Tag: Mail Services

UPS says slowing economy may weigh on first quarter

Posted by | Mar 12, 2008 | |

United Parcel Service Inc., said it may not meet its first-quarter earnings target as U.S. economic growth slows.

Domestic shipments at UPS have dropped for six straight weeks, Chief Financial Officer Kurt Kuehn said today at an investor presentation in New York. Air deliveries have fallen faster than ground shipments. The declines make UPS’s per-share profit goal of 94 cents to 98 cents “difficult to achieve,” Kuehn said. He reaffirmed full-year guidance of USD 4.30 to USD 4.50.

The economic outlook for this year is “uncertain at best,’ Chief Executive Officer Scott Davis told investors. Lower interest rates and tax rebates that are part of a federal economic stimulus package may help reinvigorate demand, he said.

“I’m not ready to proclaim the quarter lost, and I’m not ready to proclaim the economy lost,” Davis said.

Higher fuel costs, job losses and falling home values have dimmed growth prospects for the economy. It will expand 1.4 percent for all of 2008, the weakest since the last recession in 2001, based on the median estimate of 62 economists polled by Bloomberg from March 3 to March 10.

UPS will focus on expanding overseas sales to overcome slowing U.S. demand, Chief Operating Officer David Abney said.

The company is adding operations in 10 cities in China and buying seven Boeing Co. 747-400 wide-body freight airplanes, Abney said. He said India’s export volume jumped more than 25 percent last year, while European exports rose more than 10 percent.

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Deutsche Post plans to raise civil servants' working hours

Posted by | Mar 12, 2008 | |

Deutsche Post World Net AG plans to raise the weekly working hours for its some 55,000 civil servants to 41 from 38.5 as soon as a labour agreement expires March 31, Die Welt reported, not citing its sources.

The former state-owned monopoly company still employs a large number of former state civil servants. Civil servants employed in the government administration work 41 hours a week.

Chief executive Frank Appel at Deutsche Post’s annual press conference last week did not say the German mail services company plans to extend working hours, but said the 41 hours are an issue.

A labour agreement that rules out compulsory redundancies for Deutsche Post’s 130,000 German employees also expires at the end of March.

ver.di has as a measure of precaution cancelled all wage agreements effective March 31 in order to be able to launch strikes April 1, as it fears Deutsche Post plans to lay off several thousands employees.

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HBO goes postal (U.S)

Posted by | Mar 12, 2008 | |

Close your laptop, put away your BlackBerry and write a letter. That’s what John Adams would have wanted.

The U.S. Postal Service and HBO recently launched an ad campaign that focuses on the importance of handwritten correspondence and the heartfelt feelings it evokes. The effort, called “Power of the Letter,” promotes HBO’s miniseries John Adams, which details the life of the second U.S. president and his abundant letter writing.

HBO, seeking exposure for the miniseries that premieres on March 16, is footing the bill. “We didn’t have to spend a penny on this campaign,” said rep Sue Brennan at the USPS, Washington.

The campaign spans across TV, online and retail. A specialWeb site, poweroftheletter.com, was created by HBO, which provides a brief description of the miniseries and encourages consumers to write letters. Standees, which are 6-foot tall cardboard ads, were put up in more than 4,000 Postal Service retail locations around the country to drive consumers to the Web site, in addition to window clings with ads in 12,000-plus locations.

The campaign will run until the end of the month. Civic Entertainment Group, New York, handles.

“[The promotion] is in more Postal Service locations than there are Starbucks coffee shops and Wal-Mart stores in the U.S.,” said Spencer Rice, a director at Civic Entertainment.

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Postal service trust in United States

Posted by | Mar 12, 2008 | |

For the third year in a row, Americans have rated the Postal Service as the number one government agency they trust to protect their privacy.

Overall the Postal Service earned a rating of 83 percent in the 2007 Privacy Trust Study of the United States Government, conducted by Ponemon Institute LLC. The average trust score among the 60 agencies surveyed was 47 percent.

The Privacy Trust Study found that Americans remain concerned over a “loss of civil liberties and privacy rights,” “surveillance into personal life,” and “monitoring e-mail and Web activities.” While many federal agencies saw their ratings drop, the Postal Service was one of the few to increase both its customer satisfaction and trust scores.

All of us at the Post Office thank you for your confidence. We appreciate your business and your trust, and look forward to serving your mailing needs.

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Swiss Post opens its PostLab at EPFL

Posted by | Mar 12, 2008 | |

Swiss Post has strengthened its partnership with the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL).
By opening its incubator (PostLab) on the EPFL campus, it is clearly signalling its intention to be one of Switzerland’s innovation pioneers. Alongside high-tech companies, it will work in close collaboration with the school, its researchers and its students.

Using the incubator concept, PostLab will offer financing to develop projects that have strong potential and to help put them to a specific use. This concept helps reduce the time between the generation of an idea and its realization. This means greater efficiency, faster development of services and increased motivation for all partners who can witness the result of their contribution.

Led by Lorenz Lehmann of Swiss Post, PostLab is not only aimed at EPFL researchers, but also at students with good ideas as well as collaborators from other academic institutions.

Many research topics developed at EPFL represent solid prospects for Swiss Post’s business development. The security of electronic financial transactions is one area that is constantly evolving. Security of this kind will permit the development of new services in areas such as cellular telephony. The goal is to give users freedom and convenience, not to impede their activity. Another topic area is transportation logistics, which have to incorporate many parameters these days to achieve speed, traceability, cost savings and environmental responsibility, while enabling the short-term planning of transportation resources. This challenge calls for research in the fields of management, logistics, mathematics, electronics and many other leading disciplines. Advances in artificial intelligence also constitute a particularly fertile source of innovation.

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