USPS at their finest!

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madjack

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Aug 17, 2011
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Central Louisiana
I've got a pretty good sized order in with CCV for an E-Power and a few bundles of Resurrectors...USPS tracking showed it processing out of their Columbia Il facility at 6:30pm Wed nite headed for me down here in La...then shows out for delivery as 8:30AM Thur...IN Columbia Il...WTF...now it just shows, LOST...CCV is trying to track it, I am trying to track it and USPS is clueless...and they wonder why they have trouble making a buck...SHEEEEESH:facepalm:..........
madjack:2cool:
 
Trouble with the USPS is that they're so variable in their service.

I had a package that showed "Electronic Shipping Info Received", "Shipment Accepted", "Accepted at origin sort facility", and "Processed through Sort Facility" (in PA) all in the same day. It showed nothing different until I looked at the page, 4 days later, and it said "Delivered"....no "Arrival at Unit" or "Out for Delivery"...just "Delivered". Went to the mail drop and it was there.

I've had packages that update every micro-step of the way (some of them taking interesting detours also), almost down to the point of telling you the name of the driver or pilot hauling my goodies. The last mile is the clifhanger.

Long as it gets to me eventually.

vaping won't kill you, it's the stress of waiting for your stuff to finally "get here" that'll get ya.
 

vid

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Aug 28, 2011
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Wolverine Lake, MI
I got that beat, had a package from a favorite smoke shop, they ship it out on a Monday, it arrives in My state Tuesday, goes to the correct sorting facility, then overnight they ship it across state (because there dumb). It gets to the other side of the state, they tag it as misdirected shipment, they then decide to ship it back to the original sort facility 5 miles from my house. There they tag it is lost in transit. Seriously? They send it again across state, and back again. Then the deliver it! This package criss crossed michigan 4 times when it was 5 miles from my house. Stamps should now cost 10 bucks based on that BS!
 

mostlyclassics

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<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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.)
  6. 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.
 
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