<snicker> to all of these.
To be fair, though, I've found that USPS is at least as reliable as OOPS and FedEx, and it's considerably cheaper.
Here are some observations which can help explain some of the seeming anomalies in USPS shipping:
- Almost no post offices sort their own mail anymore. Virtually all mail goes to a regional processing facility. Thus, for example, a letter or parcel from Evanston, IL, to Evanston, IL, goes to the regional processing facility in Palatine, IL. Eliminating local sorting of local mail has saved the USPS billions over the last decade or so, they say.
- Some routings may seem nonsensically out of the way. But the routings depend on whatever mail-carrying contracts the USPS has signed with private-company mail carriers.
- Parcel post generally moves with Priority Mail, but it's on a space-available basis, with Priority Mail taking, obviously, priority. If you compare the parcel post and Priority Mail rates, parcel post for the most part is only marginally cheaper, frequently by a dime or so.
- First class mail and Priority Mail generally move together. And for anything less than a pound or so, it pays to compare the first class parcel and Priority Mail rates. Frequently the first class parcel rate is much cheaper.
- The extra steps involved in processing the extra-service item (delivery confirmation or insured, certified or registered mail) can significantly slow the movement of mail. And there's only slightly better reliability with the extra services. Registered mail moves the slowest. (As a for-instance, ordinary first class mail from central Pennsylvania to the Chicago area is usually one or two days; registered mail is seven or eight days.)
- Mail to a P.O. box generally is delivered a day before mail carried to your street address and eliminates any "uncertainties" involved with an unsupervised mail carrier.
As I said, just some observations . . .
Said RialCeLimT,
Common rule of thumb...If the government is somehow involved, then it is junk.
True. But the USPS is an independent public corporation, though subject to whatever silliness the congresscritters and the Postal Rate Commission want to throw at them. BTW, in countries with privatized postal systems, particularly in Europe, the first class letter rate is well over a dollar equivalent, despite the much shorter distances involved. And many of those countries don't have any kind of a parcel rate: the parcel rate is the same as the first class mail rate and thus vastly more expensive than our Priority Mail.