Post Office Pushes the Envelope

Postal officials, seeking savings to reduce losses that totaled $2.8 billion last year, proposed moving the transparent window on business envelopes a fraction of an inch higher and to the right to improve mail handling.

They also said Jan. 22 that they were considering requiring commercial mailers to reduce static cling so letters won’t stick together. The agency separately revealed that it was in such bad financial shape that mail deliveries may have to be reduced to five days a week from six.

The outrage was immediate -- about the envelopes and static cling.

Printers, envelope makers, mailers, paper companies and big mail users such as banks and insurance companies, which generate much of the 212 billion pieces of mail the post office delivers each year, called the changes badly timed, unnecessary and too expensive.

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