• Wait a minute, Mr. Postman: New mail delivery schedule raises eyebrows

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    By Daniel Arkin, Staff Writer, NBC News

    NEW YORK -- The United States Postal Service says Americans have already voted with their wallets about the decision to cut delivery of first-class mail on Saturdays: package deliveries are up, but letter volume has dropped off a cliff, a victim of our growing reliance on email and social media.

    But you wouldn’t know that from the reaction of customers at a Manhattan post office Wednesday. Whether because they perceive the new delivery schedule to be an inconvenience or because they feel like they've lost another vital service during tough economic times, people still want their Saturday mail.

    For Hela Borer, who dropped by a USPS branch on the Upper West Side shortly after the news broke, the move is a raw deal for Americans who work long or unusual shifts on weekdays. Borer, who didn't specify what she did for a living but said she works "crazy hours" Monday through Friday, argued she has little opportunity to send or read letters before the end of the business week.

    "I never get a chance to look over my mail," Borer said. "If they don't deliver on Saturday, they just lost one customer."

    A totally unscientific online poll by NBC News shows something different, however. About 62 percent of the respondents say they could not care less if the postman showed up at their mailbox on Saturday. Emails and Facebook messages don't take a day off, after all.

    Even though Borer can use Saturdays to sort through mail that's accumulated over the previous five days, the new delivery schedule irks her.

    Isaac Pontier said that USPS's plan is a major inconvenience for people who look forward to snail mail correspondence during weekends, no matter the pervasiveness of digital communication tools.

    "It's just not okay. It's just not fair for people like me," Pontier said. "The weekends are the only days I have off!"

    Patrick R. Donahoe, postmaster general and CEO, said at a Wednesday morning news conference that the agency will continue to deliver packages, mail-order medicine and express mail on Saturdays. But letters, bills, cards, and catalogs won't get to their recipients until Monday.

    "The Postal Service is advancing an important new approach to delivery that reflects the strong growth of our package business and responds to the financial realities resulting from America's changing mailing habits," Donahoe said at the conference.

    The cost-cutting move is slated to save the cash-strapped agency $2 billion a year.

    Savings or not, Sharon Lynch said she was "incredibly disappointed" with the new delivery policy, which is scheduled to take effect in August.

    "Every time I come to use the post office, I hear they're taking away a service," Lynch said at New York City's historic James Farley Post Office.

    Tamiko Bell-Bacchus, 37, struck a more mournful note on her way out of the city landmark.

    "Everyone grows up with mail delivery. It's so commonplace," Bell-Bacchus said. "But I guess now that most people use email and everything is electronic, the post office has become the dinosaur of our age."

    The whole argument may be moot, though, if Congress doesn't agree to the change. It's not clear whether the USPS can unilaterally change its delivery schedule. Donahoe said he feels that the agency, which is independent but overseen by Congress, can get lawmakers to approve the changes.

    "We think we are on good footing with this," he said.

    Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe announced a major Postal Service operational restructuring change that eliminates delivery of letters, bills, cards and catalogs on Saturdays. However, packages, mail-order medicine, and express mail will continue to be delivered on the sixth day.

     

  • California's Little Saigon post office feels like home to Vietnamese

    By Jacob Rascon, NBCLosAngeles.com

    As email becomes the norm and fewer people use traditional mail, the U.S. Post Office in Westminster, Calif.’s Little Saigon neighborhood is an anomaly.


    Consider it an unofficial hangout of the world’s oldest, largest, most well-established Vietnamese-American community. It’s a place where nearly 10,000 transactions still take place each month and Global Express Service recently outsold every other U.S. Post Office in the country.

    "People feel like this is home," said Raymond Tran, who’s going on his 21st year at the office. "They need help and I’m here to help."

    Here, hundreds of customers skip larger, closer and less-busy post offices across Southern California to connect with the Vietnamese-American community in Little Saigon.

    Read the story at NBCLosAngeles.com

    They send care packages around the world, especially Vietnam, and across the country to their Vietnamese relatives. They also send critical immigration paperwork.

    For Tran, known for his high-pitched, infectious laugh, becoming a postal worker has been a goal since he was a teenager.

    "We left for freedom," Tran said of his escape from Vietnam when he was 14. "We lost communication with my parents, my brother."

    Tran spent a year in a refugee camp in Malaysia wondering if his parents, still in Vietnam, survived. He anxiously waited to hear his name during mail call, hoping for a letter from his parents.

    Few letters arrived. Tran later learned the letters had been lost in the mail, and he decided then to dedicate his life to making a difference.

    "I have a dream in Malaysia that one day I will be a mailman or something to deliver the mail. Everybody happy to get a piece of mail," he said.

    Thirty-five years later, not losing mail remains a priority for Tran, who is married with two adult children who graduated from Southern California universities.

    "Nobody helps me except here," Robert Ho, of Santa Ana, said when asked why didn’t go to a closer post office. "He helped me get my package back. The package lost in the mail was worth $500, and he got it back.”

    Nearby businesses also value the unlikely hangout. Michael Vo moved his insurance business next door 20 years ago and said he has no regrets.

    Tran’s supervisors also laud his performance and have filled his workplace drawers with awards for outstanding service.

    "Customers value the service they get from employees at this office, especially Raymond Tran," U.S. Postal Service spokesman Richard Maher said.

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  • Postal Service ban on overseas delivery of iPads, smart phones hits troops


    By Jeff Black, Staff Writer, NBC News

    Starting Wednesday, it will cost more to send iPads, Kindles, smartphones and other popular electronic devices to American troops overseas.

    New United States Postal Service (USPS) rules restrict the international mailing of devices using lithium batteries, which power most personal electronics. Lithium batteries can explode in certain circumstances and have been implicated in at least two major incidents involving cargo planes — one in 2006 when a UPS jet was destroyed, and the other in 2010 when a UPS jet crashed at a military base, killing both pilots.

    USPS based its decision on guidelines set the International Civil Aviation Organization and the Universal Postal Union. The groups issue guidelines for global trade.

    Military families or companies wanting to mail electronic devices overseas will instead have to use private carriers such as UPS or FedEx, neither of which ship directly to APO, FPO or DPO boxes used by service members. Though FedEx does ship directly to service members overseas, it can cost more than three times USPS rates.

    That is going to hurt troops, iPads for Soldiers founder Winnie Pritchett, who since 2009 has mailed more than 700 iPads to troops in Afghanistan, told msnbc.com.

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    Pritchett started the nonprofit when her son, a helicopter pilot, was deployed in the war zone in Afghanistan. At first she started shipping Amazon Kindles to hospitalized soldiers on the front lines, then switched to the iPad because it was more versatile. Since then, deployed troops have used the devices to store military manuals, keep in touch with families and watch movies. And hospitalized soldiers with post-traumatic stress have even used apps for meditation to help their condition, she said.

    Receiving the iPads is a morale boost, Pritchett told msnbc.com, noting the devices are easy to use by soldiers who have lost limbs from improvised-explosive device blasts.

    “Better than sending them beef jerky or something like that, it’s a useful tool to help the morale,” Pritchett said. “And to let them know we truly appreciate them.”

    Since finding out about the tightened USPS regulations last week, Pritchett and iPads for Soldiers volunteers in Key Biscayne, Fla., have been frantically shipping out the devices. Pritchett hopes to get the lithium-battery ban overturned.

    The strict rules may be temporary. On Jan. 1, 2013, USPS says, "Customers will be able to mail specific quantities of lithium batteries internationally ... when the batteries are properly installed in the personal electronic devices they are intended to operate."

    Meantime, Pritchett said she is exploring other shipping options as she receives some 2,000 requests a month for iPads.

    USPS spokeswoman Darlene Casey told msnbc.com the Postal Service is "working with expert organizations to determine if any new exceptions can be developed" before January 2013.

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  • Bye-bye snail mail? Readers weigh in on saving the U.S. Postal Service

    By Jeff Black, Staff Writer, NBC News

    It wasn’t long ago, before texting, instant messaging, email, web chat and cheap long-distance phone calls, that a trip to the mailbox was a highly anticipated event. Letters from family and friends and surprise packages awaited. And sending a check in the mail was one of the only ways to pay your bills.


    That all has changed, of course, with mobile phones, tablets and laptop computers instantly passing around messages and pictures, and online bill paying taking care of much of the rest.

    As the Senate debates the fate of the venerable U.S. Postal Service, many msnbc.com users on Facebook think they could do without “snail mail.” Others say it's become more a delivery mechanism for the advertising fliers, credit-card offerings and sweepstakes invitations that stuff their mailbox each day (and for which no software filter is available).

    Weigh in on Facebook about the Postal Service’s fate

    “If it wasn’t for crap junk mail, I wouldn’t get mail at all,” said Liza Roosa. “Everything I do is online.”

    “All I get these days is junk mail,” lamented Peggy Brent Finnegan.

    And Don Hodge suggested, “Yawn. Turn it over to private enterprise, have advertisers who still believe in direct mail subsidize the whole thing.”

    Other see the winding down of the Postal Service as an inevitable evolution of technology.

    Hundreds of thousands of jobs are at stake in the GOP assault on the post office. The Senate took up a bill to postpone the agony of cuts, but it's not a long-term solution. Ed Schultz thinks Democrats should take a page out of the Michele Bachmann playbook on this fight.

    “Cassettes killed Records, CDs killed Cassettes, MP3 players killed CDs and the Internet (and email and online bill paying) killed the United States Postal Service!” said Jorma J. Takala.

    Still, many point out that the postal delivery is a vital lifeline for poor people without Internet service, patients who receive medications through the mail and for those living in rural areas without broadband.

    “There still are people who don't have internet,” Lisa McGee of Allentown, Pa., said on Facebook. “What of them?”

    “I don't know but why would anybody want to get rid of the Postal Service. There are people out there still depend on the mail because of bills and checks that old people received because they don't have computers or they don't have access or don't know to use,” said Paul Thompson.

    One thing is for certain. Many think Congress should be able to figure out a way to save a federal agency that reaches all Americans.

    “The postal service is a vital part of the American economy and it should be kept,” said Annette Pratt Mansaray of Puyallup, Wash.

    “We need our post offices,” said Christy Robin Golden, of Bassett, Va.

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