D’oh!
Simpsons stamps wasted $1.2 million for Postal Service, report says
Washington Post: Someone at the U.S. Postal Service guessed that commemorative stamps featuring TV cartoon character Homer Simpson would be twice as popular as those of Elvis Presley.
In a move that wasted $1.2 million in printing costs, the Postal Service produced 1 billion of “The Simpsons” stamps. It sold 318 million.
A Postal Service inspector general’s report singled out the overproduction of stamps marking the 20th anniversary of the cartoon as an example of failing to align stamp production with demand.
The service could save $2 million annually by ending overproduction of stamps that, like the Simpsons run, end up being destroyed when they don’t sell, the inspector general said.
In the grand scheme of things, bad guesses on commemorative stamp sales aren’t make or break. The Postal Service said this month that it could lose $15 billion in the year ending Sept. 30 unless it gets Congress’s help in cutting costs by eliminating a requirement to prepay for future retirees’ health care and letting it stop Saturday mail delivery.
But things such as unsold Simpsons stamps are fuel for critics. “If the Postal Service can’t address a simple matter such as determining how many commemorative stamps to produce, it shows they can’t address the larger problems,” said Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste.
The inspector general criticized the process the service uses to decide how many stamps to produce, saying it’s unscientific and too much of a judgment call. The audit was reported earlier by Linn’s Stamp News, a weekly magazine for collectors. “This process depends on manual procedures and the experience of one individual, which increases the risk for costly miscalculations,” the report said. “Further, such errors may be detected if an independent review and assessment of production estimates were performed.”
The Postal Service, in a response to the report, said it already addressed the problem by creating the “forever” stamp, which can be used to mail a letter any time in the future. The Simpsons products were printed when most stamp values were fixed, meaning they could no longer be used by themselves to mail a letter after postal rates increased.
“The forever stamp has gone a long way in preventing overproduction,” said Janet Sorensen, director of marketing and service in the inspector general’s office and leader of the audit team that produced the report. “They need to get a better process for projecting the need, and they are implementing that type of process.”
Working from recommendations by a citizens’ advisory board, the Postal Service produces about 20 commemorative stamp designs each year featuring historic events, geographic spots and pop-culture icons such as Homer Simpson.
Commemorative stamps are bought by collectors as well as people intending to use them to mail something. Most collectors buy stamps soon after they are issued, the report said, leading the inspector general to recommend limiting initial production of stamps and printing more if demand warrants.
While the Simpsons stamp was the most overproduced during 2009 and 2010, the service also produced more stamps that it sold in those years featuring the lunar new year, civil rights movement figures, Zion National Park, Supreme Court justices, historic U.S. flags, film director Oscar Micheaux and a Christmas stamp showing an angel with a lute.
The inspector general probe found no instances during 2009 and 2010 in which there was more demand for commemorative stamps than supply.
The best-selling commemorative issued by the Postal Service was a 29-cent stamp issued in 1993 on what would have been Presley’s 58th birthday. A Marilyn Monroe stamp issued in 1995 for 32 cents was another top seller.
The Postal Service has cut stamp production in line with falling demand for first-class mail, which includes letters and bills. It printed 21 billion stamps in fiscal 2011, down from 29.7 billion stamps, the report said. First-class mail volume continued to decline in the quarter ended June 30, falling 3.5 percent compared with a year earlier, as people and businesses shift to electronic transactions.
Wonder if the marketing geniuses at USPS have ever heard of a little thing called “market research”? If this marketing genius union employee had lost this much money in a private sector job, guarantee you his/her job would be kaput.
Yet when you have a government agency that has no fiscal accountability, what’s a few more taxpayer dollars to waste on “guesses”?
DCG
Amazing. Pimply-faced adolescents are running the USPS.
Hmmm. How much did Matt Groeing get paid?
If they would only focus on their job of delivering mail, instead of offering “commemorative anything!” Let Hallmark or someone else sell the “frilly stuff.” I just want to be able to mail a letter or package without standing in line for an hour or more…
D’oh!
USPS, meet the Pony Express.
It’s only a matter of time now – and not very much of that.
-Dave
Terry,
When I caught that on Drudge, I couldn’t help but wonder if there was a buggy whip maker employed as well.
-Dave
Hopefully the Post Office will fold before the opportunity comes to put Obama on a stamp! D’oh! Obama on a stamp! Holy Crap!
USPS doesn’t run on tax dollars.
Not entirely true, Betsy. From Wikipedia:
“The USPS has not directly received taxpayer-dollars since the early 1980s with the minor exception of subsidies for costs associated with the disabled and overseas voters.”
Also of interest is this: “the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 (PAEA), which obligates the USPS to prefund 75 years’ worth of future health care benefit payments to retirees within a ten-year time span – a requirement to which no other government organization is subject. Thus, in addition to the weak economy and the diversion of mail to electronic means, the mandates of PAEA have had a considerable impact on Postal Service finances. As a consequence, it has been charged that the US Postal Service budget crisis of 2011 is, in essence, an artificial one.”
I don’t know the exact percentage of the subsidy for ensuring that disabled and overseas voters are able to vote, but I am quite sure that it does not constitute any significant portion of USPS’s revenues, which come primarily from postage and other sales. Whatever your wishes are for USPS, the title of this story is just inaccurate. You can’t just say something and make it true.
USPS does not run on your tax dollars. It runs on postage. Their finances are a matter of public record.
Guess with all the money the USPS makes they won’t need a bailout with our tax dollars.
I don’t think the word “bailout” can be appropriately applied to USPS. USPS provides a public service – mail service to every addresses in the US six days a week. It is an inherently inefficient mission. A bailout, to me, connotes rescuing a private, for-profit company by giving them tax dollars, not a public service. If the country decided to invest tax dollars in USPS at some future time because it valued universal postal service and wanted to continue it, then that still would not be a bailout to me.
A public service that is very outdated and can’t compete efficiently with private sector services. How many people actually get mail delivered to them any more? A private company would have modified its services years ago to keep up with the times and make a profit.
You got one thing right, “an inherently inefficient mission”. That about sums up most government agencies…