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A couple weeks ago I ordered several magazines from Midway. They use UPS to the local USPS and have USPS do the delivery. Tracking showed package got to my local post office, where it sat for a week before they got around to delivering it.

What stopped you from going and picking it up?

Our office has had many letters arrive that were post marked 30 days prior to when they got here.

George,

The big problems appear to occur in some of the major USPS distribution centers. One where problems sometimes occurred before the present situation was Denver. We media-mailed a book to somebody, and the book stayed in Denver for a month before heading to the customer. In meantime Eileen had mailed another, which beat the first one by 3 weeks.

I recently bought a rifle from a guy who lives a little way north of Philadelphia, and the rifle got stuck in Philly for three weeks before heading west to Montana--which only took 3 days.

In contrast week Eileen media-mailed a book to a guy in a small town north of Great Falls--and the Greats Falls PO is the distribution center for western Montana. The guy received it the next day!

Hahahaha I wouldn't hold your breath.

You've had better luck than me then. Bought a rifle online. It shipped FedEx Ground got to the local deliver hub in like two days. Then said delivered only it wasn't. Then said duplicate scan and out for delivery. Only it wasn't. It sat in our local hub for almost a month before being delivered to the wrong address. (next door to my FFL). The seller and I both had opened cases on it. Had a FEG rep tell me to get the seller to start the insurance claim process the day before it was actually delivered.

John,

Sounds like my recent experience (and Fiddy’s) is not too much compared to the experiences of many here (Fotus’ takes the cake and the cigar). However, as usual a government run union enterprise is pretty insular to the decline of services.

ordered a new iphone for my wife August 5th it was to be delivered August 12th but instead shows it was last scanned at Vernon, CA over 2 weeks ago. Used to be you could call UPS and find out why or they would try to find it, now days there is no way to speak to a live person. Their system has told me to check back later for the past 15 days!

BTW the outfit I bought it from has been just as bad I finally put in a refund payment request with the credit card company.

George,

Actually, the USPS had supposedly been a separate corporation, but under the direction of Congress, for quite a while now.

Its also part of the mandate of the Constitution, which was instituted to allow ALL Americans to correspond without paying a delivery penalty for being way out in the sticks, which the Fathers figured would promote trade.

Which the USPS still does, when run right. Which is why a bunch of small businesses were built on that service--including ours. In rural Montana we could not get the same service for small packages from private carriers, such as UPS and Fedex.

You can blame it on the USPS union, but prior to July we were getting the same sort of reliable service from USPS that we've had since setting up out website over 15 years ago. 99% of media-mail book packages arrived within in the 3-5 business days suggested, and priority-mail packages arrived on time 90% of the time, the other 10% a day later.

Thanks John. No doubt due to your business experience you know more about the USPS than I. I probably over-generalized from what I see as a general degregation of services and many anecdotes about the current work force.

Perhaps the PS will still beat the pony express to Ca. 🙂

I buy and sell more than I should using USPS exclusively. I have only seen about an average 1-2 day delay. I always use priority.

Not what it was a year ago but for example I bought two Vortex Razors about two weeks apart from Eurooptic and both took 3 days coast to coast.......

I sent 6 flat rate boxes to Dillingham Alaska on August 10 and no lie got delivered 3 days later. I couldn’t believe it.

I shipped two on the same day and paid for 3 day shipping. No tracking updates. One arrived 14 days later and the other 21 days later. Both arrived two days after filing a claim. The second popped up on tracking 90 miles from me on the 18th day. I have since switched to fedex or ups and haven’t had any issues.

Well, maybe I was a bit unfair; if so, I am willing to admit it. My package arrived at recipient. A good week+ past listed arrival date, But! It did arrive! So there is that.

Best to all here in their shipping experiences.

They want you to pay for premium tracking now or yo do not get updates, if you look in the drop down list where you check tracking it has a drop down with prices for premium tracking. I have never seen this before and figure that's why my tracking only shows "your item is in transit or it has been delayed arriving later then expected".

That's absolute bullshit blaming the union. I have a good friend that's a postmaster at a local post office branch. He said you can blame it on covid and everybody having packages and supplies delivered. He said his Monday avarages on packages from Amazon have gone up 4 to 5 times and they don't have 4 to 5 times the extra help. If congress would get there fingers out of the post office it would be a well run profitable business but they rob it like they have social security.

Showdog,

Well put. There have been various degrees of unionization of the USPS since the 1890s, partly because back then massive amounts of mail were transported by rail, and railroad workers were often union members. The present USPS union came into existence in 1970--and if the USPS started to become "inefficient" in the 70s I would have noticed, since that's when I started my career as a freelance writer.

One of my first writing assingments during the late 1970s was co-authoring a book with a friend (and long-established writer) on the other end of Montana. Back then there was no Internet, or faxing. So we did it all by mail.

I could put a envelope of my latest contributions in the mail in the afternoon, and have it arrive at his rural address (13 miles from the nearest post office, and 500+ miles from my town) at around noon the next day. That is NOT "inefficient" service.

I retired from USPS 5 years ago, where I worked for 31 years as a rural mail carrier. I saw a dramatic change over all that time, as when I first started there was a lot of letter sized mail, and few packages. When I retired, the letter size mail had dropped, and the number of packages had increased at least 10 times. In the past five years since then, the number of packages USPS delivers has continued to increase, while still being delivered by the same number of people. Add what Covid has caused, and it's a wonder that anything gets delivered when it does. Personally, with the exception of a M.O. I mailed to a member here for a scope, that took about 2 weeks to arrive, I've not had a problem. I hear about all these horror stories on there, but in reality, they are the exception, rather than the norm.

If the volume of packages being shipped has increased dramatically, what would be the reason for not adding more people?

Hell, I am waiting on a FedEx package that shipped on the 18th and still isn’t here, however my order from midway was here in two days.