Save the Post Office! Mail your Card Greetings via USPS

This Post Office is Saved: Thanks to my wife and a few others who still mail birthday and other card greetings to Relatives and Friends -Photo from www.kensavage.com

My wife*(see note 1) is still using the postal service to mail birthday cards greetings to her relatives in The Philippines. I used my FaceBook account or electronic card via e-mail to send birthday greetings to relatives and friends here in US and in the Philippines. My wife has no FB account, so she is trying to help the USPS financially by mailing her card greetings to relatives and friends in the Philippines. I still mail via post office about 10% of my monthly bills, the rest of my bills is paid by automatic deduction on-line from my bank account. But in spite of our help to keep the Postal Service in business, the following announcement in last week newspapers attracted my attention. One station identified is near us here in the Sacramento Area. The closure of these offices will add to the depressing unemployment statistics**(see note 2 below) in the US.

"The Postal Service has marked 677 post offices nationwide for possible closure or consolidation, according to a listing provided to Congressional staffers by the U.S. Postal Service. The closure is part of cost cutting measure proposed by the USPS to the US Government Post Regulatory Commission.

The hearing, titled “Making Sense of It All: An Examination of USPS’s Station and Branch Optimization Initiative and Delivery Route Adjustments” heard that the Postal Service is expected to lose approximately $7.1 billion by the end of FY 2009. The USPS proposed to cut these loses through a combination of post office closures, price increases and other efficiency drives.(What?,another increase in postal rates!)

Not helping the USPS is a drop in mail volume caused by consumers switch online for information previously received by mail, and recession hit companies looking to reduce their mail volume by emailing accounts.

The proposed cuts are expected to save $1 billion annually. The “Post Office closing list” contains post offices that have been “identified” for full study for closure, meaning that all might not close".

How about you? What percent of your bills is still paid by mail instead of on-line?
Do you still send birthday greetings by snail mail? How often do you mail packages through the post office? Who is next in line? I am predicting the manufacturers of Birthday, Easter, and Christmas cards will soon be also losing money unless they diversify and sell other products.

Note 1*: The recipient of my wife's birthday greeting card was her first cousin in the Philippines. Her cousin called her today to thank her for the card. Her cousin reiterated to her that it is no longer customary to send birthday cards by mail, so he is really appreciative of the gesture. Last year she sent the same cousin a birthday card. I told my wife then why just sent him an electronic card via e-mail or just greet him in my Face Book account. My wife says she is not too comfortable doing on-line work and it is much easier for her to send the card by post office mail. I hope there are still several hundred thousands of senior citizens( or not) who are not comfortable using the computer. They will be the saviour of the US Postal Service.

Note 2**: The number of jobless in the U. S., according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, rose to 9.2 (14.1 million individuals) percent for the month of June, up a percentage point from May. That is the official number. But if one considers the marginally attached, the part-timers that are underemployed (hopeful of gaining full-time or more meaningful employment), and the discouraged (no longer looking for work), the statistics are actually higher -- 16.2 percent (24.9 million individuals).