I don’t know anything about Germany’s postal service.

In the US, what the parent comment was getting it, is why are we even talking about this in the first place? What problem is privatization trying to solve?

As an American, I have zero complaints about our postal service or how much we pay for it. Apart from the fact that I wish there were more branch offices and a few more workers at most locations. I don’t think privatization will solve either of those.

Why do we need to reform something that already works?

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Eridrus 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think the problem being solved here is largely one of waste.

USPS hides 9bn of unfunded pension obligations every year and underserves urban areas to subsidize rural areas.

Mail volume is also generally falling as everything moves to email, so it is getting both less profitable and less critical.

The US is a rich country, we can afford to waste a lot of money and not notice, and of course one person's waste is another person's easier job or subsidized service, but given the ongoing decline in the importance of mail (vs package) delivery, it's not clear that this is a particularly important utility for the government to maintain any more.

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7bees 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm not aware of any organization that has the same requirements to fund its future pension obligations that the USPS has. That requirement was created by Congress as part of a sustained campaign to damage the USPS.

It seems like your argument is actually that Congress should rescind that requirement, so that USPS can afford to better service urban customers while continuing to be a critical lifeline to rural areas.

	▲	eru an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Well, if postal services were provided by normal private companies, then there would be none (or less) of that kind of political interference you are complaining about here.

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treis 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The USPS is about $100 billion short in funds for retiree healthcare. Operationally they're slated to run out of cash shortly and that's going to get worse as they have to directly fund more and more retiree health care.

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msandford 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

My problem rate with Fedex or UPS is maybe 0.1% of packages. I can't remember the last time I had a delivery issue.

Just this week I had a package that was supposed to be delivered by Monday that lost tracking and didn't show up until Wednesday.

It might be "basically fine and good enough" but it's definitely not "amazing and completely beyond reproach" at least in my opinion.

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Swizec 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Just this week I had a package that was supposed to be delivered by Monday that lost tracking and didn't show up until Wednesday.

This is the sort of problem you solve with more funding not privatization.

Here’s how these privatizations work:

1. Cut funding for public service

2. Service becomes bad

3. Cut more funding because service is bad and unused

4. Service becomes worse

5. Privatize

6. Strip the service for parts, a bunch of people get rich, classic PE stuff but worse

7. Start extracting rents, you have a nice monopoly

8. Public has no or worse service for higher cost

	▲	msandford 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		1. They do a really bad job because you can't get fired 2. My package is delivered late yet again 3. I don't bother calling because the other 8 times I did I wasted an hour, nobody did anything (because nobody can get fired) and I didn't get any money back 4. Look how great we're doing! Complaints are down 5. Give us more funding because we're doing such a good job This is just as likely of a spiral if we keep it publicly owned. It's also not good. How do you get good outcomes with.no accountability?

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thayne 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Sure, it's not perfect, but I'm doubtful privatizing it would make it any better. And on the list of things I want fixed in the US, it is far from the top.

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fn-mote 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

All shopping companies lose packages, damage packages, and fail to deliver on time as promised.

The question is just about the rate it happens and the ease with which you can get restitution.

Remember when Amazon’s delivery dates were commitments instead of estimates? That was interesting for me to think about in this context.

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queenkjuul 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I spent many years shipping out online orders every day via UPS, Fedex, and USPS. USPS was not meaningfully worse in aggregate, UPS and FedEx still fucked up plenty

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deathanatos 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> My problem rate with Fedex or UPS is maybe 0.1% of packages. I can't remember the last time I had a delivery issue.

Well… I had a package being delivered, and it had missed its estimated arrival; it ended with me have a long discussion w/ their support that I'm sure was fed to /dev/null. FedEx was the carrier, it turned out, and they claimed they had attempted delivery. Problem was, they required a signature. I live in an apartment, & we have a dedicated package room. But FedEx's stance is that they can't deliver to the secure package room: they require a signature. But at my apartment, they come to the door with the street address on it. Weirdly, that is not the door with the buzzer — that's at a separate, more remote door. The delivery person is not going to take the time to find that door, assuming their corporate overlord's maximum dwell time even permits them to. So they can't buzz me. So they sticker an utterly arbitrary window on the building, and leave. The landlord clears the window. I am never notified.

Somewhere this kicks around in their system until I get a call from an unknown number of "hey your package is undeliverable." But the "guaranteed" delivery date was overshot, of course.

I was, of course, home the entire time. These are what spawn the "missed delivery" memes … https://xkcd.com/921/

This is a systemic problem, not just a "one time" issue: every package shipped via FedEx that requires a signature to me is undeliverable.

The shipper (my bank, in this case) was also less-than-helpful: they apparently have no idea who they ship with, let alone what tracking number they used. Worse, they refused to refund me the extra I had paid to expedite the shipment (which, as you can imagine from the above, did not arrive on time; worse, the expiditing fee was extortionary…)

… and this is modern capitalism these days. A fractal of bad service where the customer ends up having to do 90% of the support work.

	▲	4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
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	▲	fn-mote 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Special case pain in your rear. Sorry that happened. FYI, I am quite sure that you can provide special delivery instructions for your address to FedEx. You should try to figure out how to do that. Dealing with your bank, though… good luck with that when they don’t care.