terryl@tekcrl.CRL.TEK.COM (12/19/88)
(Gads, why am I responding to this??? Could it be a little warmup before I go out and do some more Christmas shopping, fighting the crowds, etc??? Just call it temporary insanity..... (-:) In article <576@redsox.UUCP> campbell@redsox.UUCP (Larry Campbell) writes: >In article <127@fylz.UUCP> fyl@fylz.UUCP (Phil Hughes) writes: >}I have heard that the Post Office only makes money on First Class Mail. >}I'll bet that they start this hoax to increase mail volume. > >Actually, I don't think that's true. They make a profit on junk mail >(fourth class) and lose money on first class. The price they charge per >piece of fourth class mail is lower, but fourth class mail is delivered to >the originating post office in nice, neat, zip-sorted bundles, with legible >addresses and zip codes (they instantly bounce any pieces missing zip codes). >Fourth class mail costs a lot less per piece to handle than random loose >envelopes addressed, without zip code, in YOUR handwriting. Uh, that's not what my local post says. According to flyers put out by my local post office (and I've seen QUITE a number of them in the last week or so), EACH class of mail is required by federal law to be self-supporting, i.e. the revenues taken in for each class of mail must be at least enough to cover the costs for processing that particular class of mail, so fourth class mail revenue can ONLY cover the processing costs for fourth class mail, etc. Federal law explicitly disallows the revenue from one class of mail to cover any part of the processing costs of a different class of mail. Everything else Larry Campbell says is essentially true, though. The Original Ebenezer Scrooge (-:, Terry Laskodi of Tektronix