I was unaware of the USPS newsletter News Link until today, when a colleague forwarded a copy on to me. This is apparently sent to members of the Postal Customer Councils located around the country.  There are some 200 “PCC’s” with a total of 100,000 members around the country.  The purpose of these councils is to provide education and updating on USPS products and services and to listen to the voice of the consumer.  Since the USPS range of products and services is very complex, and mail make-up and deposit rules and procedures can be technical, and may necessarily change, they perform an important function is helping customers interface efficiently with the Post.

Some customers are pleased with their experience of the PCC meetings, others find them less useful, and their quality apparently varies depending on the city and the individuals running them.  But any institution has this problem.  If you mail a lot, you probably should consider joining the local PCC.

One little tidbit in their latest newsletter here caught me eye:

“BY THE NUMBERS

SOMEBODY LISTENED. Apparently, word the State Department was increasing passport fees last Tuesday (Link, 7/12) prompted customers to head to a local Post Office ahead of the deadline. Post Offices in the Western New York District processed 2,600 applications Monday and took 1,700 photos. Passport sales in the District generated $90,000 in revenue — 700 percent over the same period last year.”

Actually, the increase was due to take effect 7/13, Wednesday. Or at least they did in St. Lawrence County in northern New York, where my wife had noted the same news in the local paper several days before and insisted we get over to the County Clerk and renew our 16 year old son’s “children’s” passport a year early, in order to save having to spend $35 more a year from now.  My protestations that the County Clerk was some 7o miles roundtrip away, being worth $14 in gas,  and that there was a probability, no, a certainty that I would have to spring for $16 for Subway sandwiches for my two bottomless stomached children, and that the Clerk no doubt charged a fee similar to the USPS’s $25 fee, were at least ineffectual, and appeared to be unheard.  The chance to save $35 right now was too overpowering, even though we’ wouldn’t even be break-even.   I resisted with success making the argument that it was completely possible our son would run away from home forever in the next year, saving us the need to worry about having not saved $35 a year before.  Some possibilities one does not raise to the mother of one’s children.

I’m glad the USPS made some good money on the price change.  The State Department was raising the fee from $75 to as high as $135 in certain cases, to $110 in our own. Of course we had to pay the County Clerk a fee for this privilege, but it was only $11. People in northern New York don’t have much money, and there is a lot of travel to and from Canada, which is only 20 miles away.  So at the end of transaction I felt all right.  I supported the County, saved, maybe $35, and now I learn that the USPS benefited from State’s fee raise, and got the money this year.

I also got to see the St. Lawrence County Office Building and Clerk’s office, which is a gorgeous anachronism of  19th century carved granite, sandstone, and brick, complete with glazed tiles of green and blue and ochre set  into arched arcade hallways.  Stunning building. Inside the Clerk’s office is a map about the size of a barn door dated 1890 which showed nearly every house in the County (which is the largest in area in New York State) and railroads all over the place, connecting towns with names that I knew to now be mere crossroad collections of a few houses and perhaps a collapsing barn or old warehouse.  There were railroads running where I new there was now second growth hardwood forest, or a little-traveled road.  And so many of them were aimed at Canada. In 1890 you didn’t need a passport to go to Canada, or to anywhere else in the world, for that matter.  And now we have to pay our government a huge fee to get a passport to travel.

Now, Mr. Potter, about that exigent rate increase…  Why not just get some other government licensing agencies to use the USPS?  I’m sure we now have to pay our government for lots of other things that we could do in 1890 without paying our government for the privilege.  If so, if we have to pay a fee, why not pay the USPS to keep it functioning?  It worked fine in 1890, and still does. In fact, it predated and has survived the railroad!  If people aren’t mailing, they certainly are traveling, not by railroad as in1890, but by plane to everywhere on earth, with their passports.