Postal Service Reports Sustained Service Performance

July bookstore sales fell 3.4% compared to July 2021, according to preliminary estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. Sales we $646 million this past July, compared to $668 million a year ago. It was the second straight month bookstore sales declined compared to 2021, after a steady string of monthly increases, and could reflect a new normal in the bookstore sales pattern, as comparisons to 2021 now reflect a period when many stores had reopened after lockdowns. In June, sales were down 8.2%. Despite the two-month sales skid, bookstore sales were still up 10.3% in the first seven months of 2022 over 2021, with sales rising to $4.54 billion from $4.11 billion in the comparable period in 2021. For the entire retail segment July sales rose 8.5% and sales increased 10.2% in the year-to-date.

The Postal Regulatory Commission (Commission) welcomes Russell Rappel-Schmid as the agency’s first chief data officer to lead its open data and data governance efforts. Mr. Rappel-Schmid joined the agency effective February 14, 2022. Rappel-Schmid will oversee the Commission’s data management and compliance with the OPEN Government Data Act. Most recently, Rappel-Schmid served as the State of Alaska's first chief data officer. In that role, he worked with the State Office of Information Technology and other state departments on the data governance plan for their move to the cloud. He also launched Alaska’s first non-geospatial open data portal, and created data tools to help users better visualize and understand the state’s data. Rappel-Schmid previously served at the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General (USPS OIG). He was a member of the USPS OIG’s data analytics team where he worked to identify, access, and effectively use Postal Service data. Rappel-Schmid also worked as an audit manager, overseeing audits of Postal Service costs, pricing, and international mail. Rappel-Schmid started his career using data to drive internal audits while on active duty in the U.S. Marine Corps.

Consumer complaints to Keep Me Posted (KMP) increased throughout the pandemic as service providers altered or removed paper communication preferences at an alarming rate. For years, banks, utilities, telecoms and other companies have encouraged and even incentivized their customers to voluntarily opt in to digital correspondence on their accounts. Over time however, many service providers have replaced carrots with sticks and charge punishing fees for paper bills and statements. Since the beginning of the pandemic, a laundry list of major corporations have taken advantage of widespread disruptions to proactively assault longstanding communications preferences. Far too many stopped asking consumers to opt in to electronic bills, statements and other important notices, and instead just switched their account holders from paper to digital communication without prior consent. These anti-consumer practices show no sign of fixing themselves, but there is a silver lining. In many instances, consumers can reclaim their preferences for paper communications, free of charge, by taking a few proven steps.