Hi, this is Frank Romano for WhatTheyThink.com. I have an article called “The Parcel Post Kid”, 1914. A young girls parents, she was 4 years-old, decided that she should visit her grandmother in a city 100 miles away from where they were in Idaho and so the rate for her would have been full fare so they decided to ship her by parcel post. Sorry, I'm not making this up. This is a true story.

Now in those days you could not send live animals except for baby chicks, so she was—the postmaster called her a baby chick. She met the requirements. She was under 50 pounds. The stamps were glued to a tag that was attached to her jacket. It was 53 cents, 53 cents to ship her by parcel post. They lifted her into the baggage carriage. The baggage master watched over her during the trip. When she arrived at the city she was going to someone took her off the train and brought her to her grandparents. That was just a kindly. It was not something the postal service normally did. Her name was May and that is the story of baby chick May from 1914.

Now I bring this up one, because it is weird and I am too, but recently I had a newsletter printed and it was printed in Phoenix, Arizona, beautiful job on the printing and it was mailed from Phoenix, Arizona and it took 13 working days to get that piece to the east coast of the United States. I received it 13 days later from the day it was delivered to the Post Office.

Now I realize that every printer cannot be RR Donnelley or Quad Graphics or anyone that prints and mails billions of pieces of mail. They have a system and a logistical approach to get things to post offices where things can be delivered virtually overnight. I'm talking about a newsletter that goes out standard mail to about 6,000 people. That is a normal small mailing that is typical of what many small printers do. Small printers don’t do billions. They don’t do millions. They do thousands and so the delivery of 13 days for standard mail is unacceptable, totally and completely unacceptable. You cannot do business that way. You cannot maintain a business that way and the postal service has to figure out a way to fix that.

Now I know they are going through a lot of problems and I hate to add insult to injury because they are saying they may go out of business. Well you know something, no one will notice. It is about time that they change the rules on mail and by the way don’t just listen to the big mailers. They know how to do it. They know how to get things done. We have geared everything for them. We haven’t geared it for the small mailer, the small printer who gets into variable data printing and now that variable data printing is starting to take off as new digital printing technologies are taking off we need the mailing service to be behind us and they have to change their ways and they should start listening to little printers and medium-sized printers and not just the gigantic printers and that is my opinion.

I contend that today the standard for quality is no longer offset.