The Post Office...
 

...insert verb of choice here...

I guess it's that time of year again. My cards that were supposed to be here yesterday weren't, and they won't be here today either! Hoping several items clear the ice and snow this weekend and show on Monday. Oy...:mad:

It is for sure that time of year. Stuff that was supposed to be here Monday and Tuesday showed up yesterday and today. Not horrible, just frustrating. I have seen items that I have bought and sold both getting caught in the bottleneck of the holiday season. I have the guaranteed shipping thing on my Ebay so I don't know how that effects it when it's not my fault. Guess we will see.
We just have to have a little patience and I'm guessing that in about a month we will see our precious pieces of cardboard arriving in a more timely fashion!!
Happy Holidays!!!

Almost all of my deliveries have been 1 or 2 days late for the last few weeks. I check the INFORMED DELIVERY thing on the USPS site to see what will be delivered each day

I sent a package out on Monday by Priority Mail, the receipt said "expected delivery date Saturday December 15" 5 days delivery, well at least they are admitting up front that they can't live up to their own promises, it was delivered this morning.

Yes, at times like this I’ve learned the emotional value of keeping things in historical perspective,

and to paraphrase from a book I recently read, to recognize, ‘ok, so I dropped it at the post office, and then what happened? Was the package safely and dryly driven in a covered mechanical carriage to an almost magical place known as an airfield, where it was whisked away on a flying steel carpet that safely flew hundreds of miles per hour through the clouds to land on giant rubber pillows later the same day on the other side of the continent, for a final delivery accuracy of likely 99.9%, all the while avoiding bandits and train robbers, leaky tents and frostbite, not to mention dysentery and rampant tuberculosis, over a trip that may otherwise have taken weeks or months, if the postal worker survived the trip at all... ’

Yes, our great-great-great grandparents would kick us in our shins if they thought for a moment that we were serious whenever complaining about our modern, now standard, 2-day postal service…

Honestly, I only have positive things to say about the USPS. I have had very little difficulty over the years. Sorry others haven't been as fortunate.

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Just sent a refund for a package that was delivered to West Sacramento CA. The person I sent it to lives in Illinois. Each day I call the 800 number provided by UPS and the wait time is 45 minutes to one hour. I hang up as I don’t have time to wait on hold. I then created a UPS account online which I’m waiting for a response. Told the guy that I refund the money to “if the card shows up consider it a gift.”

I have a card that was supposed to be delivered to me in NC last Thursday, USPS First Class mail. At this point it hasn't made it past the Chicago Network Distribution Center, and hasn't been scanned in 5 days. Yes, in the scheme of things it is pretty minor, but I've got to admit I'm starting to get ticked.

Maybe a dumb supply and demand question, but the post office knows things get nuts this time of year right? They don't hire temporary workers and pull extra shifts?

USPS is run by the union. Customer service is not a priority. The main concern is that the workers dont exhibit too much effort and take all scheduled breaks.

I think somewhere deep down I knew that, but was trying to forget it.

They hire a ton of extra workers just for the Christmas rush at the sorting facilities.

One of my best friends wife is the head of the union here and most people would not believe how screwed up the system really is.

A friend of mine on my old softball team was a postal worker and he would regale us with stories about how powerful their union was. He compared it to baseball and laughingly said, "The last thing his 'team' was interested in was scoring runs (meaning delivering the mail on time)." Oof.

I wonder how mail service in the U.S.stacks up on an objective basis with mail service in other countries in terms of cost and performance. Anyone aware of any studies or analysis along those lines ?

Unions should have been done away with with the advent of the internet and social media. The USPS needs to be privatized in a big way. And their benefits need to be more in line with the mainstream, not the way they are now. I am pretty sure it's really, really difficult to get fired and that isn't good for anyone except crappy employees who NEED to be fired.

I have been quite positive about the USPS through twenty-five years of trading/purchasing cards through the mail. Very few issues at all and always minor. But, over the last year at the local level that has changed. I have had several packages over the last year show as "Out for Delivery" on the tracking, only to never receive it that day and check the tracking to find some notice saying it was not left due to some direction on my part, which was completely untrue. So, both of the last two times it happened I was waiting the next day for the mail and would go out for it as soon as it arrived, and both times as the driver pulled away I could hear them laughing and talking in obvious personal conversations through bluetooth. So, basically, they just half-way pay attention to their deliveries, then when they find a package they didn't deliver back at the PO, they enter something to cover themselves. Once, no biggie, but it's happened like eight times this year. So, I'm afraid I am leaning on the negative side about the postal service on a local level.

I'm not a postal employee (nor do I play one on TV), but to put it into a bit of perspective, try the alternatives for packages larger than can fit in a standard sized mail box. Our experience is the USPS consistently provides a much better service in the handling and delivering of packages than UPS and even FedEx (to the small extent we get FexEx packages). We regularly receive UPS packages whose appearance would indicate their primary delivery measurement is to see how many packages they can damage in transit. We almost never see packages with this treatment from USPS. Also for larger packages, the USPS is either cheaper or on par with UPS.

As to seasonal delivery, delays abound in all areas of shipping. We had one USPS package with estimated delivery to be this past Saturday. It arrived the next day (Sunday). A major delay. :rolleyes: One item in the package was broken, but the box wasn't damaged. Both my wife and myself agree it wasn't packaged properly (and definitely not how I would have sent it).

Of course it could be better, but it's also not Italy either.

UPS once delivered to me a '73 California Angels Media Guide with Nolan Ryan on it, the greenish one where he is wearing the the strikeout crown in the artwork. They left a brown paper package on my front steps in the pouring rain - I mean pouring. By dumb luck, I got home maybe 10 minutes after it was delivered, and snatched it up and took the thing inside. The package had soaked down right to the lining, but the book inside was fine. If I had left it outside for another 5 or 10 minutes, I'm guessing the whole thing would have been ruined.

I'll stop short of saying that unions need to be done away with entirely; I don't know enough about them in other industries to say that with any certainty. But I will agree with about everything else you said, if true. How much longer is it before the collecting community at large says screw this, and starts paying more $$ for FedEx next day delivery...?

Well, happy Monday!

3 of my 4 outstanding packages - and they just happened to be the 3 that included the more valuable pre-war stuff...showed up today. Now my only remaining problem is the one that originally led me to make this post - and that package (due last Thurs.) still has not been scanned past Chicago. LOL...I think it's a '76 Mike Schmidt.

I think they do make those temp hires...trouble is, it was likely one of them that walked off with your package :eek:

One USPS fact is that the USPS has "lost" more money than any other single business entity in the history of the world.

Shon-- I get that it loses money, is inefficient and saddled with contractual commitments to it's employees that seem impossible to address at this point, and that its obligation to deliver mail 6 days a week to places that are always going to be unprofitable and subsisized would be an issue even for a private company. I was just wondering how the cost and reliability of mailing a letter or package here with USPS stacks up with the situation in other countries.

Last year they walked off with one of my daughter's canoes they were getting for Christmas from Amazon. Really? Who steals a box that is 7 foot long and weighs 30 lbs? It happened. I ordered two. One showed just fine, the other never did.

Well the AMZ scenario may have an equally likely explanation: the temp holiday worker at Amazon may have presumed a box that big probably included at least two of whatever was inside and so never sent another one out??

Kidding aside, I do hope your delayed item isn't really lost or 'fell off the truck' this time.

The item I was concerned about this time did finally show yesterday. I think the moral of the story at least for this holiday season is don't order stuff from the opposite coast past the first week of December...:mad:

Anti-Unionism....
 

A lot of "lost" stuff was found in this guy's closet...:D

Usps
 

During my Postal career, I was fortunate enough to be able to work in 63 different Post Offices, often doing quality control types of work. What I noticed is that in nearly every Post Office, 95% of the employees were good, hard working people who were trying to do a good job for their customers. Then, there was always the 5% who were worthless and should have been fired, but it is nearly impossible to fire someone. I have had Union stewards complain to me that they spend most of their time defending and protecting employees who should be fired, and the stewards were just as frustrated as the managers.

As far as pay and benefits, nearly everyone who has been hired during the past 10 or so years is making roughly 60% to 70% of the hourly pay that the older employees are making. These new people are almost all part time workers with very limited benefits. Even long term employees are being squeezed. I was a Postmaster with 35 years of service, and my share of the health insurance plan was $933 per month.

And...they're at it again. First class package due on time yesterday. Hasn't been scanned in 2 days, now best case scenario could be here by Monday. WTF?

I have another my mail delivery person is horrible story. We have snow on the ground and it was lightly sleeting off and on last Saturday. When the wife and I got home Saturday night from going out to eat. The neighbor kid from a block to the south and across the street was knocking on our door. He seen us pull in so he walked over and handed me a soaking wet bubble mailer. He said his Mom found it in their front yard when she got home from work.

It is far from the first time this exact thing has happened. The carrier also walks the route when it is raining with the mail in their hand getting soaked.

It was a semi rare card I bought from a seller in Australia. Luckily that seller way over packaged the card so it was safe.

From what I've seen the problem is with managers that don't document things that crappy employees do. They can be fired, managers must do their job though.
I have more experience with the communications industry, not the USPS however.

I've been expecting a card since 12/11. It was sent first class but no tracking number.

I've seen issues before where an employee doesn't know the difference between First Class letter (no tracking) and First Class package (with tracking). Someone once tried to do the former to save me money because they thought the package would qualify and I was like no you don't understand - I have to have a tracking number...:eek:

That's horrible and hard to think of an excuse, especially if it's happened multiple times. Maybe consider getting your cards delivered to an office or if that is not possible, rent a PO box? Not sure what they cost but it may be a consideration if you get a lot of stuff through the mail and your local delivery person is that incompetent.