My actual experience in sending and receiving items thru the USPS has been quite good (or perhaps lucky), but my general complaint is with the front-line service at the counter. I went in to mail some items yesterday, and of the maximum 7 windows available, 3 were closed and of the 4 remaining, 3 of the workers were in the back (swallowed into a black hole?) for an interminable length of time. Meanwhile, the "take a number" indicator showed a backlog of 38 customers, or nearly 10 per window, assuming some of those counter workers could ever be found. It took some loud complaining from several customers to get a supervisor, who wasn't much help either.

Why can McDonald's, paying minimum wage to teenagers, give superior counter service, when long-tenured high-wage union postal workers give such atrocious service???? (That's a rhetorical question...I think we all know the answer to that one.)

Also, IMO the postal rates and classes are kept unnecessarily complex, so as to avoid more front-line automation and self-service. If the USPS could implement the equivalent of the banking system's ATM's, I would do self-service posting 99% of the time.