Save the Post Office?

Yahoo! News and The Daily Ticker are reporting that the U.S. Post Office faces an $11 billion (with a B) shortfall this year and may be forced to close up the shop without more cash or drastic restructuring.

Won't happen. But that is a heck of a way to get our collective attention. I support the post office as much as I can. I still mail a fair amount of my bills out of sheer stubbornness. When I have an item to ship for Swap.com, eBay or Amazon, I choose the P.O. over UPS or FedEx. Come to think of it, I just canceled my Netflix streaming service in favor of their by-mail only service.

But after hearing the news about how much cash the USPS is losing, I ask myself whether my choice is a good one or not. Am I right to place value in patriotically supporting this service despite the shortcomings of its long-term operations? Or am I merely helping to prop up their sales and string them along just a little bit longer? Don't get me wrong, if UPS or FedEx were measurably cheaper or more convenient, I'd take my business to them but they're not so I still enjoy my occasional runs to the P.O.

With the bailout word getting thrown around one thing seems obvious to me: That if this isn't quashed it could get turned into an election issue. Whether some sort of bailout happens or if the USPS fails (again, it won't), all fingers will point at the current presidential administration despite the fact that strictly-speaking the USPS isn't even a governmental agency nor do its problems have anything to do with any recent presidential or legislative action.

eBay, MTV & Netflix

I got an email a couple days ago commemorating my ten-year eBay anniversary. Having no precedent for ten-year internet anniversaries, I wondered what I might receive in recognition. Well, I didn't get crap except a subtle reminder that eBay was still there hoping to conduct business with me. Considering my ten years on eBay only reminded me what the site used to be for its very passionate users. All auctions, all the time. Bidding on random scraps. Selling random scraps. Running to the post office. Getting money orders and cashiers checks. Waiting for checks to clear. And buyer beware. It wasn't efficient but it was fun. Then slowly trickled in the Buy-It-Nows and the PayPals and the Super Sellers and of course the fees. Wired recently ran an article on eBay titled Going, Going, Gone: Who Killed the Internet Auction?. It attempts to explain how and why eBay has changed from its original incarnation to what it is now.

Monday marked MTV's 30th anniversary. Yep, thirty. I celebrated by watching a VHS (yep) tape I bought in 1995 for $4.99 titled I Want My MTV. The video is 45 minutes of MTV promos and other awesomeness. MTV has long been lain to rest so this kind of reminiscence isn't too painful but one detail regarding the occasion kinda irked me. MTV didn't even acknowledge the date on tv or online. This post with a hilarious title expands on the details: MTV Apparently Wants To Be 29 Forever.

Another business that seems to be going the same route is Netflix. Netflix recently announced its second pricing revision/ increase this year. Netflix' last move effectively separated its DVD-by-mail and streaming services and also attached a small price increase to both. For the users of both services, that sucks. If, like me though, you think the streaming selection sucks, it was actually a nice surprise. But whatever Netflix reasons for the moves (and many others), they are obviously an effort to divide and conquer their customer base and they leave even more early adopters alienated or in the dust altogether.