The VPO has no scales to weigh packages, nor Priority Mail stamps available for purchase. To use the Priority Mail service, most customers have to buy the forever stamps and stick them on the box.
Since VPOs neither cancel mail nor offer any special postal services like registered, certified or insured mail, VPOs do not have a postmarking device: no black four-bar cancel or red round-date cancel.
Each VPO is supposed to have a green dated Aviation Security marking device. This is used when a Priority Mail package is accepted, but this marking is not used to cancel stamps. This auxiliary marking includes the USPS logo along with the city, state, ZIP code and VPO name.
A postal contract is required to operate a VPO. Each month I submit a Freedom of Information Act request to USPS headquarters requesting a list of every VPO in the United States and how much each location is paid.
This financial data is revealing.
VPOs have another significant cost: signs. Outside each location is a big sign with the USPS logo, the words “Village Post Office,” and the city, state and ZIP code. These are more modern than the signs at many real post offices. Some VPO signs are illuminated at night.
An average, unlit outside sign is $1,700. The illuminated ones cost more, with a top price of $2,300.
These signs have been used in communities so small they are not even incorporated. Such costs are amazing for a government agency that loses millions of dollars every day.
read more of the financial data of Village Post Offices
Village Post Offices — are they really worth it for the USPS? Linn’s
The Village Post Office is a Potemkin Village erected by Elephant Plaza to fool people into thinking they have a real one. As noted in the article above, it cannot offer many of the basic services people really need. It can sell you some stamps and maybe give you a flat rate Priority mail box but that’s about it. Another flim flam perpetrated on the public at the public hearings USPS have when they are proposing to shut down yet another small, full-service Post Office. The old switcharoo. That’s one of the unacceptable choices they give them – oh, we can establish a Village P.O. for you otherwise, we will reduce the hours your old P.O. is open to two hours a day. You have to be a village idiot to believe a Village P.O. is the same as a real Post Office. What a sham perpetrated on the American people. More spin to the self-inflicted death spiral. I don’t know how the marketing/P.R. people that push this line of crap on the public can sleep at night. Then again, that assumes they have a conscience.
I much prefer Staples to a VPO and the PO. Staples is great!
I’ve noticed new signs at “real” post offices do not include city, state or zip code. I believe USPS is trying to create a disconnect with patrons and their hometown post office. I enjoy seeing the names of various towns on older post offices when I travel.
USPS doesn’t use taxpayer funds but 70% of the idiots think they do!!
So just have someone from every state send in a Freedom for Information Act and use this to show how they are not using taxpayer dollars wisely .