U.s. Postal Service, Cut Saturday Mail Delivery | featured news

The U.S. Postal Service says it will delay plans to cut Saturday mail delivery because Congress isn't allowing the change. The Postal Service said in February that it planned to cut back in August to five-day-a-week deliveries for everything except packages, as a way to hold down losses.

The financially beleaguered Postal Service suffered a setback in its plan to end Saturday delivery of first-class mail as Congress on Thursday passed legislation requiring six-day delivery.

The U.S. Postal Service lost $1.3 billion in the October to December quarter, an official said on Friday, days after the beleaguered mail agency announced plans to cut back on Saturday delivery to save money.

Netflix won't miss Saturday mail delivery, even though the weekend service helped keep the company's DVD-by-mail subscribers happy. The U.S. Postal Service's planned shift to five days of home delivery a week instead of six may even make Netflix Inc. slightly more profitable by lowering the costs for sending out its familiar red envelopes with DVDs. That's because subscribers may be able to watch fewer DVDs for the same monthly price.

The U.S. Postal   Service will stop delivering mail on Saturdays but continue to deliver packages six days a week under a plan aimed at saving about $2 billion annually, the financially struggling agency says.

The Obama administration's plan to rescue the U.S. Postal Service would allow the agency to end Saturday mail delivery and sell non-postal products, according to documents released on Monday.

The U.S. Postal Service could save billions of dollars by ending Saturday mail deliveries, according to the Government Accountability Office. Postal officials — eager to stave off an estimated $7 billion in losses this year — think they can save about $3 billion annually by stopping weekend mail deliveries while still keeping post offices open on Saturdays.

The U.S. Postal Service would cut Saturday mail delivery starting in the first half of 2011 under a plan the agency will give its regulator tomorrow.