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The Post Office is trying many ways to make delivering the mail profitable instead of losing money. They’re reducing the number of postal offices, breaking apart the union (renegotiating contracts, etc), and following the model of UPS and FedEx.
The above is not true—well, except for the title. The U.S. Post Office is looking at stopping Saturday deliveries as a cost cutting measure.
Hey, More People Get Saturday Off!
I always wondered how the postal employees liked never having a Saturday off—kinda like news delivery people.
I mean, this blog post was written on Thursday1, and yet it’s going live on Sunday. I’m wondering how it will effect the pay of postal employees—it seems like it’d be better on their schedules.
What about Netflix?
[W]ith Netflix and Gamefly, the customers can borrow, to a degree, as many DVDs or games as they want in a month for the same fee. If Charlie Jones received 2012 in Wednesday’s delivery, watched it right away and dropped in the mail that same day, it would be technically possible to receive another DVD to replace it in just a couple of days. So neither company is likely to be willing to pay FedEx or UPS more to deliver videos or games on weekends; the customer’s gonna just have to wait until Monday. [No Saturday Mail Delivery Shouldn’t Hurt Gamefly, Netflix in the Long Run – Hot Hardware]
I tend to agree, it could actually be better for their business, because they potentially won’t have as many DVDs to send out in a week. I mean, if there’s a one day turnover for a movie, right now you might be able to get 3 a week—if you time it right. That means you could get 12 DVDs a month, whereas if it goes down to 2 then you only could get 8.
Since cost is associated with filing, finding, and sending (not having someone hold onto a DVD) then it would actually increase profit—unless people unsubscribe because they can get a movie for $1 for one night at Red Box.
People—they’re strange, aren’t they?
- Does that mean my secret’s out as far as how I pre-write posts? [↩]
