Postal Monopoly
Since the day before Thanksgiving, our postal carrier has left our mail on our front step instead of sliding it through our mail slot and into our house. This infuriates me, because that means sensitive legal and financial documents have been sitting outside our house in plain view; someone could've taken them and we never would've known they'd arrived.
I didn't think it was possible to get madder, but the process of trying to complain to the post office did the job. First, I went to their website. They said you could email them or call them. The email prompts didn't even have a choice for "complaints," so good luck trusting that that message is going to get read by the right person. So I called the number. An automated voice gave me five choices, none of which were either "complaints" or "speak to a representative." A look at the Yellow Pages and a search for local post office locations yielded me the same phone number. Finally, I put the letter in the mail and mailed it to the post office.
But what am I going to do if there's no good response? To walk away from the Postal Service and choose another carrier would mean to move outside the US. In other words, they have a monopoly on us customers. And I know well enough to know what happens to customers and customer service when there's a monopoly.
So that's the story from the customer side. In studying government, I end up doing a lot of thinking and strategizing about how to work the other side. It's harder than I first imagined: governments are designed to work according to rules even when rules gum up progress, innovation and therefore going the extra mile for customers is not rewarded and therefore rarely pursued, and the work that's left for governments to do is the stuff that's complicated and hard to measure and easy for people to get upset about. So while I'm upset with the Postal Service, I understand this stuff is hard. I hope I and others can work on the government side in some way to make it better on the customer side.
I didn't think it was possible to get madder, but the process of trying to complain to the post office did the job. First, I went to their website. They said you could email them or call them. The email prompts didn't even have a choice for "complaints," so good luck trusting that that message is going to get read by the right person. So I called the number. An automated voice gave me five choices, none of which were either "complaints" or "speak to a representative." A look at the Yellow Pages and a search for local post office locations yielded me the same phone number. Finally, I put the letter in the mail and mailed it to the post office.
But what am I going to do if there's no good response? To walk away from the Postal Service and choose another carrier would mean to move outside the US. In other words, they have a monopoly on us customers. And I know well enough to know what happens to customers and customer service when there's a monopoly.
So that's the story from the customer side. In studying government, I end up doing a lot of thinking and strategizing about how to work the other side. It's harder than I first imagined: governments are designed to work according to rules even when rules gum up progress, innovation and therefore going the extra mile for customers is not rewarded and therefore rarely pursued, and the work that's left for governments to do is the stuff that's complicated and hard to measure and easy for people to get upset about. So while I'm upset with the Postal Service, I understand this stuff is hard. I hope I and others can work on the government side in some way to make it better on the customer side.
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