Standard Mail and fun with the Post Office

In July and August of 2011 we had seen some instances where the difference in time between when Mail Services and the time we had it in hand saw mail times in excess of 2 weeks when we had been averaging about 2 or 3 business days for some time now. Because of this I did some digging and compiled the following info on the Post Office and mail delivery.

I follow Hess Printing on Twitter and they had an article that advises that it can take between 7 to 10 business days (10 Facts about Standard Mail).

I found another mailing services company that says to estimate 7 to 15 business days (Print Place). This was the longest time I found, on the web, though.

The USPS does not guarantee delivery time for Standard Mail (USPS Google Cached FAQ).

"Standard Mail" is USPS speak for "Bulk Mail" as opposed to "First Class". It goes:

1. Express
2. Priority Mail
3. First-Class
4. Parcel Post
5. Bound Printed Matter (Media Mail)
6. Periodicals
7. Standard Mail (Bulk Mail)

Only Express has a guaranteed time to deliver and all of the others do not. This is primarily because the USPS is legally bound to deliver to EVERY postal address and this induces considerable variations depending on where it is mailing from and where it goes to.

This will probably be changing considerably in the future as the current Postmaster General (Patrick Donahoe) is pushing to cut 220,000 positions and almost 4,000 locations by 2015. Actually, their financial position is so tenuous that it is projected that they will be insolvent by the end of September 2011. Yes, this month.