Dishonest Weights & Scales: Are The Postal Services Ripping Us Off?
Since each envelope had contained only six sheets of paper and since Kim M. had previously been able to mail envelopes containing 10 sheets of paper each without incurring "postage due" fees, she suspected that a weighing error had been made.
Kim M. first went to Perry's Parcel, an independent mail and shipping service in Atascadero, California, to purchase additional postage for the two envelopes, but when the clerk weighed the envelopes on their postal scale, it showed that each of the letters weighed only .60 ounces -- well under the one-ounce limit for First Class postage.
But when Kim M. took the letters to an United States Postal Service (USPS) office in Atascadero to dispute the "postage due," their scale showed that the letters each weighed 1.1 ounces -- a difference in weight of half an ounce from the scale at Perry's Parcel.
When questioned about the large difference in weight between the two scales, the postal clerk shrugged and said, "Ours are regulated. Theirs are regulated by them."
When the same Post Office's automated postage machine showed that an envelope and six sheets of paper weighed 1.3 ounces -- a difference of .70 ounces from the postage scale at Perry's Parcel -- Kim M. then went to several different stores and tried out many different scales in an effort to determine what the true weight of one envelope with six sheets of paper might be.
As the video shows, the results were inconclusive -- especially since the digital scales consistently returned wildly differing results.
And these are the same scales that are used to determine postage.
Desperate Times, Desperate Measures
There is no question that the USPS is going broke.
In 2009, the Associated Press reported that the USPS is "facing a nearly $7 billion potential loss this fiscal year despite a 2-cent increase in the price of stamps in May, cuts in staff and removal of collection boxes.
Post office looking at closing hundreds of offices
http://www.usatoday.com/money/2009-08...
Ruth Y. Goldway, Chairman of the Postal Regulatory Commission, is currently "inviting public comments on a Postal Service proposal to end carrier street address delivery, collection at blue collection boxes and incoming mail processing on Saturdays in the United States."
According to Goldway, "This is one of the most significant changes the Postal Service has ever presented to the Commission."
Public comment invited
http://www.prc.gov/prc-pages/default....
In a depressed economy and with the USPS considering such drastic measures, is it inconceivable that their scales (and the scales of their competitors) might be a little less than accurate?
April 20, 2010
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