Dear Yahoo!:

Dear Yahoo!:
What percentage of mail is lost by the USPS?
Mike
Chicago, Illinois

Dear Mike:
You'd have better luck finding Dick Cheney's social security number. Even though the United States Postal Service routinely hires contractors to assess performance, it doesn't release statistics on lost mail.

The post office uses something called the "External First-Class Measurement System," or EXFC, to determine the percentage of first-class mail that travels within USPS time standards from a collection box to the addressee. Relying on those results, the post office has determined it's doing a pretty good job. For example, the USPS reported an EXFC score of 90% nationwide last year.

The Government Accountability Office, however, has found some post office assessment criteria "unsuitable as benchmarks." Furthermore, the post office "does not measure and report its delivery performance for most types of mail. Therefore, transparency with regard to its overall performance in timely mail delivery is limited...(so) it is difficult to hold management accountable for results and conduct independent oversight."

This 1991 manifesto against the post office from the CATO Institute, admittedly an organization that would rather see oxygen privatized than praise a government agency, claimed that one original intent of the EXFC was to "determine...the percentage of mail lost or misdelivered." But when the initial test was completed, the USPS didn't release those figures. The CATO report went on to accuse the post office of "losing or throwing out over a billion letters a year." Of course, that was 16 years ago, but that's not to say at least some shenanigans still don't occur.