We're Fed Up

lltE ARE so fed up, exasperated and frusYU trated by the grief caused us by the Postal Service it's hard to know where to begin. We suspect you feel the same. The problems go far beyond inconvenience, they cost money on a short and long term basis, create millions of unnecessary inefficiencies and slow the entire U.S. economy. The Postal Service, which appears as helpless as the rest of us, appears to find cuts in service and increases in costs as their only answer to a worsening situation. Some answer.

Several stories in this issue were completed and scheduled to run in our December issue, but because the Postal Service lost a package of artwork and copy for l1 days we were forced to postpone them until this issue. The distance they were mailed is less than 50 miles! Additionally, we get a constant stream of complaints about late and non-delivery of issues. All we can suggest you do is talk to your postman and your local postmaster as they have the prime responsibility for delivery. We meet our deadline of providing copy to our printer, who in turn meets his delivery date of getting the completed magazines to the company that addresses them and delivers them to the Postal Service. And then. after everyone in private industry has met his deadline each month by dint of much hard work, and the burning of midnight oil, the magazines sit untouched on some post office loading dock. You better believe we're unhappy about it. Especially since our considerable mailing costs are up over 100%.

The people we deal with at the post office,like our carrier, seem to us to do a good job. Where the problem really lies is difficult to discern.

But the problem surely exists and we hear often from both retail and wholesale companies in the industry of cost creating situations caused by the Postal Service. Horror stories of lost mail and glacier slow deliveries are all too real. Collections of money have become an increasingly serious problem for some firms and late deliveries of offering lists are a frequent complaint.

Senator Barry Goldwater, in the Congressional Record, August 24, 1976, says of the "impractical proposals" of the Postal Rate Commission, "I believe that the positions they are taking would destroy the entire Postal Service."

The United States economy simply cannot exist as it is today if mail deliveries continue to worsen. It is an extremely serious situation with no solution on the horizon.