USPS to suspend San Francisco same-day delivery trials
The US Postal Service will be suspending its “Metro Post” sameday delivery pilot in San Francisco from next month, after failing to attract enough interest from retailers.
The service hailed as a “game changer” for the package business when USPS launched the trials at the end of 2012 offered to deliver e-commerce products between 4pm and 8pm when ordered by 2pm on the same day.
USPS aimed to gather enough data from the pilot in 941 ZIP code areas of the city to judge whether to continue the same-day service and expand it to other US cities.
But a new report from the USPS Inspector General said the pilot was “not properly” implemented, and that there was insufficient participation from the six retailers on the pilot to provide the required daily minimum volume of 200 packages per day.
The IG revealed that over a five month period, the trial in central San Francisco delivered just 95 packages, with 80 of these coming from a single retailer. The deliveries earned USPS the princely sum of just $760, for a pilot programme that cost $10,288 to run.
The IG report revealed that reasons why some retailers chose not to take part in the Metro Post included that the service did not provide signature confirmation, and that the service did not allow purchase of exact postage for deliveries — using the Endicia online postage facility, it required purchase of postage in dollar increments rather than exact amounts.
One significant problem was that the San Francisco pilot was based on the expectation that a number of larger retailers would join, but only one large retailer did get involved — later withdrawing because of other priorities. The small retailers remaining in the pilot could not generate the target daily package volume.
Relaunch
The Inspector General said USPS now intends to relaunch the programme in San Francisco if it can secure enough large retailers to take part.
The report confirmed: “Officials initiated suspending the pilot in the San Francisco District by March 1, 2014, which will allow time to notify customers of the change. Officials further indicated they plan to re-initiate the program in the San Francisco District when they can secure large retailers’ participation.”
A similar pilot running in New York does have large retailers participating, and will continue according to the IG report.
The US Postal Service same day delivery pilots come as part of a wave of trials of such services by e-commerce and brick-and-mortar retailers, including Amazon, Wal-Mart and eBay.
