The real thing
Real Mail Notification offers customers daily email alerts
USPS is continuing to test a program that offers customers a digital preview of the mail they’ll receive later that day.
Real Mail Notification sends subscribers an email each morning with images of that day’s mailbox contents. It will be tested this fall in New York City following a promising trial in Northern Virginia.
“We’re doing this to enhance the mail product,” New Products and Innovation VP Gary Reblin told Direct Marketing News this week.
The service uses pictures of mail that pass through sorting machines. Mailers can work with USPS to add interactive options to the email alerts, making them a potentially valuable advertising vehicle.
During the Northern Virginia test, the consumer response rate to direct mailings spiked, underscoring research that suggests marketing campaigns are more effective when email and direct mail are used together.
Ninety-three percent of users in Northern Virginia opened their email alerts within two hours, and 86 percent said they would recommend the service to friends.
Reblin is optimistic about the program, which is part of the Postal Service’s broader effort to use technology to spark innovation and profitability.
“We think this … is going to change and revolutionize direct mail,” he said.
source: USPS News Link
at the Melville, NY PD&C 117/119 they screwed up a mailing for Macy’s Department store (third time) 5 trailers sat in the yard as the memorial day holiday mailing came and went (was going for full bore mailing in 10 million residents of NYC Metro area)………Macy’s went ballistic on them and when the smoke cleared the low IQ, uneducated, affirmative action, postal mismanagers had to spend over a million dollars to make it right……the female indian affirmative action queen dolt responsible……promoted to senior MDO two months later……..you can not make this stuff up in the land of the blind us postal circus the one eyed man is king . (plant mismanager is another indian affirmative action king-wink, wink, nod, nod if you get my drift)(this place was so bad we thought it hit rock bottom, this moron proved us wrong)
they stole this idea from the Swiss…………they send their customers pictures of their mail and customer can delete on their computer what they do not want. some customers as a result only need one or two days of delivery. the Swiss came up with this about 15 years ago. uneducated, low IQ postal mismanagers always a day late and a dollar short! at our plant we have mismanagers that dropped out of high school, the one’s with GED’s act as if the went to Harvard, we say ” the turds float to the top”!
The Post Office is rushing headlong into the 1990’s. This is a really bad idea but when you have really bad managers this is what you get. Where else would you have a multi-billion dollar business and they put someone with a GED in charge of managing people and data? How is this going to work on check day when the people track us down and demand their mail because they saw what they are getting? I tell my customers already I can’t give it out early because we have idiot managers that would cause problems if we are caught doing it.
In our office, after scanning of packages are complete, Mngt. scurry over to “delete” the nixie packages out of the system and then they are sent out usually that day! What about transpancy!!!
How many of us really want 2 be e-mailed informing them that later 2day, they will receive advertisements and requests 4 generous donations? 4ever, this is the great majority of mailings virtually all of us (we’re all postal customers), receive.
Management better quite lying now
We’re supposed to be so impressed at the technological advances the USPS is making, but here’s something they also still do: fuck up mail delivery something terrible.
Our uniform vendor, a great fellow, by the way, sends me his postcard at my home to let us know when he’s coming to the office on his bi-monthly rounds. You’ll be glad to know that yesterday, July 30, I received his postcard telling us he’d be in our office on June 30. Given he usually gives us about a week’s notice, that card took five weeks to go about 140 miles from his home to me. First class postage, too.
Our new regulars and CCA’s are in races to see how fast they can carry routes and think it’s a normal day when they case two routes, carry at least one swing, and still work through lunch breaks and go home half an hour early. Some do put in for no lunches, which is fine, but some don’t, and deliver mail for half an hour a day out of the goodness of their hearts. They will not associate with veteran carriers, with the exception of one CCA who is very nice, a good carrier and actually listens to our advice. They spend all their time on break or before they clock on hanging around the supervisor’s desk. One claimed she’ll do two routes a day, BUT THAT’S IT. Wow.
There are rumors of route adjustments coming this fall – whether they’ll be like that miserable JRAP where we get fucked without even getting counted for a week, or we have a count team remains to be seen. Now, you older carriers who have been through full counts and inspections, tell me: how do you think these newbies, who think management is their friend and will be fair, will act with an inspector following them around all day?
They’ll get nervous as hell and literally run all day, which they do anyway, but knowing that in union meetings leading up to a count, should we have a count team, they won’t show up and if they did, they’d refuse to listen and do it their way anyway.
End result: I predict at least two routes being abolished, along with a carrier technician position. Then they’ll piss and moan about not going regular, or in the newer regular’s cases, have 1300 or 1400 stop routes and will be expected to carry it all in the same time they do now.
Is this common where you are? It’s the USPS of the future, and customers will be begging for us newly retired old timers to come back. Sorry, end of next year, I’m outta there.
The USPS is quite good at creating more problems for themselves. I am sure this preview will show mail that ends up being a DPS error and going to the wrong route, or even the wrong office. Then these customers will be calling looking for the misdirected items and the slew of new postal managers promoted to handle these calls will collectively shrug their shoulders and inform the customers that there is no guarantee.