Post Office: We don't care about you

The Associated Press reports that the Post Office has started a program to eliminate stamp vending machines in post offices by 2010. They claim it is too expensive to maintain them, especially as they have gotten older. They also claim some machines get little use.

Well, maybe if they didn't return change in dollar coins people would use them more. Or if they sold useful items, like "additional ounce" stamps--currently 24¢. Instead it's usually books of 20 first class stamps--$7.80 at the current rate. Which means if you don't have exact change, or $8 in bills, you get the hated dollar coins back. If they sold books of 7, people could just put in $3, which I think a lot more people carry around--$5 bills seem to be used a lot less than tens and ones.

The post office is increasing its use of automated postal centers, though, which is a good thing. They take credit cards, as well as cash. It would help to have more of them. The last time I went to the post office, two people were monopolizing the single automated machine, with a huge stack of envelopes they were mailing out, apparently from where they worked. Each envelope had to be done separately, with the zipcode manually keyed in, and the requested services entered (there is no "same as previous" option, apparently). So I had to wait on the line (long, of course) to see a clerk.

The thing in this article that REALLY ANNOYS ME is that the postal service is reducing the number of free-standing blue mailboxes. They have done that a little in my neighborhood already. I used to have one right at my corner, but it's gone now--though there is another only a block away, so it's not a big deal. What is a big deal is that they have reduced the number of pickups from that box to one a day. If I don't get my mail in by 11:00 a.m., it will sit there to the next day. To me, this just tells me they don't care about giving us good service.