Post Office Warns People Not to Use Its Mail Boxes

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Post Office Warns People Not to Use Its Mail Boxes

© Raisa Nastukova / iStock Editorial via Getty Images

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has warned people not to use its blue boxes on specific dates. It particularly warned about the chances of theft from these on Sundays and holidays. It raises the question of why USPS bothers to keep these boxes, which must be expensive to service at all.
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The USPS’s warning suggested how people dodge the trouble. “If customers simply used retail service or inside wall drop slots to send their U.S. Mail, instead of depositing it to sit outside overnight or through the weekend, blue collection boxes would not be as enticing after business hours to mail thieves for identity theft and check-washing schemes.”
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As a solution, people should go to their local post office or put mail in boxes after the last dispatch time. It is a complicated way to decide when to mail a letter. It is also inconvenient.
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The USPS already spends and loses too much money. The blue box requires trucks to pick up mail from them two times a day. It is hard to imagine a system more expensive, particularly because USPS has over 30,000 offices. It also has over 600,000 full-time employees, many of whom deliver the mail. One reason there are so many is the inefficiency of delivering mail six days a week.
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Although it might merely be a gesture, one to save money, USPS could junk the blue boxes. While the postal service warning targets holidays and Sundays, the problem exists throughout the week. Customers have to worry if checks or other valuable letters make it to their intended destinations.

Like so many other things, the blue box is becoming a thing of the past.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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