Saturday Mail Cut Loophole: Post Office Boxes

March 30, 2010 — -- Want to keep getting your mail on Saturdays? Try a post office box.

Under the cash-strapped U.S. Postal Service's plan to cut Saturday delivery and trim its delivery schedule from six days a week to five, mail would continue to be delivered on Saturdays to the more than 13 million P.O. boxes across the country. Postal Service officials hope that, with Congressional approval, the Saturday service cut could be implemented in 2011, but an expected months-long review by regulators could slow the plan. (Read on for more.)

Deputy Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe told reporters Monday that the U.S.P.S. does not know how much demand could rise for post office boxes as a result of Saturday delivery cuts, but said that the Postal Service is prepared for any potential increase.

"If we have to add more boxes to any post office in the country, we'll have room," he said.

P.O. box rates range from $12 for six months for the smallest boxes to hundreds of dollars for larger boxes, depending on post office location. Some U.S. residents who don't receive at-home mail delivery are eligible for free boxes.

Post office box fees generated nearly $904.7 million in revenues for the U.S.P.S. last year.

The P.O. box alternative isn't enough to satisfy at least some customers who prefer traditional Saturday delivery, like Raul Godoy of Miami, who says he won't be renting a box.

"I don't want the added expense and/or hassle of having to go to get my mail," he said in an e-mail to ABCNews.com.

Sara Damelio, the owner of Skincando Inc., a Washington, D.C. skin care product company, said she won't get a box, either. She wants to get merchandise delivered to her customers as quickly as possible, she said, and having a P.O. box so she can receive mail, she said, won't help if Saturday deliveries are scrapped and her deliveries are delayed.

"It's the shipping time that's important," Damelio said. Customers, she said, "want it now. This is a now-based society."

Complaints from Damelio and others notwithstanding, the U.S.P.S. says several surveys show that, overall, both business owners and individual customers support the Postal Service's proposed Saturday delivery cut.

Customers said that "one day less of delivery is better than no Postal Service at all," Donahoe said.