Wednesday, March 24, 2021

Yes, Louis DeJoy is still around, with a "plan" to make USPS service slower and more expensive


I generally trust USPS making on-time deliveries more than I do Amazon’s in-house logistics service, but when there is a screw-up, it tends to be a really “big” one. At least with Amazon, if a delivery is “lost” between A and B, they provide “options” meant to avoid alienating customers. But with USPS, if an item gets “lost” in the shuffle, you have no “options,” and USPS is usually loathe to spend any time “correcting” the problem. For example, I purchased an overpriced item from an Ebay seller who shipped the package “first class” from New York on the 17th, with delivery scheduled for the 22nd. By that day, the tracking stated that it hadn’t even left the New York hub.

I filed a “where’s my package” search, and quickly received an insulting and offensive email reply from a local “carrier technician” named Rachael Mathwig, who claimed that the issue was “resolved” and the case was closed, and added that “it isn’t unusual” for first class packages to take 2-3 weeks to be delivered. Yeah, just pile-on more bullshit to make me even more upset. Today there was still no updated tracking, still just a notation dated on the 21st that the package would be delivered “late.” I decided to call customer service to either get them to admit it was “lost” or to actually do something to find out what happened to it. The CS person admitted that it was “surprising” that the case had been “resolved” without providing any information that would justify calling it “resolved,” and she promised to “escalate” the investigation to a New York district manager.  Word to the wise: call—don’t email—your concerns about the service if you don’t want them ignored.

Problems like this may soon no longer be just the occasional mishap. Remember Louis DeJoy, the present Postmaster General who was the first in that position in decades who had no qualifications or experience in the position? His only “qualification” for the position in the eyes of the man who put him in the position, Donald Trump, was that he was a major Republican donor—you know, like the former U.S. ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland. Of course, DeJoy also was “concerned” about what he could get out of the job personally for himself, which was converting some USPS services into the private sector, which at least one company he had an interest in could benefit.

Some of us may recall that there were concerns about DeJoy’s actions that displayed “reckless incompetence” that was likely “intentional.” There was the cutting of hours, the destruction of sorting machines, and allowing mail trucks to leave empty. Because of that, a high percentage of priority and first class mail packages were seeing delivery delays. It was charged that DeJoy was deliberately trying to sabotage the delivery system in order to delay and prevent the timely delivery and counting of mail-in ballots, which would be assumed to favor Democrats in the 2020 election.

DeJoy denied that his actions were designed to effect the election in Trump’s favor, although one suspects that this was indeed Trump’s expectation of him. After expressions of outrage in the media and by Democratic politicians, DeJoy announced that he was delaying the implementation of his “reforms”—except that the removal of sorting machines already in the process would not be put back together and returned to service, even brand new machines. Some post office workers even reported that they were told to stop recalibrating new machines to begin operation by supervisors who claimed that they had received instruction to continue the demolition process.

Nevertheless, despite isolate reports of boxes of ballots left unattended before election day, it appears that whatever efforts were made to “alter” the election by DeJoy went for naught, and rather surprisingly DeJoy himself wasn’t a target for enabling “fraud” by Trump or any of his election witch hunters. This probably explains why DeJoy still has a job, although reports are that Joe Biden hopes to fill three vacancies on the USPS board, which would give Democratic appointees a 5-4 majority to decide the fate of DeJoy and his current “reform” proposals, which certainly gives one cause for alarm.

According to a report by NPR, DeJoy is “calling for longer delivery times for some first-class mail, shorter hours for some post offices and more expensive postal rates—all part of a 10-year reorganization plan.” DeJoy’s “plan” would cut hours at an undisclosed number of post offices, and close an undisclosed number of other offices. Executive vice president Kristen Seaver defended the actions, claiming that only the “fringes” of the network were affected, and that the changes would essentially “only” reduce on-time delivery for first class mail by one-third, which is frankly already a “big” number to start with, and could actually go even higher if postal employees are under no pressure to make “on-time” deliveries.

First class mail traveling from one coast to another “might” take at least five days no matter what the extra cost of the shipping; “might” in this case is just a euphemism for “probably will.” This included delays in the delivery of prescription drugs, financial documents and bills, which of course are a hair above being mere “annoyances.” The previous “promise” of USPS was to deliver 96 percent of first class mail in 2-3 days; if DeJoy has his way, that “promise” will become “yeah, right.”

DeJoy claims this is a “very positive” vision for the future. Yes, USPS continues to hemorrhage money, but the mandate by a Republican-controlled Congress to force the service to “prepay” health costs for future retirees didn’t help (DeJoy claims that USPS owes $80 billion in unfunded liabilities). This requirement was seen by many at the time as just another funding headache imposed by Republicans as a way to force USPS into a “private” company model, outsource some services, and to raise prices to allow private carriers to be more “competitive.”

Not everything that DeJoy is proposing will negatively affect service. His proposal to persuade lawmakers to ditch the pre-funding requirement in favor of forcing retirees to accept Medicare is long overdue. $40 billion in capital improvements to “modernize” delivery is being proposed, including deploying “next generation” carrier vehicles and creating a GPS tracking system for consumers, like the one Amazon provides (and hopefully a more “accurate” system). There is also a proposal to make it easier for customers to schedule the time and place of deliveries.  Of course prices will have to rise to meet the goal of putting USPS in the “black” eventually.

To be honest, DeJoy talks like a “businessman” who justifiably believes that the Post Office needs to be “streamlined” to run more “efficiently. But this doesn’t jibe with the massive reduction in sorting machines—especially brand new machines—that are meant to make processing mail more efficient. Not only that, but by reducing both sorting machines and the people to operate them and the hours they work doesn’t precisely sound like the right way to “improve” efficiency—especially for service in rural areas.

Whether or not DeJoy keeps his job long enough to implement his proposals remains to be seen. Last month, LA Times business reporter Michael Hiltzik wondered why he was still around, since even the Republic majority on the USPS board had “ample” reasons to fire him. DeJoy admitted to implementing changes without properly examining their impact on service. In 2019, 92 percent of first-class mail delivery was “on-time” during the Christmas season; in 2020, it was down to 64 percent. Yes, you might expect delivery services to be a little slower during holidays—but not a lot slower. The problem with DeJoy’s current proposals is that they don’t promise to improve service, but to make it slower and more expensive, with just “cosmetic” improvements and cost-cutting to justify it. 


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