Is the Post Office Screwing Customers?

[burkhome]

Hard to believe that anyone would think they were getting screwed by the "government".

[anmius]

Hard to believe that anyone would think they were getting screwed by the "government".

Too bad the Post Office isn't "Government" otherwise this would be true.

[Gampa]

I would like to relate my recent Post Office story. See if this makes good business sense to you.

I ship 30 to 40 packages a week through the PO. I generate the shipping labels on line and simply drop them off to the Post Office nearest my house. One of my packages was returned a couple of days ago with a small sticker over my eBay shipping label saying that it was 14 cents short on postage. The problem - I had put the piece in a box that said Priority Mail on it. I had generated a label for just parcel post. The difference in postage - 14 cents.

The Post office took the time to fill out the label, send it back through their sorting process, return it to the different Post Office that my mail carrier works out of, and then return it to my house. All for 14 cents.

When I corrected it and took it back to the original Post Office the clerk saw me drop it off. He said " do you have the correct label this time?"

It seems to me that if he knew who the "offending" party was that he could have simply waited for the next time he saw me and told me about the Priority Mail issue. It would have saved them a lot of unnecessary labor.

To you it is 14 cents. To the Post Office, a trillion dollar a year business, it is our bread and butter. You mail 30 to 40 packages a week. What if they were all off just 14 cents? How much is that to the Post Office in a year?

With millions of items being mailed every year isn't it best to have one uniform system to handle postage shortages then to reinvent the wheel everytime?

[JPG]

My tongue is extremely sore from all the biting!:(

[bhurley]

Grandpa - maybe you could read the last sentence of my post again. That is the logic I think would work best.


Back when I had a "real" job I managed parts warehouses for a major car company of Japanese origin. My buildings shipped about 1 million dollars a day in volume. We made nothing but money for the company - a lot of it was accomplised by just using plain old common horse sense. Nothing fancy, no blanket policies for 14 cent shortages.

Maybe some common horse sense could be applied at the local post office.

[dusty]

Grandpa - maybe you could read the last sentence of my post again. That is the logic I think would work best.


Back when I had a "real" job I managed parts warehouses for a major car company of Japanese origin. My buildings shipped about 1 million dollars a day in volume. We made nothing but money for the company - a lot of it was accomplised by just using plain old common horse sense. Nothing fancy, no blanket policies for 14 cent shortages.

Maybe some common horse sense could be applied at the local post office.

Large companies (operations) tend not to allow decisions like we are discussing here to be made at the working level. Management views the potential for a "bad decision" to be too great and the results of that bad decision to be too far reaching.

Furthermore, we grunts have no horse sense.

[bhurley]

Successful managers of both small and large compannies learn that if you can put these no brainers in the hands of those closest to the work it will really lighten the workload and the employees will feel like they have a stake in their workplace and success.

The 2 or 3 best managers in my business stood around most of the time with very little to do. The employees knew what to do. Our job was to stay out of their way. The run of the mill managers ran around in circles thinking they needed to make all of the 14 cent decisions.


I've succeeded in taking this thread in a different direction and I didn't intend to.

nuf said

[dforeman]

Dusty is right. Common sense or social sense might work in very small towns (that is if there are any still around). But in most cities and towns, the average postal worker has to tot-the-line (follow a procedure). They are really not given much of a choice or discression beyond what they are required to do. And, when the auditors come around everything thing had better be in the up and up. Because a bad report card from the audiors could very much lead to some major changes. And if the auditor happens to be standing right there at that particular time the postal worker does anything outside of procedure, the very next day that worker will be looking for a new job.

I heard a judge say on time to somebody that was challenging a speeding ticket in court say, "you do not challenge or argue with an officer in the line of his duty". His job is public safety and enforcement of the legal statute plain and simple. And, he has no authority/discression to make judgement outside of that duty for which he was to perform. If you have something to say or complain about, you come in here, tell me and we will discuss it. And, that was right before he land blasted the kid with a $600 dollar fine for arguing with the officer. And no, that kid was not me.

[db5]

Went to the Post Office today and they discovered the problem and it was fixed. Apparently they check these things regularly.