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Note to reader (Sep 2001): this web page has gone out-of-date to some extent since it was written. There have been several rate increases since then, terminology for various mail classes has changed, and the USPS has put up a very useful web site. I don't have the inclination to go through the page right now and make all the appropriate modifications. I'll let the original open letter stand for the time being as a testament to the way things were, ca. 1997.

But I do have a few more things to say to the USPS. First, I have found out through a friend who is a postal employee that you do not allow flat, rigid items in a letter. I ran a test and sent him a compact disk (without a case) in an envelope. Sure enough, you broke it. I think back to the times I tried to send a computer diskette in an envelope - and they always arrived broken. I attributed it to rough handling; I couldn't imagine your machines were actually designed to destroy thin, flat, sturdy items.

This is unacceptable to the point of insanity, or criminality at least. I can't believe your machinery has to be designed so that each and every letter that comes through must be bent. C'mon, everywhere else in the package handling world, rigidity is preferable to floppiness! I suggest that when you redesign your machines, use CDs, computer diskettes, and cassette tapes, all without the cases, in an envelope as test items. (There's an irony here in that cassette and CD cases are much more fragile items than the items they were designed to protect.) Surely, if your machine can destroy items that flat and sturdy, you might as well market it as a trash compactor.

Another point is, how come you can't at least tell us what we can't do? Why should the rules and regulations of the USPS be such a mystery? You come to my house every day, why can't you slip a small sheet of things we need to know in my mailbox? You occasionally send out complex, gaudily colored, stamps-by-mail envelopes, so you can't use expense as an excuse.

Secondly, I was in a post office a few days ago to buy what I call "extra-ounce" stamps. That seems perfectly clear to me, and I can hardly imagine anything clearer. In fact, I thought I had gotten the term from the USPS itself somewhere along the line, although it always stymies postal clerks. In this case, I tried to clarify myself by saying, "you know, 21 cent-ers." That's risky, because I always have the darndest time trying to remember which is the post card rate and which is the extra-ounce rate. After much discussion with the clerk, to the point that I was feeling very bad for the people in line behind me, she finally got it through my head - very politely - that the stamps I wanted were now 23 cents - that the rates had gone up July 1 2001.

Point no. 1: How could I have been kept unaware of the rate increase? As argued above, you come right to my door every day- and you can't slip a flimsy little sheet of new postal rates in my mailbox??? It's not like you don't have a direct line of communication with your customers - I can't think of a business with a more direct line!

Point no. 2: After almost 3 months the post office still had not gotten in any of the stamps of the new denomination!!! (They didn't have any of the old, either. Am I the only person who uses extra-ounce stamps? How come they're not loaded in your vending machines?) It's not like your own rate increases take you by surprise. Can't you time them with the availability of the new stamps?

Point No. 3: This is more idealistic than the two specific points above. It's obvious you're going down the tubes - the rate increases are coming faster and furiouser than ever. You might want to have a talk with your employees about greed. Let them know that, sure, you'll give them everything they demand for their cushy jobs, but that when the whole thing collapses there won't be any money or benefits for anybody.

Thirdly, about that "extremely reliable" compliment at the beginning of my letter below: I used to be your biggest defender, never believing the grumblers who go around blaming the USPS for this, that and the other lost piece of mail. I always maintained that if you print a valid address clearly, and supply a clearly printed return address, the chance of a letter being lost is virtually zero. After all, I didn't recall ever in my life losing one, either incoming or outgoing. I probably wouldn't come out and say it to someone's face, but I would always at least mentally accuse the complainer himself of carelessness. Think about it: How often do you see a hand-addressed envelope that shows that the writer took any pains to be neat? (To be honest, I think hardly anyone makes an effort to be really careful at anything.)

Anyhow, that's all changed now. In August 2001 I sent my mother an envelope which never got to her. It only had to go from a Washington DC suburb up to a Baltimore suburb. It contained an old and somewhat treasured document that I had borrowed. I know the letter was addressed correctly. I know the address was printed in block capitals. I know I stuck on a preprinted return address label. I know it never got there. My world was altered forever.

Then my mom told me she had recently sent a check to my sister in northern Virginia which never got there. My mom is a long-time letter writer, and I know her addresses are more legible than any machine-printed ones.

And then it occurred to me, in the previous 5 months two of my gas bills never came. Maybe one you could blame on a glitch at the utility, but two???

And then it occurred to me, my sister told me she never got the letter I sent to her in Florida the previous Christmas (2000).

And THEN it occurred to me, how come in the 20 years I've been living here, I've happily hand-delivered mail dozens of times to other households in the neighborhood which was dropped off at my house by mistake - but no more than 2 or 3 times have neighbors brought my mail that got mixed in with theirs? Just how much of my mail is being pitched into neighbor's waste baskets?

Note that all of these incidents predate September 11, 2001 and can't be blamed on that. My confidence in the US Mail has taken a terrific beating and now my heart jumps up into my throat whenever it comes time to release my grip and let a letter drop into a mailbox.

Fourthly, what in the world are you, a company giving every sign of going down the tubes, giving away free mailers and boxes for??? I should have to subsidized the wastefulness of my fellow Americans?

Dear U.S. Postal Service (USPS),

First of all, a compliment: I find your delivery to be extremely reliable and more-than-speedy enough for my purposes.

The cost is not yet outrageous, but I'm afraid it's heading that direction. We used to be Number 1. Then you were reduced to gushing how few countries had cheaper rates than us. It won't be long before you're bragging that U.S. postal prices are "within the top 50% of all nations!" Whoopee.

My big complaint is that you do a poor job of communicating in plain terms what services you offer - and that's putting it very gently. I devote a Web page to the matter because of the unbelievably, stupendously, breathtakingly bad job you do. World class. Absolutely staggering. Phenomenal. Mindboggling. Simply amazing.

How hard can it be? You only offer a tiny handful of services. Compare that with other companies which offer perhaps hundreds of products.

I challenge you to a surprise quiz. Close your books and take out your pencil.

Here are some mail classes. Which are equivalent? Which are subcategories of which others? Go.

Special Standard Mail
Parcel Post
Fourth-Class Mail
Standard Mail (B)
Book Rate
Special Fourth-Class

Time's up. Anyhow, you're off the hook. I can't grade your quiz because I don't know the answers myself. I don't feel stupid because your employees can't sort it out, either. I know some.

When I go to mail a package Special Standard Mail

(formerly Special Fourth-Class, a subcategory of Standard Mail (B), formerly Fourth-Class, equated to Parcel Post in your Consumer's Guide, although just a subcategory in your Postal Bulletin. Got it? I didn't think so.)

the computer at the post office shows Book Rate. This is either the same thing, or at least has the same pricing, so that's ok. The only damage derives from my need to make sense of things.

But that's if I'm lucky. More often than not, some class pops up on the computer which costs a lot more than the Special Standard Mail. I always bring a load of USPS publications to show the clerk the price I had expected. I doubt many people go to that trouble and are completely at the mercy of your computers and your employees' key-punching fingers.

Notice that this rant hasn't even touched on the more important question of what kind of items can be mailed in each class, and how the various classes compare with respect to delivery time, and what happens in case the piece is undeliverable.

Once I went to mail a packet of newsletters in a big envelope via Special Standard Mail. The computer showed Book Rate. The clerk yanked out one of the newsletters and declared it wasn't a book. Sure seemed like a book to me, and, moreover, what should it matter since I was just mailing a generic package Parcel Post?

In the old days, I tried to use Bound Printed Matter, figuring naively that it was bound, it was printed, and it was matter. No, no, no. "Bound Printed Matter" turns out to be USPS-speak for "catalogs". (By the way, I've caught the Federal Election Commission using this class for definitely non-catalog material. Naughty, naughty, naughty!)

The point is, could you please wipe the slate clean and devise useful classes with reasonably descriptive names? What I as a consumer need to know when I want to mail something, anything - a package containing a book, bottle of shampoo and a letter, for example - is what options are available to me. Then I will make a choice (if there are any) based on price and projected delivery time.

Also, USPS publications heap on everything you've got to offer - both business-type classes and normal-people-type classes. Why not produce separate booklets so the masses don't ever have to stew over whether they can mail something Second Class or Library Rate, etc.?

(Second-Class sure sounds like something between First- and Third-Class, doesn't it? And both of those classes are available to normal people. Second-Class rates are available to publishers. Can anyone with access to a copy machine call himself a publisher, I wonder? By the way, why does Third-Class exist when it costs the same as First-Class and has a slower delivery time?)

A few definitions of your acronyms and jargon (for example, Intra-BMC, ASF, zone) right in the publication that uses them would be greatly appreciated.

This isn't asking for too much.

Is it?

On a different topic, do you know how hard it is for the common man to come up with the Zip codes that are oh-so-important to you? In the past, I have had very poor luck using the phone number for Zip codes under USPS in the phone book. (Perhaps that has gotten better now.) Even my local post offices don't have Zip code directories available to the public. One would almost think that Zip codes are classified information. Buying the big, fat 2-volume set for the whole U.S. does not make sense for the typical person.

My suggestion is this. Team up with the local phone company to include a complete, local Zip code directory in every white-page phone directory. This only makes sense, since the phone directory provides the rest of the mailing address. How many pages could it take?

Local Zip code directories are all that people would generally need. If you are mailing something out of your area, you almost certainly got the Zip code along with the address you are mailing to. If for some reason you dug the address out of a non-local phone book, well, there would be a Zip code directory right in that phone book.

That's all that comes to mind right now. Thanks for your consideration.

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