The post office had bad news on Monday for all those who like to pop a check into the mail to pay a bill due the next day: don’t count on it.þþþThe United States Postal Service said it planned to largely eliminate next-day delivery for first-class mail as part of its push to cut costs and reduce its budget deficit. Currently, more than 40 percent of first-class mail is delivered in one day.þþThe agency said the slower delivery would result from its decision to shut about half of its 487 mail processing centers nationwide. The move is expected to eliminate about 28,000 jobs and increase the distance that mail must travel between post offices and processing centers. It would be the first reduction in delivery standards for first-class mail in 40 years.þþCurrent standards call for delivering first-class mail in one to three days within the continental United States. Under the planned cutbacks, those delivery times would increase to two or three days, potentially creating problems for clients of Netflix, the popular DVD-by-mail service, who hope that their next episodes of “Mad Men” will arrive in a day, or procrastinators who like to pay bills as late as possible.þþThe agency had announced on Sept. 15 that it would begin studying plans to close 252 of its mail processing centers.þþOn Monday, the Postal Service said it would “move forward” with that plan, with closings to begin as early as March. It also said it was seeking a nonbinding advisory opinion from the Postal Regulatory Commission about the closures, although agency officials said they were intent on closing the processing centers as part of a plan to save $3 billion a year by 2015.þþ“The bottom line is that in the last three years, we’ve lost almost 27 percent of our first-class volume,” Patrick Donahoe, the postmaster general, said in a phone interview. “In 2000, 5 percent of people paid bills online. Now it’s 60 percent. The problem is we’ve lost so much volume in blue-box mail, we can’t hold out for next-day service anymore.”þþThe Postal Service lost $5.1 billion last year.þþMr. Donahoe has said that by 2015, he hopes to cut $20 billion from the agency’s annual costs, now about $75 billion. He has called for closing up to 3,700 of the nation’s 32,000 post offices, reducing deliveries to five days a week from six and cutting the agency’s work force of 653,000 employees by more than 100,000.þþPostal officials said they would not make definitive announcements on any post office closings before January.þþBut many of the other proposed changes sought by the agency would require Congressional action.þþSo far, lawmakers have been unwilling to grant Mr. Donahoe’s requests or agree on an alternative plan of action.þþ“What I need Congress to do is act now to help me on the things they can help me on,” Mr. Donahoe said.þþIn particular, he urged Congress to approve five-day-a-week delivery and to remove the post office’s obligation to set aside about $5.5 billion a year for 10 years to prefund retiree health care, a burden that has accounted for a large share of the agency’s financial losses in recent years. If Congress takes those two actions, “it can help me save $8.5 billion a year,” he said.þþThe Postal Service had previously announced a 1-cent increase in first-class postage, to 45 cents, starting Jan. 22.þþFredric Rolando, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, voiced concern about the proposal to reduce delivery standards.þþ“High-quality service is essential to preserving the value of our networks and to any future growth strategy,” Mr. Rolando said in a statement. “Degrading standards not only hurts the public and the businesses we serve, it’s also counterproductive for the Postal Service because it will drive more people away from using the mail.”þþAccording to the postal officials, 42 percent of first-class mail is currently delivered the following day, while 27 percent is delivered in two days. About 31 percent arrives in three days and less than 1 percent is delivered in four to five days.þþPostal officials said on Monday that after processing centers were closed in the spring, slightly more than half of all first-class mail would be delivered in two days, with most of the rest arriving in three days.þþSenator Thomas Carper, Democrat of Delaware and chairman of the Senate subcommittee that oversees the Postal Service, said, “Today’s announcement is another grim reminder that we must act quickly if we want to save the Postal Service.”þþ“We still have a lot of work that needs to be done in order to find a comprehensive solution to the Postal Service’s serious financial problems,” he added.þþThe Postal Service said there would still be opportunities for companies that properly prepare and drop off mail at the destination’s processing center to get it delivered the following day. Mr. Donahoe said Netflix officials had told him they would seek to do this to assure many next-day deliveries. A Netflix spokesman declined to comment.þþClosing the processing centers would increase the delivery time of newspapers and other periodicals, which are considered periodical mail rather than first-class mail, to two to nine days, up from the current one to eight days.þþPaul Boyle, senior vice president for public policy at the Newspaper Association of America, said, “If you’re in the daily newspaper business and you want your newspaper to reach readers, it does no good to have your Tuesday edition delivered on Thursday reporting on Monday’s news. It’s not timely enough. The Postal Service was put together to bind the nation together and newspapers were a key component of what the Postal Service’s mission was.”þþBut Sue Brennan, a Postal Service spokeswoman, said the changes would probably have minimal impact on the average customer.þþ“Most customers don’t know when mail they received was sent,” she said. “Right now it takes two days to send mail from D.C. to New York. That won’t change. D.C. to California is three days. That won’t change.”þþBut she said that sending mail from one borough of New York City to another or from Washington to Northern Virginia would generally increase to two days, from one.
Source: NY Times
