Post office cutback fazes very few

The decision to keep Saturday delivery of packages but stop Saturday delivery of mail is expected to save the USPS $2 billion a year.

By

David Mielach, BusinessNewsDaily

Thu, Feb 07 2013 at 9:15 AM

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Small businesses use email and social media for lots of things, but many of them also rely on the good old United States Postal Service. And they say the Postal Service's new plan to stop Saturday mail delivery will not present a major problem.

"It is not that big a deal because businesses can really just work around it," said Jeffrey Segall, owner of the New York-based accounting firm Jeffrey Segall CPA.

The decision to keep Saturday delivery of packages but stop Saturday delivery of mail is expected to save the USPS $2 billion a year, according to a report on ABC News. The move comes after the organization reported a $15.9 billion loss for the last fiscal year.

"The Postal Service is advancing an important new approach to delivery that reflects the strong growth of our package business and responds to the financial realities resulting from America’s changing mailing habits," postmaster general Patrick Donahoe said in the statement announcing the move. "We developed this approach by working with our customers to understand their delivery needs and by identifying creative ways to generate significant cost savings. Our customers see strong value in the national delivery platform we provide, and maintaining a six-day delivery schedule for packages is an important part of that platform."

While the suspension of Saturday mail service may inconvenience businesses, most small business owners do not appear to think it will hurt their bottom line. Many of them say that technologies, which hurt the Postal Service in the first place, will allow them to continue to run their businesses effectively.

"I don’t think it is really a big problem," Segall said. "Most often we file taxes online , and as a result we are not affected by the news. It may actually be harder for individuals than for businesses, because a lot of people aren't able to get to the post office during the week if they need to and Saturday may be the one way to do that."

Even businesses that are more reliant upon the Postal Service did not sound worried by today's (Feb. 6) announcement.

"Anything the post office can do to stay open is obviously good news for a stationery company like us," said Andrew Jacobs, owner of Jam Paper. "This won't have this big of an effect on us, since it doesn’t change the way we are shipping – and as far as receiving, most businesses aren’t receiving packages on weekends, anyway. It is pretty much business as usual."

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