John Klingelhoets

UPS / Fedex should operate distribution facilities over the weekends, in today’s day and age with the internet – many orders are placed over the weekends.  Not that orders should be delivered during the weekends, but if companies could get their products into the UPS/Fedex distribution systems during the weekends people would receive their packages earlier!

This angers me, I do not understand HOW the post office got into such a bad situation.  Sure people email and don’t send letters any longer, but the real question becomes how did they miss out on the .com boom.  Now more than ever FedEX and UPS are seeing record profits due to the internet.

Take it back 10 years, the United States Post Office should have seen this coming, and like any business (even though they are quazi-government) prepared.  As Amazon.com, eBay and all these other companies started seeing huge traffic, and items started being shipped – why did our post office not pick up the slack?  The USPS visits EVERY HOUSEHOLD, BUSINESS and location in this country daily – delivering packages would have been easy considering they had the infrastructure in place.  If anything they could have expanded it, and created a chaper way to ship more items for all these huge .com’s.  Instead of just being a “shipping option” they should have stepped up the plate and offered better discounts, and been more competitive.

Finally, in 2011 were starting to see tracking and some of the technologies that  UPS/FedEX had years ago be adopted by our postal service.  The tracking now actually shows in many cases where your package last was, and is accurate and not 12 hours behind.  Database services are quick, why should anyone have to wait 12 hours to see a update?

Now the USPS is left with a 8 billion dollar shortfall, a bunch of commercials that say to use their flat rate boxes so you don’t have to weight them (up to 70lbs? – so you do?), not a good reputation for boxes – but the infrastructure in place to handle it.   It would be interesting to see what percent of mail today is marketing related as well – I bet its well over 50%.

Finally, I wonder some of the stats.   Lets say it takes 20 seconds per house to deliver mail, if the average postal worker makes $26/hour with benefits, that means that each house coss $0.14 per day ($46/year) to deliver mail to just for the postal worker alone.  Why not just cut back to delivering mail to residential homes to 2 days a week, and keep businesses at 5 (since they do in general still handle a lot of mail), anyone who wants mail daily could get a PO Box and check it themselves.

Being an apple geek, and having an iPad, iPod, iPhone and Macbook Pro – I love apple gadgets.  I’ve noticed a few things apple does with marketing that in my option are done very well.

1) Apple does not change product names. With Dell – when they release new computers they continue to change tons of numbers and product names, when they are all desktop computers.  Apple takes a more simple approach and creates a computer called “iMac” – not Optiplex 745, Optiplex 755, etc.  Its always the “iMac.”

2) People have confidence in products that stay around. When Dell or HP play their part number and naming games, people feel that their computers are old and obsolete.  Apple takes a different approach, all though they update the product lines frequently – the product names for the most part stay the same.  It really gives people confidence that their Apple products are staying around.

3) Apple Charges a Premium. Yes, they do – but if you’ve ever used apple products they really feel like they are well built.  I had a Macbook Pro and a old Toshiba Laptop, both of which I purchased at the same time.  Three years after I purchased both, the Toshiba laptop was falling apart – while the unibody MacBook was holding up well.  Feet weren’t falling off the bottom, the case was still in excellent shape – everything about it was great.  The Toshiba laptop I had was plastic, and all falling apart, feet were missing, plastic was chipped, it was scuffed up.  My mac all though it had  few dents looked like a million bucks compared to that laptop.  While I was proofreading this paragraph, I realizing it I referred to it as “old Toshiba” earlier in this post, but not my Macbook Pro as old.

4) Resale Value stays high.  Like any computers the resale value drops a ton after its old – but macs retain their value much better.  Not that it matters, but even 6 years after a mac was purchased new, you can still sell it on ebay for about 1/3 to 1/2 of new purchase price!  That has a lot to say about it!

5) Macs just work.  Like they made fun of PC’s in all those old commercials – macs really do just work.  Even the most techie people prefer to be able to just use their computer without having weird errors or having to deal with problems.  Macs (all though not problem-less) – have a lot more problems than PC’s.  Whats even better is there is probably a mac store within driving distance where in many cases they will help you for free with fixing any issues you have.  Apple really stands behind their products.

Apple has done a great job with Steve Jobs behind the helm.  I can only hope that Apple computers stays innovative and continues to function as well without him!

Best Buy was the last to update their pricing and still have the $99 touchpads available!  If your after one this is the last place on earth to get $99 touchpads: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/HP+-+TouchPad+Tablet+with+16GB+Memory+-+Black/2842056.p?id=1218358284065&skuId=2842056

Checked in our FourSquare today and found this a little weird, it said it was my second time checking in – but yet it gave me points as though it was my first time checking in.  To me it seems foursquare is having problems with growth – since I’ve had a few problems in the last few weeks, but even with problems they have an awesome product.

HP’s website seems to be having issues with the touchpads.  It said I had one in my cart but continued to get error after error after error.  Checkout the HP website:

After seeing this, I finally did get half way through before it got errors – I had to call HP and they said I didn’t make it through… Apparently the demand is still HUGE for these.