Trump Wants Postal Service to Charge “Much More” for Amazon Shipments

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With the agency losing billions of dollars a year, the President thinks that the USPS should start charging Amazon more for utilizing its shipping services. The Postal Service is Amazon’s number one carrier, delivering “about 62 percent of Amazon packages, for about 3.5 to 4 million a day during the current peak year-end holiday shipping season.”

“Why is the United States Post Office, which is losing many billions of dollars a year, while charging Amazon and others so little to deliver their packages, making Amazon richer and the Post Office dumber and poorer? Should be charging MUCH MORE!” Trump wrote on Twitter. The U.S. Postal Service, which runs at a big loss, is an independent agency within the federal government and does not receive tax dollars for operating expenses.
 
It's perfectly reasonable to ask why the taxpayer is subsidizing every package Amazon sends via the USPS.

Even worse is that China is classified as a "developing country" by the international postal commission, which requires the USPS to absorb the costs for delivering Chinese parcels within the US. This is why you can buy some LED's from Shenzhen for 50 cents and they come with "free shipping" to the USA, again paid for by the US taxpayer.

I benefit from these things, since I buy everything on line, but that doesn't make it right.
 
I heard this before and I agree, that is fine by me. Although I would not be surprised if they try to simply charge you and I more and then charge Amazon the same old, same old.
 
USPS undercharges everyone, not just Amazon.

UPS and FedEx are very profitable. Primarily because they don't mail envelopes for pennies. Delivering mail to every address in America is just stupid in this day and age.
 
Trump's just got a bone to pick with Bezos, he's jealous because he's better looking, way richer, a better business man, and can speak English in complete sentences.

That said all it would do is take the business from USPS and give it back to ups/FedEx. Delivering Amazon packages is the least if their issues.
 
GlowingGhoul said:
It's perfectly reasonable to ask why the taxpayer is subsidizing every package Amazon sends via the USPS.
Click to expand...

Easy solution: Privatize the USPS and remove its government mandated monopoly on mailbox delivery. If they fail at that point then other services will pick up the slack. No more worrying about tax payer money going to the USPS.
 
bos said:
Trump's just got a bone to pick with Bezos, he's jealous because he's better looking, way richer, a better business man, and can speak English in complete sentences.

That said all it would do is take the business from USPS and give it back to ups/FedEx. Delivering Amazon packages is the least if their issues.
Click to expand...

Well, that sure didn't take long. Guess this thread derailment will be worse than the one in the State of Washington. :D
 
If USPS is to charge more then hopefully they improve their shitty service as well. Never had as many issues with FedEx or UPS than with USPS. Not even close.
 
Derangel said:
Easy solution: Privatize the USPS and remove its government mandated monopoly on mailbox delivery. If they fail at that point then other services will pick up the slack. No more worrying about tax payer money going to the USPS.
Click to expand...

It really is this simple. The real problem is once the government is involved with ANYTHING they refuse to release control over it.
 
Derangel said:
Easy solution: Privatize the USPS and remove its government mandated monopoly on mailbox delivery. If they fail at that point then other services will pick up the slack. No more worrying about tax payer money going to the USPS.
Click to expand...

USPS is not tax payer funded. In fact the gov has raided USPS just like social security to pay for other shit. I
 
bos said:
USPS is not tax payer funded. In fact the gov has raided USPS just like social security to pay for other shit. I
Click to expand...

The USPS is able to borrow over $15 billion from the US treasury at an extremely low interest rate (1.2%). It is not directly tax payer funded, but tax payers do shoulder the burden when they borrow money. The government also gives them $2.8 BILLION in tax breaks per year.

http://fortune.com/2015/03/27/us-postal-service/
 
USPS isn't losing money on Amazon shipments, it's one of their biggest sources of revenue. Once again our POTUS tweets without asking anyone around him for facts. The biggest revenue loss for USPS stems from the congressional restrictions placed on them. They are forbidden from charging competitive rates on large package shipping, because Congress doesn't want them competing with FedEx etcetera. They attempted to reduce hours to bring labor costs under control and ended up having to service 7 days a week. They deliver envelopes to everywhere in the US in 3 days or less at cost and have not been allowed to raise prices to balance out increasing costs or carry a surplus to handle future cost increases. The Postal Service has it's issues, but if you just look through how badly Congress has beaten them up over the last 20 years, it's a damn miracle they manage to do what they do.
 
exlink said:
If USPS is to charge more then hopefully they improve their shitty service as well. Never had as many issues with FedEx or UPS than with USPS. Not even close.
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I personally have never had issues with USPS. UPS on the other hand is constantly delivering items late, to the wrong address, or not at all.
 
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bos said:
Trump's just got a bone to pick with Bezos, he's jealous because he's better looking, way richer, a better business man, and can speak English in complete sentences.

That said all it would do is take the business from USPS and give it back to ups/FedEx. Delivering Amazon packages is the least if their issues.
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I mean sure your other points may have merit, but this one is lol. I think that's a stalemate, unless the bond-villian/Dr.Evil look is in this holiday season ?
 
Derangel said:
The USPS is able to borrow over $15 billion from the US treasury at an extremely low interest rate (1.2%). It is not directly tax payer funded, but tax payers do shoulder the burden when they borrow money. The government also gives them $2.8 BILLION in tax breaks per year.

http://fortune.com/2015/03/27/us-postal-service/
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Lol. You read 1 article eh, and didn't even really understand it.
 
IcePickFreak said:
I mean sure your other points may have merit, but this one is lol. I think that's a stalemate, unless the bond-villian/Dr.Evil look is in this holiday season ?
Click to expand...

Neither is conventionally good looking, but Trump has literally nothing going for him. At least Bezos is in decent shape and doesn't have a shitty combover.
 
EchtoGammut said:
USPS isn't losing money on Amazon shipments, it's one of their biggest sources of revenue. Once again our POTUS tweets without asking anyone around him for facts. The biggest revenue loss for USPS stems from the congressional restrictions placed on them. They are forbidden from charging competitive rates on large package shipping, because Congress doesn't want them competing with FedEx etcetera. They attempted to reduce hours to bring labor costs under control and ended up having to service 7 days a week. They deliver envelopes to everywhere in the US in 3 days or less at cost and have not been allowed to raise prices to balance out increasing costs or carry a surplus to handle future cost increases. The Postal Service has it's issues, but if you just look through how badly Congress has beaten them up over the last 20 years, it's a damn miracle they manage to do what they do.
Click to expand...

Once again another pussyhat wearer makes knee jerk statements in a sloppy rush to attack the President. IN 2013 Amazon demanded the USPS provide Sunday delivery as a regular service. Nice, deceptive wording you have there to suggest it was congress that forced the USPS to take on an additional burden. It was the Obama administration's cozy relationship with Bezos that helped push this through. I'm sure Bezos buying the official Democrat cheerleader newspaper in the same year had nothing to do with this, no quid pro quo, right?


By DAN MITCHELL
November 13, 2013

FORTUNE — Why does Amazon’s new deal with the U.S. Postal Service to provide Sunday deliveries to Amazon Prime customers seem so unsettling? I can think of three reasons: the exclusivity (we’ll get mail on Sundays, but only mail from Amazon); the dynamic of a private enterprise hiring out a government agency as a contractor; and the fact that, as the Wall Street Journal put it, the deal is a “marriage of one of the country’s most successful enterprises with one of its most troubled.”

Amazon and the Postal Service are both mum on the deal’s details, so it’s difficult to answer many of the questions that it raises. Such as: How much will it help shore up the USPS’s losses, estimated to be $3.9 billion so far this year? Will other companies be able to make similar deals? If so, will smaller companies also be able to get in on the action? What will the deal do for Amazon’s bottom line as investors increasingly clamor for better results? Why didn’t Amazon choose a private delivery service to partner with?


The postal service is losing billions in the aggregate. What they are charging for their services does not cover their expenses. You can't attribute that loss to any specific USPS service, it's a systemic issue. Amazon benefits disproportionately from that situation, and the losses would be lower if they hadn't had to make specific changes Amazon required them to, like purchasing much larger vehicles, and making Sunday delivery a regular service. Read the agreement Amazon made with the USPS and it's clear the additional expenses incurred by the USPS are definitely contributing to its loss and profiting from artificially low rates.
 
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[QUOTE="Delivering mail to every address in America is just stupid in this day and age.[/QUOTE]

I just got my mail 2 minutes ago: One piece of cell phone spamvertising. Ridiculous.
 
GlowingGhoul said:
Once again another pussyhat wearer makes knee jerk statements in a sloppy rush to attack the President. IN 2013 Amazon demanded the USPS provide Sunday delivery as a regular service. Nice, deceptive wording you have there to suggest it was congress that forced the USPS to take on an additional burden. It was the Obama administration's cozy relationship with Bezos that helped push this through. I'm sure Bezos buying the official Democrat cheerleader newspaper in the same year had nothing to do with this, no quid pro quo, right?


By DAN MITCHELL
November 13, 2013

FORTUNE — Why does Amazon’s new deal with the U.S. Postal Service to provide Sunday deliveries to Amazon Prime customers seem so unsettling? I can think of three reasons: the exclusivity (we’ll get mail on Sundays, but only mail from Amazon); the dynamic of a private enterprise hiring out a government agency as a contractor; and the fact that, as the Wall Street Journal put it, the deal is a “marriage of one of the country’s most successful enterprises with one of its most troubled.”

Amazon and the Postal Service are both mum on the deal’s details, so it’s difficult to answer many of the questions that it raises. Such as: How much will it help shore up the USPS’s losses, estimated to be $3.9 billion so far this year? Will other companies be able to make similar deals? If so, will smaller companies also be able to get in on the action? What will the deal do for Amazon’s bottom line as investors increasingly clamor for better results? Why didn’t Amazon choose a private delivery service to partner with?


The postal service is losing billions in the aggregate. What they are charging for their services does not cover their expenses. You can't attribute that loss to any specific USPS service, it's a systemic issue. Amazon benefits disproportionately from that situation, and the losses would be lower if they hadn't had to make specific changes Amazon required them to, like purchasing much larger vehicles, and making Sunday delivery a regular service. Read the agreement Amazon made with the USPS and it's clear the additional expenses incurred by the USPS are definitely contributing to it's loss and profiting from artificially low rates.
Click to expand...


There is literally nothing in your quoted article to indicate the agreement with Amazon is contributing to losses, in fact it mentions shoring up USPS against losses, quite the opposite of what you're trying to prove.
 
Derangel said:
The USPS is able to borrow over $15 billion from the US treasury at an extremely low interest rate (1.2%). It is not directly tax payer funded, but tax payers do shoulder the burden when they borrow money. The government also gives them $2.8 BILLION in tax breaks per year.

http://fortune.com/2015/03/27/us-postal-service/
Click to expand...

you mean like every other major business how may BILLIONS did wallst get from the bail out?
 
bigddybn said:
It really is this simple. The real problem is once the government is involved with ANYTHING they refuse to release control over it.
Click to expand...
I'd imagine there are a few unions that would stand in the way of this as well.
 
I would prefer to not even get mail anymore. All the important things I do is online or e-mail. I get more spam then I do with e-mails. Verizon for one like to send me 2 brochures for Fios every week. One with my name and one with the precious owners name. The house that I been living in for the past 10 years.Wish these internet companies just lowered their rates to get customers instead of sending brochures every week to me. Hell I get them from comcast advertising to sign up for their internet service which I already have! How many millions does each company spend every year on spam mail?
 
GlowingGhoul said:
Once again another pussyhat wearer makes knee jerk statements in a sloppy rush to attack the President. IN 2013 Amazon demanded the USPS provide Sunday delivery as a regular service. Nice, deceptive wording you have there to suggest it was congress that forced the USPS to take on an additional burden. It was the Obama administration's cozy relationship with Bezos that helped push this through. I'm sure Bezos buying the official Democrat cheerleader newspaper in the same year had nothing to do with this, no quid pro quo, right?


By DAN MITCHELL
November 13, 2013

FORTUNE — Why does Amazon’s new deal with the U.S. Postal Service to provide Sunday deliveries to Amazon Prime customers seem so unsettling? I can think of three reasons: the exclusivity (we’ll get mail on Sundays, but only mail from Amazon); the dynamic of a private enterprise hiring out a government agency as a contractor; and the fact that, as the Wall Street Journal put it, the deal is a “marriage of one of the country’s most successful enterprises with one of its most troubled.”

Amazon and the Postal Service are both mum on the deal’s details, so it’s difficult to answer many of the questions that it raises. Such as: How much will it help shore up the USPS’s losses, estimated to be $3.9 billion so far this year? Will other companies be able to make similar deals? If so, will smaller companies also be able to get in on the action? What will the deal do for Amazon’s bottom line as investors increasingly clamor for better results? Why didn’t Amazon choose a private delivery service to partner with?


The postal service is losing billions in the aggregate. What they are charging for their services does not cover their expenses. You can't attribute that loss to any specific USPS service, it's a systemic issue. Amazon benefits disproportionately from that situation, and the losses would be lower if they hadn't had to make specific changes Amazon required them to, like purchasing much larger vehicles, and making Sunday delivery a regular service. Read the agreement Amazon made with the USPS and it's clear the additional expenses incurred by the USPS are definitely contributing to its loss and profiting from artificially low rates.
Click to expand...
I honestly feel bad for the USPS workers over this deal. I see USPS trucks out there at 7pm Sundays in my area still doing deliveries. Actually I see them out past 6 all through out the week the past year. This is also probably on top of all their preivous duties too. Sure they get good pay and over time but after a point people just want to go home. Same with UPS and FedEx they run their drivers into the ground.
 
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EchtoGammut said:
USPS isn't losing money on Amazon shipments, it's one of their biggest sources of revenue. Once again our POTUS tweets without asking anyone around him for facts. The biggest revenue loss for USPS stems from the congressional restrictions placed on them. They are forbidden from charging competitive rates on large package shipping, because Congress doesn't want them competing with FedEx etcetera. They attempted to reduce hours to bring labor costs under control and ended up having to service 7 days a week. They deliver envelopes to everywhere in the US in 3 days or less at cost and have not been allowed to raise prices to balance out increasing costs or carry a surplus to handle future cost increases. The Postal Service has it's issues, but if you just look through how badly Congress has beaten them up over the last 20 years, it's a damn miracle they manage to do what they do.
Click to expand...

USPS is losing money on every Amazon shipment. Amazon has been trying to do their own home deliveries and they really picked up this year in my area. I pay attention to this stuff because I am a UPS driver. We were much lighter this Christmas season because of far far fewer Amazon deliveries.

Is this something I should be concerned about since UPS is my career? Nope. Not at all. Because we make no money, and often lose money ourselves, shipping Amazon packages. Our management team used to justify carrying them as a way to help offset fleet maintenance and fuel costs, especially when we could use rail transportation. But over time even that proved false.

Frankly it should be illegal for the post office to be shipping packages. I have to compete with them, so does FedEx, when they operate at incredible loss and the government picks up the loss. Luckily they are so incredibly inefficient that the competition is shit. Hell I deliver a ton of packages that are sent through the USPS through a special deal we have set up, called surepost. They can't even deliver their own friggin packages and so they pay UPS to do it.

vegeta535 said:
I honestly feel bad for the USPS workers over this deal. I see USPS trucks out there at 7pm Sundays in my area still doing deliveries. Actually I see them out past 6 all through out the week the past year. This is also probably on top of all their preivous duties too. Sure they get good pay and over time but after a point people just want to go home. Same with UPS and FedEx they run their drivers into the ground.
Click to expand...

Postal service employees top out at $26 an hour. They get very good benefits as well. UPS driver tops out at $36 an hour and also gets better benefits than postal workers. But we work a lot harder and actually make profit. Most drivers, if they are any good at all, will end up working ~45 hours a week. If they are out working really late it's typically because they want even more overtime.
 
Amazon does not have control over the last mile , the delivery from Warehouse to Customer. This needs to be addressed. Amazon currently is evaluating systems to rectify this. Where this may leave the US postal service. Likely delivering less packages for Amazon. So they will loose less money... but this will not stop the service bleeding money. Certainly they will not be able to raise prices as "The Trump" desires. The US Postal service is like a farmer. Just about everyone will make money at their expense.
 
Derangel said:
Easy solution: Privatize the USPS and remove its government mandated monopoly on mailbox delivery. If they fail at that point then other services will pick up the slack. No more worrying about tax payer money going to the USPS.
Click to expand...
This is a piss poor solution.

Why?

1) Because the USPS is legitimately great at its job (ie. delivering packages for the lowest price you can get pretty much anywhere in the US).
2) None of the private delivery services actually want to do everything the USPS does for the price they charge so by default you'd be looking at worse service for higher costs. That is why they use the USPS to do much of their deliveries to the unprofitable locations.
3) Most of the money issues you hear about the USPS today are due to a Repub controlled Congress purposely sabotaging their budget to make them pay for decades of their retirement fund up front. Which is dumb. More info here.
4) The USPS isn't even taxpayer funded per se. Its essentially fee for service, that is by buying stamps and such you're funding it. If you don't buy stamps or use its services it gets no money from you.

Privatizing the USPS is a idea born purely out of ideology and/or political tribalism and it'd be legit dumb to do.
 
Snowdensjacket said:
USPS is losing money on every Amazon shipment. Amazon has been trying to do their own home deliveries and they really picked up this year in my area. I pay attention to this stuff because I am a UPS driver. We were much lighter this Christmas season because of far far fewer Amazon deliveries.

Is this something I should be concerned about since UPS is my career? Nope. Not at all. Because we make no money, and often lose money ourselves, shipping Amazon packages. Our management team used to justify carrying them as a way to help offset fleet maintenance and fuel costs, especially when we could use rail transportation. But over time even that proved false.

Frankly it should be illegal for the post office to be shipping packages. I have to compete with them, so does FedEx, when they operate at incredible loss and the government picks up the loss. Luckily they are so incredibly inefficient that the competition is shit. Hell I deliver a ton of packages that are sent through the USPS through a special deal we have set up, called surepost. They can't even deliver their own friggin packages and so they pay UPS to do it.



Postal service employees top out at $26 an hour. They get very good benefits as well. UPS driver tops out at $36 an hour and also gets better benefits than postal workers. But we work a lot harder and actually make profit. Most drivers, if they are any good at all, will end up working ~45 hours a week. If they are out working really late it's typically because they want even more overtime.
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I know they get paid well but fuck those hours. What good is money if you can't spend it!
 
Snowdensjacket said:
USPS is losing money on every Amazon shipment.
Click to expand...
The USPS isn't allowed to make money by law so they tend to lose money every other year and make it up the next.

Snowdensjacket said:
Frankly it should be illegal for the post office to be shipping packages.....when they operate at incredible loss and the government picks up the loss.
Click to expand...
You should read up a whole lot on the history of private shipping concerns around the 1600's and 1700's which is where the guys who wrote the Constitution got their motivation to make sure to create a state controlled shipping service.

Also the govt. (taxpayer) doesn't make up their losses. They operate on purpose to lose money 1 year and then make up the difference the next.
 
I find this laughable because it's obvious Trump has no clue how the USPS works. First off USPS isn't allowed to make money.

I have intimate knowledge having worked for USPS on their POS system for nearly 5 years. Postal makes almost zero money on packages and mail. It's all the Bulk Rate Mail (you know the junk mail we all hate) where their money comes from.

Postal also screwed themselves years ago with the pensions they had to pay out which cost them billions. The USPS Workers Union is incredibly strong.

Even if USPS did charge Amazon more it wouldn't help them. What USPS needs to do is cut back on the number of days of the week they deliver. That would be saving millions per year. The problem is Congress will never let them.
 
Derangel said:
The USPS is able to borrow over $15 billion from the US treasury at an extremely low interest rate (1.2%). It is not directly tax payer funded, but tax payers do shoulder the burden when they borrow money. The government also gives them $2.8 BILLION in tax breaks per year.
Click to expand...
You don't think FedEx or UPS get huge tax breaks too? They use jobs as a cudgel to get theirs. And they're for profit entities. At least the USPS is non-profit and (edit) can't declare bankruptcy or play any other court shenanigans to get out of debt payments.

Both FedEx and UPS get plenty of incentives too for opening locations in states and cities.

So if you're actually ideologically consistent and hate the USPS and wish it gone because it gets govt. support then you'd be required to hate FedEx/UPS too for the same reasons.
 
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