Study: People like getting snail mail
By Jennifer Liberto, CNN Money
WASHINGTON — Americans dearly love getting their mail daily. But they can’t say what they’d miss if the U.S. Postal Service disappeared.
“People seemed to sense that the Postal Service disappearing would be a bad thing, but they had trouble articulating more specifically how this would affect them personally,” the report from the U.S. Postal Service Office Inspector General says.
The inspector general’s office commissioned the report, which posed questions to 101 people in 10 focus groups nationwide. It summed up the answers in the white paper called: “What America Wants and Needs from the Postal Service.”
I think if the USPS allowed Fed Ex and UPS and any other new start-ups that might appear to handle letters, service would be better. Competition is always good for business.
Just came from the post office today and to mail a small shoebox size package they wanted $19.00. That is a rip off and with the costs that high to send a pretty small package they will surely go under. I opted to not send the package that way. Gonna send gift cards for now on.
Want to solve the problems of the USPS? End street delivery.
Using a sample of 101 people to speak for over 300 million is ridiculous !
The post office should move mail and deliver it 7 days a week, even on holidays.
I am one of the biggest fans of snail mail. A great deal of our history has been preserved via letters written and kept. How many of us know how our parents/grandparents courted by the letters we discovered after they’ve gone? I have a notebook of father’s letters to my mother that he sent to her all through WWII. What a different view of life that I would never have known without those handwritten treasures.
Opening a letter, reading someone’s thoughts, savoring and saving that correspondence, and then rereading it later is irreplaceable.
I have traveled the world, and sent snail mail from numerous countries. The USPS still has the title of BEST, as far as I can determine.
Next time you get the gift of a handwritten note, amongst all your bills and ads, see if it doesn’t make you smile. It is a treasure that is worth the 49¢.
Ditto to Denise’s comments.
I probably spend $30 a month on cards – birthday, anniversary, etc (to people I don’t exchange gifts with) to which I always add a note. .49 is a bargain to send them across the country and a little more to relatives in Europe. UPS and FedX package service are competitive with USPS (in fact last time I checked they were more expensive and prohibitive for overseas). I’ve seen enough hacking that I don’t pay bills online. There is a reason the package services don’t try to replace mail is they can’t compete with either cost or service.
Has anyone else noticed the junk mail has stopped?
I use to have to take the trash can out to the mailbox,now next to nothing. Have the advertisers figured out only 15% or 20% percent of the homes have full time residents and most of them are broke?