Postal Service Can't Count on Public Support as it Scrounges for Funds

The postman always rings twice? Don't count on it. He may not be ringing at all unless the Postal Service finds a way to survive beyond the next few months, when it faces a series of potential financial calamaties.

The biggest calamity – email – has, of course, already occurred. The only remaining question is not whether the Postal Service fails but how long and ugly its demise will be.

The most immediate problem for USPS is a $5.5 billion payment due this month to the postal workers pension fund. There is no money to make the payment and it appears likely USPS will default.

Beyond that, USPS is in danger of running out of operating funds early next year, thanks to all the first-class mail that's no longer being sent. 

USPS likes to remind us that it is the nation's second-biggest “private” employer, after Walmart. But it's about as private as the Defense Department when it comes down to who gets stuck with the bill -- you do -- for the Postal Service's pension payments and other unavoidable liabilities. But then you already knew that, didn't you?

Few friends

While we could be generous and say the Postal Service is a victim of the times, it has also been incredibly slow to face up to its future, or lack of same, and one of its biggest failings has been the miserable way in which it handles customer complaints. Basically, it ignores them … and that's on a good day. ConsumerAffairs.com is awash in complaints from consumers whose complaints have been met with open hostility, followed by stunning inaction.

The result is that in its hour of need, the Postal Service has few friends willing to speak up for it, as a ConsumerAffairs.com analysis of consumer sentiments shows.

We analyzed roughly 83,000 comments about the Postal Service on Facebook, Twitter and other social Web sites, blogs, microblogs and so forth. Using computerized sentiment analysis, we found a dismal net sentiment over the past 12 months, one that seldom rises into positive territory and quickly plunges into an overall negative sentiment of 23% by the end of August, when consumers made 1,100 negative comments and 690 positives.

Blue line shows net sentiment

To say that consumers are wildly enthusiastic about their mail service and willing to go to great lengths to preserve it would be overstating the case several hundredfold. Consumers are, at best, neutral about the agency and it doesn't appear likely, based on the comments we sampled, that they're likely to mount a campaign to save it at taxpayers' expense.

One of the thousands of Tweets we analyzed came from @illuminatedNO who complained that the USPS tracking system is “awful.”

He and many other consumers complained that the USPS system of tracking is unreliable and imprecise: “They know when it left and when it gets (if it ever does) to the destination. That is not a tracking system. I predict they will be out of business or taken over by a private entity by 2015,” said Mike Funderburk in a Facebook posting.

Competitors

It's not really possible to compare USPS sentiment to its closet competitor, since its closest competitor is the Internet -- specifically, email. However, in the parcel and overnight letter delivery business, United Parcel Service and Federal Express have taken huge bites out of what business the Internet left behind. And although there is no shortage of complaints about lost and damaged shipments, late deliveries and other problems, both companies rank much higher in consumer sentiment than the Postal Service.

We found roughly 12,000 comments about UPS on social media and blogs. Big Brown was in positive territory for most of the 12-month period, peaking at a positive net ranking of 80% in February.

Blue line shows net sentiment

FedEx's overall trend is a bit more erratic but the total number of comments over the 12-month period was only 1,200, making it difficult to draw any firm conclusions.

Blue line shows net sentiment

Postal workers

And finally we come to the postal workers, a heavily unionized, politically powerful work force that is quick to remind Congress of how many votes it can turn out and also quick to remind taxpayers – with rather questionable accuracy – that they are supported entirely by purchases from customers, a claim that ignores the monopolistic powers granted to the USPS and the government's readiness to bail out the workers' pensions.

Postal employees are, after all, the Little People we are all quick to say we admire. No one could possibly be against continuing to support the Postal Service in the style to which it has become accustomed, right?

Wrong, according to the 68,000 consumer sentiments we measured over the last year. Net sentiment was a dismal -51% in August and ventured into positive territory for only a brief time in October 2010 before plummeting back into the dungeon of public approbation, as shown in this graph:

Blue line shows net sentiment

Most of the resentment towards postal workers is reflected in the commonly-held belief that their jobs are not very intellectually or physically challenging but are nevertheless poorly performed, often  with a notable lack of pride, accuracy and timeliness, as in this Tweet from @psyborg_007:

Much as we hate to say it, this is the time for that old bromide: it's hard to find anyone willing to say anything good about postal workers, as in this sampling of comments we found around the blogosphere:

Whether fair or not, negative sentiment on this scale will make it difficult for vote-hungry politicians to fashion a generous and speedy bail-out for the postal workers. That's not to say it won't happen but, with the Tea Party crusading against government spending, it will be politically treacherous for elected officials to be seen as lavishing funds on such an unpopular group of workers.

It's easy for those whose jobs seem exceptionally secure to fall into a pattern of ignoring or, worse, responding snappishly to their customers' and patrons' complaints and inquiries.  But as history makes all too clear, there is no such thing as exceptional security and dedicating oneself to customer satisfaction and simple human kindness is, at the very least, inexpensive insurance against the unexpected. 

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Sentiment analysis powered by NetBase