The “forced” price reduction by the US Postal Service (read their release) is, as my late mother-in-law used to say with a slight Hungarian accent, “a lotta hooey.” This was the expiration of an increase forced onto postal customers and the public based on the terms of an exigent price increase program to save the USPS when they were in financial trouble. During its time, the USPS was to get their house in order before its planned expiration.

Now, the USPS is claiming it is being shortchanged when in reality its customers were being overcharged. Is this like the slayer of parents asking for the mercy of the court because he was recently orphaned? USPS problems are a long term combination of self-infliction, myopia and a large doses of oversight and regulatory meddling. It’s time to set the USPS free, and let it run as a real business making the hard decisions real businesses have to make.

Instead, they’re backed into a corner. By focusing automation efforts on big postal customers who supply the bulk of their volume, where the savings would be fastest and biggest, they rarely found time to nurture small postal user volume or make aggressive efforts to create new businesses. EDDM is not the answer for everyone.