Fun_People Archive
21 Apr
Post office follies

Date: Thu, 21 Apr 94 23:39:39 PDT
To: Fun_People
Subject: Post office follies

Forwarded-by: lou@orange.metron.com (Lou Katz)
From: the San Francisco Chronicle about 2 weeks ago:

Postal Service Drops 2-Day Deliver Promise

Washington - The Postal Service no longer will promise to deliver Priority
Mail envelopews within two days.
     Postmaster General Marvin T. Runyon said yesterday that he has ordered
all advertising with the two-day claim to be dropped because too much of the
two-day mail cannot be delivered within that time. He directed postal
officials to destroy all the red-white-and-blue envelopes bearing the two-day
delivery claim, at a cost of $185,000.
     Priority Mail, which costs $2.90, is one of the fastest-growing postal
services, and Runyon said the agency remains committed to it. The agency now
delivers 84 percent of the envelopes within two days, but that is not good
enough, he said.
     Runyon did not say how good the service will have to become before the
two-day claim can be restored, but he did promise that "we will not resume it
until we can meet it with a high degree of consistency."

[I remember when businesses in NYC got 3 deliveries per day, and when an
ordinary letter mailed in the morning would be delivered that afternoon for
3 cents!. LK]

© 1994 Peter Langston