk mail

Guess what the USPS admits is subsidizing them now.

How about this: "You send more legitimate mail, we can afford to send you less junk!"

Nicest protection racket ever.

Mail theft exists. In fact it's one of the leading causes of identity theft.

And computer viruses? Any one ever been delivered anthrax through email?

And a paper archive was never lost in a fire or flood.

Also, I see way more junk mail in my mail box than I do in my email inbox ...

What about in your spam folder? You sure it isn't just a case of good Bayesian filtering?

Cool business idea: Bayesian filtering for snail mail.

From what I understand, all spam in mailboxes appear from cooperation of USPS with advertisers, since most ads do not have any address stamped on it. So it looks like USPS actually distribute spam.

Or something from Ted Kaczynski?

On the other hand, my email provider has never decided to just throw away my mail because it was too lazy to work its entire shift.

Which absolutely does not characterize the majority of postal workers, but it's happened enough to make the news.

There's no structural reason for any email employee to cause my email to not be delivered, but there is that structural possibility for a demotivated postal worker.

This is a perfect example of why the USPS is on its way out.

People haven't forgotten about the USPS. They simply naturally no longer have a need for it. We often check our mail once a week!

Why? Because we don't get anything useful in the mail. Just junk mail. Once a week, we think "Have we checked the mail this week? Hmm, better go check it."

No amount of advertising by the USPS is going to save them. They're not going to magically become useful again because they have TV commercials.

It's over.

It shows how hostile a dying industry becomes. Looks to me like the RIAA and USPS are in similar situations by the way they're acting.

Very true, great point.

To be fair: the USPS is being rushed out the door via a legislative hit job. They've been required to accumulate a reserve of 75 years-worth of worker benefits (retirement and healthcare) -- something I don't believe any other company or government service has to do -- and build up that reserve in 10 years, on their existing budget.

So the speed of their decline is greatly exaggerated by this and not entirely reflective of the drop in utilization.

Personally, I see no reason the USPS couldn't remain and remain as a useful service if they transitioned to being better at sending/tracking packages as opposed to letters.

UPS and FedEx are great and all, but they've nowhere near the customer focus that the USPS has. And in many cases companies offering shipping services already leverage the USPS to deliver useful mail and packages -- it's a great service for them, because they can get the attention that the average citizen cannot. I think there's plenty of room to expand on what works for the USPS, maintaining a useful baseline service for Americans.

All that said: yes, their marketing has been atrocious, embarrassing, unhelpful and utterly unnecessary lately.

I'm aware of the government requirements on USPS but I believe that's irrelevant. The USPS would still be in the decline it is today regardless of whether or not they had to stash away all that money today, 5 years from now, or never.

It's simple: people don't use the mail as much as they used to. And that trend is only going to continue. People will never increase their use of the USPS.

"UPS and FedEx are great and all, but they've nowhere near the customer focus that the USPS has."

I must have a very different experience with the USPS then you. Any time I go to the post office (which now is maybe once every year or two), the employees are extremely disgruntled, not happy that you're there, and not very interested in helping you get what you need done.

More importantly, though, in my experience, the USPS is horrible at its core job: transporting and delivering mail. They have "tracking" that doesn't actually track - it simply tells you the package has left the origin and arrived at the destination - nothing in between.

Mail is consistently lost, delivered to the wrong address, or opened before delivery (by who knows).

Again, this is my experience. I suspect it's not unique, but your mile probably varies.

They would still be in decline, but they actually run an operating profit right now. If/as mail volume further declines they can cut & consolidate facilities to a point where they can still be reasonably profitable.

Any time I go to the post office (which now is maybe once every year or two), the employees are extremely disgruntled, not happy that you're there, and not very interested in helping you get what you need done

We all have anecdotes. My business uses USPS for shipping packages worldwide and I am a very happy customer of their services. I go to various Post Offices (01139, 06096, 01095, and 01803 among others, depending on my schedule and travel) 6 days a week to collect mail and ship packages. At this point the workers all know me very well, so it may be that my experiences are atypical, but I find them all to be extremely hardworking, friendly and willing to go the extra mile for me - for example, I mailed a letter once and didn't put enough postage on it. One of the postal workers put on the extra postage and left a note in my PO box asking me to reimburse her when I got a chance.

But again, these are just anecdotes.

However, even when I visit Post Offices I don't normally go to, I'm still largely happy with the services. The only complaint is that sometimes when a Post Office is very busy, I've had employees be curt with me, but in those circumstances I can understand why.

They have "tracking" that doesn't actually track - it simply tells you the package has left the origin and arrived at the destination - nothing in between.

Wholeheartedly agreed. They need to do better here.

Mail is consistently lost, delivered to the wrong address, or opened before delivery (by who knows)

I've shipped something like 2000 packages in the last 3 years to all 50 states and over 40 countries. I've had a grand total of two packages lost (and I'm pretty sure that only one of those two packages was actually lost and the other one was just a customer who wanted a free second item).

I'll be happy to put on my tinfoil hat and tell you what I think is really going on.

The USPS does a lot more than ship packages and letters. They are also the government's mass printer. That VA letter and social security check probably wasn't printed in a Virginia suburb, but at one of the regional USPS printing offices. They also handle very high security items, not just to you, but between government agencies under conditions that would make the warden of a maximum security prison blush. The term "going postal" isn't about some guy at your local post office flipping out over the number of people waiting to get their packages weighed, but about some guy who has spent decades wondering if the guy standing next to him is a postal inspector just itching to see him screw up.

To put it another way, they offset a lot of other agencies costs (at least in overhead). I'm certainly not saying it would be better or worse if all of this were handled by the private sector, but I will say it would require a lot of restructuring and make someone a huge pile of cash. Still, it is going to happen sooner or later. Politically it is just too sweet.

I agree about the anecdotes. I'm sure the experiences are varied.

I'm thinking more big picture. How much mail will my 17 month old send or receive via the postal service when he's in junior high? High school? College?

I see the USPS becoming less and less relevant during his lifetime.

Defenders of the Post Office like to say this, but it is at odds with reality.

The prefunding requirement only requires them to have the NPV value of future payments for everyone who currently or formerly works for them. This is how everyone should accumulate pensions: the alternative is an accounting gimmick in which you promise unsustainable future payments today and then make yourself scarce (or ask for the taxpayer to clean up your mess) when they come due tomorrow.

(The minimum requirement for all employers is that they implement pay-as-you-go, which means that someone's pension should be fully funded at the point where they start drawing benefits. This means that, if you hypothetically have 100k employees who are 5 years from retirement, you can report a pension fund with no assets as fully funded today. This gives you five years to look under the seat cushions for the $25 billion you need to come up with to avoid insolvency. Congress has decided to not let the Post Office implement pay-as-you-go because Congress anticipates that the Post Office will, if allowed to do that, report "The Post Office is profitable on its own revenues and receives no support from the federal government" reliably every year until their pension fund implodes with a 13 figure uncovered liability.)

They're separately required to produce accounting projections for the next 75 years, but those don't have a funding mandate attached to them.

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/CNBC/Sections/News_And_Analysis/...

The part most relevant to the discussion is the paragraphs surrounding: "Under current law, PAEA (P.L. 109-435) requires USPS to determine the actuarial present value of future retiree health payments for current or former employees and to amortize that liability over a 40 year period."

> "This is how everyone should accumulate pensions"

Probably. Yet this is the only group that is required to. And they've been required to make up the difference under a very short timeframe. Should every pension fund be given only 10 years to correct the situation?

> "Congress anticipates that the Post Office will, if allowed to do that, report "The Post Office is profitable on its own revenues and receives no support from the federal government" reliably every year until their pension fund implodes with a 13 figure uncovered liability."

And why is the Post Office singled out for this concern? Are other government profit centers treated the same way? Perhaps the Patent Office?

>And why is the Post Office singled out for this concern? Are other government profit centers treated the same way? Perhaps the Patent Office?

It probably has to do with the number of employees. IIRC, the Post Office is one of the largest employers in the country.

And on the flip side:

How Employers Raid Pension Plans http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020413820457660...

Treasury dips into pension funds to avoid debt http://news.yahoo.com/treasury-dips-pension-funds-avoid-debt...

> UPS and FedEx are great and all, but they've nowhere near the customer focus that the USPS has.

Wut?

The local post offices I've used are perennially understaffed, never has enough people, the workers are unbelievably slow, the paper products are overpriced. It's absolutely the consistently worst customer service I have ever used.

I was referring to the mailbox that each and every residence and place of business has, regardless of their proximity and population density.

FedEx and UPS have service centers, but nowhere near as many as post offices and neither run widespread residential routes for pickup.

Yeah, but the law prohibits UPS and Fedex from delivering to those private mailboxes. So it's not really fair to complain they don't and the USPS does.

I live in a small town and recently made a trip to the big city..

I was absolutely amazed at how many advertising campaigns are based on fear. I had completely forgotten about LifeLock, Life Insurance, Home Security Systems, Health Insurance, Car Alarms ... etc. etc.

Seeing ads that say "Buy this or else..." completely shocked me.

It appears to be quite the norm these days.

> Seeing ads that say "Buy this or else..." completely shocked me.

Why? Those products only exist because bad things can happen. Of course their advertising campaigns are going to remind you that bad things can happen.

USPS's business model has nothing to do with safety or security and thus it is shocking to see them using fear to sell their product.

Playing on your emotions is an important part of marketing. Most successful marketing campaigns to this to some degree.

I'm going to be honest here for a moment. I agreed with everything you said, but the disorganized, grammatically-incorrect manner in which you delivered it made it harder to read and understand. Slang writing doesn't get a point across as well as a well-structured, creative sentence with a vibrant vocabulary.

It's a federal offense to steal someone's mail out of their mailbox. No such protections exist for email.

This is an excellent point! As "technologists" I think we believe that a meritocracy of technological prowess should decide who survives, but that view threatens to really short sell the social ramifications of such moves.

We replaced phones with the internet, but in doing so lost common-carrier protections because we were paying attention to the technology not the law. If we replace mail with email and don't retain the same legally protected status on private communications, we'll have only ourselves to blame.

s/loose/lost

I think you'll find that it is a federal offense in your country to hack someones email.

There's no "hacking" necessary because there aren't nearly the same protections (in the USA if you're wondering) on someone's email as there is on USPS mail. To be fair, even laws about FedEx, UPS, DHL etc. mail are less stringent than USPS mail, simply because they're not federal agencies.

Title 18 U.S.C Section 1030 (the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act) makes it a federal offense to exceed your authorized access on, basically, any computer system anywhere. (Does it communicate? It is used in interstate commerce? BAM.)

So there are a bunch of employees at my ISP who are fully "authorized" to read my mail. Also a bunch at the recipient's ISP. And probably some scanners in various systems in the middle that might surface my email for purposes of targeted advertising or spam fighting. It's not nearly the same level of protection.

You are welcome to put your email in an envelope (i.e. encryption). The technology exists and is proven.

If you send your regular mail without an envelope, there is a good chance many people will read it along the way too.

A refrigerator has never been hacked, but the USPS still can't manage to put my mail into my labeled mailbox instead of my neighbor's.

Is the author equating email with Google or am I missing something?

Yeah, the addition of Google in the title feels like link bait, although the author may not have intended it that way. It would have been more honest with email in place of Google.

Honestly, stuffing letters into file cabinets makes me cringe. I just think of the impending annoyance of having to sort through the pile of useless information that I'll feel the compulsion to shred while I do it.

USPS blew it. They could have evolved/adapted into different businesses. Not only could they have competed with UPS and FedEX for parcel delivery at scale, but there was (and perhaps still is) an opportunity for an entity to provide 3rd party authenticated email service-- and charge for it.

Instead, they got comfortable with merely existing as a junk-mail conduit. Pathetic.

Sadly, in the current environment, where the failure of government programs is taken to be virtually axiomatic, the USPS is running out of slack to re-invent itself.

The main problem the USPS has right now is that Congress a few years back mandated that they put aside money for pensions of USPS employees who haven't even been born yet, let alone hired. FedEx and UPS don't have that requirement.

It makes you wonder who dreams up this stuff. The purpose of a pension is to defer a percentage of payroll payments until later, to keep operating capital higher during critical business periods. If you just have the money sitting in the bank doing nothing, you can just pay the employees up front and don't need to worry about having pension plan at all.

That's not really the main problem. Their projected deficit for this year ($14.1 billion) far exceeds this excess pension payment ($5.5 billion).

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/12/who-kill...

Much of the quasi-independent USPS's attempt to move in a UPS/FedEx-ish direction was blocked by the government. They actually tried to get to the most profitable segment of the market, fast package delivery between major metropolitan areas, before FedEx or UPS did much in that area, but their 1978 proposal for an "Express Mail Metro" service was blocked by the Postal Regulatory Commission.

The USPS ad isn't completely baseless. We just recently did a virus cleanup for someone who opened up what they thought was a ticket confirmation for their boss in their email. Oops. (Their mail service provider apparently doesn't block zip files containing executables.)

There is a lot of confusion out there from people who aren't sure what is and isn't safe to open. The knowledge that we take for granted -- .jpg is safe, .vbs is not -- is completely alien to most computer users.

And then there are the scams. And yeah, people still fall for those, too: "But it said it came from my friend! I just thought they had gone on a vacation in France!"

We often get calls from people along the lines of, "I just received this message [..], is it safe to click on it?"

So in the real world, the marketing behind this ad is pretty sound.

On the other hand, we get deliveries all the time and USPS is by far our least favorite. Roughly half of items shipped by USPS are misdelivered at least once before they finally make it to us, if they arrive at all.

> The knowledge that we take for granted -- .jpg is safe, .vbs is not

Not always: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/ms04-02...

I receive bunch of scam letters in to my mailbox. One looked like official gov printed notification and started with words "You might be subject for 5 years in prison" and then smaller letters "if you prevent delivering this mail". And then actual ads - extend warranty of your car..

Same goes about "won tickets to cruise" with phone number where they offer you to buy something...

So in this regard USPS is not better then email. It is just happened that sending bio hazardous stuff is expensive through snail mail..

Okay, I agree with the OP that the Postal Service is acting ridiculous. I've had to reassure elderly people that just because Facebook offered them a too-good-to-be-true offer that turned out to be a virus once, that that doesn't make it much more dangerous than a telephone. Thousands of elderly people are scammed on telephones every year and quietly lose millions of dollars rather than simply catch a botnet virus.

Unfortunately for USPS, negative political advertising is all about getting the other side to stay home and not participate. The other side is already sold on technology and won't listen.

With that said, the OP's zealous belief that owning a Mac and a firewall makes him immune is comical at best.

"Mail is so awesome now more than any time ever because it’s so much less full of junk than my email."

Maybe it's just because I am almost entirely switched to e-bills, but my experience is totally the opposite. I rarely get spam messages in my gmail account (once a month?) but my email every day is 90%+ commercial bulk mail. Maybe once a week I get a personal letter or other item specifically sent to me. The rest is either catalogs, credit card offers or financial disclosure / privacy disclosure letters from my credit cards or brokerage.

While this article has some good points, I feel it's advice on how to advertise is misguided. Why does a government mandated monopoly waste money advertising?

Every time USPS asks for a rate increase I can't help but wonder how much they spent on Lance Armstrong or the other advertising campaigns.

Make your service efficient and reliable, that's your job. You haven't been glamorous since the pony express days (I know thats a myth).

I want my mail to be reliably delivered at a good price. I don't want you to be slick or hip.

Why are government services spending time and money with advertising at all. They exist to provide a service to citizens if citizens want it. We're both shareholders and customers. They certainly don't exist to ensure their ongoing existence.

This isn't a PSA for the greater good of the country, this is full blown advertising and it should never happen with tax payer dollars. ever.

This blows my mind.

FTA> Can the government acquire private companies? I imagine you could. Take your commercial money you are blowing on this crap, and start acquiring companies doing innovative things with mail.

AHAHAHAHAHA. No. It would take a lot to drive me away from Google, but this would definitely be the fastest.

It's not good for the environment. Why kill more trees with junk mail?

Sustainably farmed paper (which is practically all of it) is a net gain over not using paper at all. The energy wasted hauling this paper around is a bigger concern environmentally.

No matter how environmental the paper is, sending paper to people who don't want it is a huge waste of resources.

After being reminded of the "You wouldn't download a car" meme yesterday, I could completely see this becoming the next one.

This ad is very misguided. Is there really no other reason to use mail? If not, then well ... it should go away lol.

I mean honestly ... mail doesn't get hacked? It is a felony to steal other people's mail, or open the envelope and replace it with something else. I can use social engineering at so many levels to replace a letter to someone, or make it go missing, I mean seriously? Come on. Distract the postman as your accomplish slips a letter in...

I'd like to disagree with the USPS that a paper letter has never been infected with a virus. Remember the anthrax and uni-bomber eras?

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