Going Postal: He Said, He Said
You might think that a room full of catalog company executives and suppliers would be slightly hostile in the face of a U.S. Postal Service bigwig talking about how the USPS is here to help catalogers.
And that is kind of what happened during the American Catalog Mailers Association’s National Catalog Forum in Nashville last week. Deputy Postmaster General Pat Donahoe was doing his best to make nice with the catalogers, but part of the discussion did get a little heated.
Donahoe was awfully brave to tell the attendees that while he was sorry they got whacked with the 2007 postal rate hike, and that it shouldn’t have happened, it was time to move on. He’s right, but he’s also lucky nobody threw a shoe at him.
It didn’t help that the attendees had just been riled up by Gene Del Polito, president of the Association for Postal Commerce. Del Polito is one of my favorite industry speakers—he’s not afraid to say what he things and he doesn’t mince words, especially about the ineptitude of the Postal Service.
But I have to say I was also impressed with some of the USPS folks—and I don’t praise postal personnel lightly. Mark Acton, commissioner of the Postal Regulatory Commission, seems like a bright guy, and Donahoe more than held his own (though I did have to leave his session to catch a flight when things were just getting good).
It’s just hard to know who to believe sometimes.
For instance, Del Polito pointed out the USPS’s problems with its flats sequencing system (FSS. The machines were built to handle high volume, but flats mail volume has dropped so they’re not working properly. Del Polito said the machine manufacturer (Northrup Grumman) has a fix for the problem, but the USPS won’t do it because it doesn’t want to lose face.
But then Donahoe said USPS is already implementing a fix for the FSS problem and that it was due to be fixed soon. Who’s right? (Del Polito and Donahoe unfortunately weren’t in the session room at the same time. It would have been helpful if they were, not to mention highly entertaining.)
The important thing is starting and maintaining a healthy dialog between the catalog mailers and the USPS. That’s been missing for a long time, and catalogers have paid the price–literally.
The Postal Service needs catalogs, and they’re finally listening to the folks who mail them. It’s just too bad there weren’t more of them at the Catalog Forum to speak up.
