The U.S. Postal Service got a tongue-lashing today about its “bad business sense” from H. Robert Wientzen, president of the Direct Marketing Association.
“The Post Office seems to have a death wish,” Wientzen said in a statement. “No company on this planet increases prices when business is falling off.”
Wientzen noted in his blast that the USPS wants to modify the last rate decision by the Postal Rate Commission, and raise rates by $800 million or more.
Why speak out so harshly? Sheer exasperation. “No doubt the post office is suffering financial problems, and a decrease in revenue,” Wientzen said in an interview. “What we don’t accept is the knee-jerk reaction that to continue to raise prices makes any sense.”
The answer isn’t simple, the DMA chief conceded.
“You’re going to have to cut costs somehow, and it’s not going to be easy, nor a solution that everybody is going to find comfortable,” he said. “That probably means some change in the number of employees, some reflection on how they can do less work, or put less labor hours it. It may mean privatizing some parts of the system.”
Wientzen concluded, “Congress cannot escape dealing with this any longer. The post office can’t be expected in all fairness to solve it within the confines of current legislation. What we fear is that this death spiral will continue.”
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