Sometimes it’s hard to get a straight answer. One such occasion was at the recent meeting of the Mailers Technical Advisory Committee.
In a session that included a presentation about USPS service performance, the presenter showed charts (like the one above) that, among other data, compared service in late September 2025 to what it was a year earlier.
After looking at those charts, the question was asked whether the reported scores reflected true service (as experienced by customers) or simply the consequence of changes to how service is calculated.
A lot of circumlocution was featured in the response – including a review of how the postal network has changed because of former postmaster general Louis DeJoy’s 10-Year Plan and its focus on cost reduction – but not an answer to the question that was asked.
So a more specific follow-up question was posed: would a mailpiece sent from “A” to “B” today experience the same service that it would have five years ago. In response, there was more evasiveness and obfuscation and a detour into all of the financial and operational issues facing the USPS.
At that point, the unlikeliness of a straight answer – a “yes” or “no” – became obvious. The presenter was declaring that service was as reported because the Postal Service had the numbers and a chart that said so. Questioning the bases for the data from which the chart was developed was not to be entertained, and no discourse was going to be opened about how changes to how service is calculated can impact (or be designed to improve) the resulting scores.
The elastic yardstick
Mark Twain famously said “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics,” essentially reinforcing the axiom that “Figures do not lie, but liars surely figure.”
To be clear, there’s no accusation being made that anyone overtly lied during the MTAC presentation, but the dodging-and-weaving to avoid a straight answer supports the premise that what attendees were being shown was missing some important context, enabling (or hoping for) the conclusion that USPS service was better than it really is.
Since mid-2020, the Postal Service has repeatedly relaxed its service standards, adjusted (usually lower) its annual service targets, and conjured a growing litany of reasons for why a significant proportion of all mail is excluded from service performance measurement. In its quarterly service performance figures, for example, the majority of the reporting cells are labeled “unable to measure.”
In its implementation of the Regional Transportation Optimization initiative, the agency added a “day zero” to the calendar so that mail left sitting overnight – or over a weekend – in impacted post offices doesn’t hurt calculated service.
Most recently, the USPS sought an open-ended exclusion – that it would administer – for mail impacted by what it determines to be “extraordinary” circumstances. (We gave that absurd proposal our Bull Trophy in our September 22 issue.)
It’s unknown whether new PMG David Steiner is aware of how his staff manipulates service standards and targets, and uses an elastic yardstick of service measurement criteria, to enable reporting favorable numbers. However, given his recognition that providing actual good service should be an institutional objective, hopefully he will demand more honesty – and less smoke and mirrors – in what customers are told about USPS service performance.