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USPS again!
golden
Posts: 10,495 ✭✭✭✭✭
I bought an item off of Ebay on Tuesday. The seller was 500 miles from me. Tracking now shows the package in San Diego which is 2000 miles away! I would rather pay more for the mail and get it out of government hands.
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Can one imagine all of the screwups and problems in transitioning the US Postal Service to a private company?
The Mysterious Egyptian Magic Coin
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Don't know if it's your case but all mail goes first to a P&DC (Processing and Distribution Center) where huge sorting machines are located. Doesn't slow the mail down. For example, if I mail a letter from my mailbox to my next door neighbor, it will go to a P&DC several 100 miles away overnight, but will still be delivered the next day. How else can it be done? Do you want your local PO to go through each piece and determine where it's going? THAT would take forever. By the way, UPS and FedEx do the same.
I think USPS does a fine job. UPS on the other hand...
Collector, occasional seller
If you just bought it 2 days ago, what date did you anticipate delivery? The seller must have shipped immediately from what you describe which is all they can do. USPS almost always has 1st Class Mail delivered in the U.S. within one week of the date tendered.
Heck I ordered an item off ebay last Friday (06/09) and it was marked shipped (w/USPS tracking) on Saturday (06/10). It didn't get into the mailstream (postmarked) until Tuesday (06/13) and isn't scheduled for delivery until this Saturday (06/17)!
USPS is a crap shoot. Recently I had a package shipped to me from Georgia to Washington State. It left Georgia on Friday and was in my mail box on Monday.
Another one was shipped from Massachusetts to Washington State. It left on a Monday it arrived in Anaheim, CA on Thursday and then made it's way up the west coast and arrived on Monday.
It's hard to predict what is going to happen. Although most of the time they seem to deliver pretty fast.
I recently sent a package from SoCal to New Mexico and it took a detour to Washington state. Still got there, just a few days late. Aside from that I've very, very rarely had an issue with thousands of packages sent over the last 3 years or so.
...well if it's in San Diego and it needs some collector company before going home...you could have them drop it off @ my house
I've actually found that USPS service has improved quite a bit in the past year. They do use hubs for types of mail but that does not seem to slow down the process. It may just be more efficient.
A privately owned and operated USPS would be more expensive and almost certainly not any better. Considering the amount of mail they handle on a daily basis, they do a pretty efficient job overall, IMO.
Collecting 1970s Topps baseball wax, rack and cello packs, as well as PCGS graded Half Cents, Large Cents, Two Cent pieces and Three Cent Silver pieces.
The package was going 500 miles South and in ended up going 2000 miles West!
Out of all of the times I have shipped and received stuff with USPS it is only 1/100 that I am upset about something. So that being said I am pretty satisfied with them.
Wah Wah Wah!
Folks whine about the USPS but truth be told, they are prompt in 99.999% of the mail delivered AND they are inexpensive for the service you get.
You want to pay $21.95 for FedEx? Then go for it! Perhaps more with UPS? Go for it.
You'll get your treasures in a prompt manner.
But please, until you've worked for a Service which handles 1,000,000,000 pieces of mail on a daily basis, don't whine about how they do things to best meet their business needs.
Ever fly across the country and wonder why if you're flying from Seattle to New York City you have to stop in Atlanta?
It's just the way they do business.
The name is LEE!
Here's the status of a card I just bought on ebay, and it's USPS status after 2 days:
June 15, 2017, 9:59 am Arrived at USPS Facility EAST BRUNSWICK, NJ 08816
Your item arrived at our USPS facility in EAST BRUNSWICK, NJ 08816 on June 15, 2017 at 9:59 am. The item is currently in transit to the destination.
June 15, 2017, 5:32 am Arrived at Post Office EAST BRUNSWICK, NJ 08816
June 15, 2017, 4:48 am In Transit to Destination
June 13, 2017, 9:48 pm Departed USPS Origin Facility KEARNY, NJ 07099
June 13, 2017, 9:45 pm Arrived at USPS Origin Facility KEARNY, NJ 07099
June 13, 2017, 6:46 pm Departed Post Office MILLTOWN, NJ 08850
June 13, 2017, 4:50 pm Acceptance MILLTOWN, NJ 08850
June 13, 2017, 8:24 am Shipping Label Created, USPS Awaiting Item
So, It was mailed in Milltown NJ, and then was transported 32 miles north on I-95. It then was shipped 31 miles south on I-95, where it now evidently sits, only 2 miles SE of where it was originally mailed.
Oh, I live in Texas.
Steve
Mailed Parcel Post? First Class? Priority? Priority Express? It matters.
Of course it would be more expensive. The USPS is a massively underfunded liability that will eventually be bailed out by taxes.
Junk mail accounted for 48% of mail delivered back in 2012, want to bet if that number went up or down in the past 5 years?
The USPS is being propped up by mail no one wants and final mile deliveries UPS pays them to deliver because it's cheaper then hiring more employees.
Add together the cost (over a billion dollars in 2012) of disposing of the junk mail and the environmental impact of creating, transporting and disposing of it and I'd wager the actual "cost" of a privatized mail system might be a lot lower than you think.
Ok, the article is from 2014...But I doubt things have changed much.
WS
https://wsj.com/articles/u-s-mail-does-the-trick-for-fedex-ups-1407182247
Keep in mind that most mail is sorted and routed by the reading of bar codes without human interaction. Misreading of a bar code is to periodically be expected. What matters is the shipment eventually finds its way to where it was sent.
I have had nothing but good experience with USPS. The advent of UPS and FEDEX helped force them to become better and more efficient.
Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else. - Bastiat
Well, it looks like my card just made it back to Kearny NJ for the second time:
Arrived at USPS Origin Facility
2017-06-15, 20:14:00, KEARNY, NJ 07099
Hopefully, it will now make it's way west.
Steve
I can't comment on UPS, but I have to agree about the USPS.
Since 2002, I've had 600 eBay transactions. About 450 as a buyer & 150 as a seller.
Only had an issue once.
On the other hand, I've tracked items I purchased, that according to google maps, would total a little over 300 miles, turn into a 1,700 mile journey via USPS. So when I read things like the following, I'm not surprised.
U.S. Postal Service Reports Fiscal Year 2016 Second Quarter Results. May 10, 2016.
Operating revenue grew 4.7 percent to $17.7 billion.
Controllable income totaled $576 million; net loss of $2.0 billion reported
Only a GSE could have financial results like that & still be in business.
Sorry, I forgot to mention the method. They were both First Class Package.
I have used all three entities... USPS, UPS and FEDEX. I have had only one issue with USPS - lost package, never found. No issues with UPS or FEDEX. It surprises me to see the amount of issues posted here. I am not a dealer, however, I do buy things -many things on the internet. Cheers, RickO
I buy and sell a lot of stuff, 5 - 10 packages a day.
Outgoing: Always get a scanned receipt on drop off.
Incoming: Check for the email with tracking
I NEVER check tracking for a least a week. On outgoing, never check it unless a person says they did not get their package. Last one, it had been delivered in 3 days, and the person filed a not received in 7 days. The person finally "found" it at his house.
Incoming: No issues, everything has arrived.
How they move it around, where it goes, who it meets along the way,?
I do not care. My life was find before I could check the location every 6 seconds, I see no reason to micro manage watching a package move. I prefer to scoop up the good deals that everyone is missing because they are watching paint dry, water boil, and packages move.
Since this is a quasi free country, you can always:
Create your own shipping service and take all of the FedEx USPS, UPS business
Create your own grading company
Set up and operate your own coin shows
Or dwell on a coin board and whine about everything.
USPS is a quasi-government company today. Means it has all the negatives of both.
If you allow it to become a non-government company, the first thing is does is file bankruptcy to get out from under the pension obligations. The second is stop delivering to every address. Both of those are congressional mandates.
There is a reason for the joint FedEx-USPS and UPS-USPS services, which are that FedEx/UPS can more profitably haul large #s of packages from the large eCommerce distribution centers to the local POs and hand it off to USPS for last mile delivery to every address in the US.
If you don't think this impacts you, because you don't live in a rural area, guess again. All new subdivisions are required to have a central mail delivery center with individual boxes, but older areas still have direct to the home delivery. That's the fourth or fifth thing to go...
ANA 50+ year/Life Member (now "Emeritus")
Author: 3rd Edition of the SampleSlabs book, https://sampleslabs.info/
One out of 100 complaints/defects is a showstopper.
Six sigma, 3.4 defects per billion is expected by any modern business.
I'm at about 1.7 / 100 with the USPS. Stolen, lost.
Who knows what goes on in a USPS distribution center at three in the morning, but whatever it is, it ain't good.
UPS and FedEx are the gold standard. USPS sucks.
3.4 per million
Collector, occasional seller
Besides, who's going to deliver all the junk mail?
"Keep your malarkey filter in good operating order" -Walter Breen
I used to be employed by the USPS (retired) and I worked on a sorting machine for parcels and first class packages. The machines are automated. It reads the bar code or the actual address on the package and sends it to the correct slide. In the past we would have to 10 key the zip codes so human error came into play. If a parcel takes a long route to its destination it was probably missent by the machine.
Received the package today.