It seems that the on again off again decision by the United States Postal Service to end Saturday mail delivery is off again. The quasi-government agency floated the idea earlier this year in an effort to save money. Online merchants and consumers as well as executives of online retail giants like Amazon are happy that it decided to give in to Congressional bullying and rescind the order. Amazon Prime customers are especially happy because the products they buy are delivered free of charge.
Actually, package deliveries would have continued if Saturday mail deliveries had stopped. The post office had exempted packages from the order and, in fact, expanded package deliveries to include Sundays as well.
Still, online merchants believe that they had dodged a bullet. It seems that they overwhelmingly prefer to use the United States Postal Service to deliver the products they sell online. A survey of online sellers performed by EcommerceBytes discovered that 97.4 percent of respondents said they preferred to use the USPS. United Parcel Service (UPS) came in second with 39.6 percent and Federal Express (FedEx) was third with 26.6 percent. The main reason they chose the USPS over the private sector package delivery services was cost.
Still, the issue of the USPS delivering packages is still alive and well. The decision by the USPS to rescind its order concerning Saturday delivery is just a stopgap because the postal service is still facing bankruptcy. A law passed by Congress requires it to set aside a large percentage of its revenue to a workers’ pension plan. That pushed its budget to the red and had it come up with the idea to end Saturday delivery in the first place. There still is a possibility that in the not too distant future there will not be a United States Postal Service altogether.
If this happens, then online retailers will have to find an alternative. There are alternatives out there already. Witness the experience of Tigrlock, an online retailer that sells bike locks. The company felt that it had to find an alternative to the USPS because 30 percent of its customers are overseas and the company discovered that the postal service charged $50 to ship a package to Japan. So it turned to Direct Link, a U.S.-based subsidiary of Sweden Post, which charged $30 less than USPS.
Of course, the reason why Tigrlock chose an alternative to the USPS was because of shipping costs overseas. Still, it makes the point that there are alternatives out there if the USPS ceases to exist.
The problem is that the alternatives for domestic shipping are FedEx and UPS among others. These companies are private and profit making. So no USPS will lead online sellers to perhaps pay more for shipping. How much more is the question and how will that affect online consumers, some of whom do not pay for shipping at all.
This post was written by Rob Janis
Robert Janis holds a masters degree in journalism and has been a professional writer for 40 years. He has written for daily newspapers, business, trade, regional, and speciality magazines. Robert's interest lie in Amazon Marketplaces and online commerce.