Lawrence’s two U.S. post offices are about to lose their vending machines for stamps.

Need a reason? Not even Judy Raney, the postmaster herself, can get the things to take her money with any degree of consistency.

And that’s just the beginning.

“They’re so temperamental now,” Raney said. “I’ll walk out there with a dollar bill, and it may or may not like it. They’re starting to work less than they do work. We go through periods when they’re down more than they’re up.”

So now, as part of a program to eliminate aging vending machines in post office lobbies nationwide, Lawrence’s two locations each will part with their machines sometime after March 18. The machine at a contract postal center at the Kansas Union, on Kansas University’s main campus, also is to be eliminated.

The machines – estimated to be up to 30 years old – have problems that go beyond customer aggravation and dwindling sales.

“They’re costing us more than they make,” Raney said. “They’re so old that we can’t get parts for them anymore.”

The Postal Service announced in 2006 that it would be removing about 5,900 stamp vending machines from service in each of the next four years, until nearly all 23,000 would be retired.

The old machines will be recycled and used for parts.

In Lawrence, Raney said, many customers already have been opting for the U.S. Postal Service’s next generation of customer-service technology: Automated Postal Centers, which have been in Lawrence for two years in the lobbies at the main post office, 745 Vt., and Jayhawk Station, 1901 W. 31st St.

The automated centers are similar to self-check lanes at a supermarket, Raney said. Payments are made by inserting a credit or debit card – like at an ATM – and then following prompts for sending anything from a letter to a parcel.

The centers are always open.

“We reflect what’s going on in other retail establishments,” Raney said, noting that people regularly pay for “almost anything” these days using debit or credit cards.