USPS Action Plan May Impact Your Online Store And Customer Delivery Expectations

There is a change being proposed by the US postal service that may have an impact on your ecommerce business if you use the US Postal Service. The US Postal Service announced on Tuesday a plan to possibly scale back delivery services to a 5 day week thus eliminating delivery on Saturdays. Since the U.S postal service is expected to have a cumulative $238 billion shortfall during the next decade, the postal service is planning on implementing major cost reductions to its operations.

(Sarcastic Mental Note To Myself: Finally the government is actually trying to cut costs rather than throw more money at something that is losing money…. ok sorry, couldn’t resist… back to writing….)

At this point it is hard to estimate what overall impact this may have, but eliminating Saturday delivery obviously increases delivery time for some of my customers. About 40-60% of my current deliveries go via the postal service. I will be watching closely to how it impacts my business, and may need to make adjustments if necessary. As ecommerce has grown as an industry, so has customer expectations for faster delivery. Having that 6th delivery day was nice, but I am afraid it will be going by the wayside.