How is USPS copping during the Pandemic? Just wondering…..

Just speaking from personal experience, USPS is at the top of their game. No real slowdowns overall.

Seems to me that postal transit times have started to get longer. I ship mostly first class packages and some that were accepted at the counter last Monday are still in transit. One example, Atlanta area to Michigan.

My thinking is that a lot of first class packages used to get on a plane but now they are having to go by truck. And Priority mail takes priority over First Class mail (as it should).

A couple of weeks ago I had a media mail package to Fargo, ND and it made the trip in 4 days.

Usually, I love USPS but man they are KILLING me the last two weeks (cue the Benny Hill music)

(last two/three weeks)
My Stetson hat has been ambling thru the countryside of Ohio for three days. The buyer lives in Indiana. He is a new buyer and is rattled.

My 1835 pottery took the scenic route in PA before showing up at the buyer’s place. My buyer and I were kind of laughing because the USPS tracking had originally said we had either the wrong address or the label was not readable, but we use stamps.com. Finally it made a loop and got redirected. Where are you gooiiinnngg? This should have taken 1 or 2 days due to location.

April 25, 2020, 11:52 am
Delivered, In/At Mailbox
HAVERTOWN, PA 19083
Your item was delivered in or at the mailbox at 11:52 am on April 25, 2020 in HAVERTOWN, PA 19083.
April 25, 2020, 8:28 am
Out for Delivery
HAVERTOWN, PA 19083
April 25, 2020, 8:17 am
Arrived at Post Office
HAVERTOWN, PA 19083
April 24, 2020, 8:40 pm
Arrived at USPS Regional Facility
PHILADELPHIA PA DISTRIBUTION CENTER
April 23, 2020, 11:54 am
Forwarded
MEDIA, PA
April 23, 2020, 11:44 am
Arrived at USPS Facility
MEDIA, PA 19063
April 23, 2020, 6:33 am
Arrived at Post Office
MEDIA, PA 19063
April 22, 2020, 3:34 am
Arrived at USPS Regional Facility
PHILADELPHIA PA NETWORK DISTRIBUTION CENTER

Oh and my 1930s glass fridge box and lid set? Fuhgeddaboudit, The USPS must have put a 500 lb object on it. It was shards of glass on delivery and the double boxes I used looked like a crushed accordion. The buyer and I both wept. 🙁

Howvere my award for most ridiculous journey is this a package of vintage party favors:

NEW YORK, NY 10001
Your item was delivered in or at the mailbox at 12:20 pm on April 30, 2020 in NEW YORK, NY 10001.
April 30, 2020, 7:10 am
Out for Delivery
NEW YORK, NY 10001
April 30, 2020, 4:25 am
Arrived at USPS Facility
NEW YORK, NY 10001
April 30, 2020, 4:12 am
Departed USPS Regional Facility
NEW YORK NY DISTRIBUTION CENTER
April 30, 2020, 3:42 am
April 29, 2020
In Transit to Next Facility
April 28, 2020, 9:54 pm
Departed USPS Regional Facility
BATON ROUGE LA PROCESSING CENTER
April 28, 2020, 11:10 am
Arrived at USPS Regional Facility
BATON ROUGE LA PROCESSING CENTER
April 25, 2020, 1:25 am
Arrived at USPS Regional Origin Facility
PHILADELPHIA PA NETWORK DISTRIBUTION CENTER

Aww come on USPS!!!!! I love you people but COME ONNNN.

Silver lining: I got to bond with a few buyers who are also sellers as we ate popcorn over this ;/

Hey Broad Porch does good coffee! I made ice coffee with it and it was smooth with a nice finish.

Be Safe Take Care!

PSS There are some good deals on Teslas out there.They are blazing fast off the line, like a rollercoaster. Not sure how practical they are for rural life, but Just sayin.
Eve

• This reply was modified 5 years, 11 months ago by Eve Everett.

So nice to hear from Eve again! I’ve missed your sense of humor.

“My Stetson hat has been ambling thru the countryside of Ohio for three days. ” LOL!

I haven’t noticed any issues with the USPS recently myself.

i have a USPS Parcel ground package coming from my sis in MA that is taking over 15 days to update tracking. no movement or scan since April 21st (scan 1 on April 17th picked up, scan 2 on April 21 that it was “In Transit”). it’s a heavy-ish box, but i thought it would move some by now.

Actually, I just realized that the free USPS packing supplies I ordered are taking a much longer time than usual to get to me. One order was shipped on April 21st and I still haven’t received it. And I can’t check on it right now b/c the tracking function isn’t working right now on the usps website.

Very significant delays from my experience– tracking, scanning in and delivery are all 2-3 times as long as usual (first class is the worst). Buyers are mostly understanding, and I mention the delays in a dispatch email. I’ve also had Fedex items take weeks. Particularly Smartpost I have stopped using at all because it was taking so long. It seems to me Fedex is being more transparent about the problems than USPS, who still claims they are only minimally effected in transit times. I am mailing some supplies to my parents one state over, and First class takes about 10 days, Priority about 5-7 days fairly routinely.

They’ve completely crumbled in my area. No more room in package drop-off, so you have to wait. Staff was down to 2 clerks. Total wait is unknown since the line only moved twice when I was there. The mailboxes were full and rejecting mail, so people were just leaving stuff in boxes on the floor. There was also huge bins of unprocessed mail just sitting in the lobby completely unattended.

I went twice today and will try a third and fourth time if needed. If it’s this bad on my next trip I’ll dump everything to 14 day handling and forget about it for a while.

Some items that we mailed last week Monday are still not delivered.

For new orders, we are gonna try to get acceptance scans for as many as possible. Then email the buyers with the tracking number once it shows acceptance.

Another option is to enter the buyer’s email address on the USPS website so they can directly receive the tracking updates. I hesitate to do this because USPS can sends a lot of emails for a single package as it moves thru their system, and this may annoy. (I do it for buyers who seem to think slow mail is somehow my fault.)

Even USPS tracking website seems overwhelmed at times today.

And whenever USPS gets stacked up, it seems like they process items “Last-in-First-out”.

I had to refund 2 lost orders last week, 1 whose package was late but finally delivered, and now have 2 more buyers over the weekend claiming they haven’t got their package although it was scanned as delivered. That’s a lot of that type of issue for me, but could be just a coincidence.

I did see a notice that USPS has announced they are adding 1 day to normal delivery estimates except for Express Mail.

@old_dad:
Why do you refund buyers if tracking is available? Did they open cases? or is there more to this?

I still have 2 items sold 4/25 and mailed 4/27 moving slowly thru Detroit area and meandering around Pennsylvania. A 3rd item purchased 4/28 moving slowly thru Detroit area as well. All this is first class mail with acceptance scans.

USPS not looking stellar on these few examples. Luckily my buyers are not pinging me about these, at least not yet.

i did see several delays on items going to Michigan. seems like there is a bottleneck up there. everything is getting delivered, just a few days off.

Things still seem to be working fairly normally around northern California. Packages seem to be arriving relatively quickly (including ebay supplies and USPS supplies) Maybe I’ve just been lucky but I haven’t received any “where is my package” messages from buyers recently either. One of the YouTubers I watch regularly who is in the NY area is experiencing loads of delays though.

Now that I am watching more items in transit with USPS, 2 of my items from last week are still struggling thru Michigan, but moving towards delivery. (So the worst item has 10 days in transit so far.)

Also, it definitely seems that all items are slower getting out from Atlanta Metro right now.

To be proactive, in addition to shipping promptly, we are getting acceptance scans and emailing buyers with the tracking info.

A new Postmaster General was just appointed. I’m not going to get into politics here–people can google this person’s background on their own and the calls for Post Office changes from who he supports. I’ve still been having good service from the Post Office as usual and consider the rates good for the service received. I am hoping this continues but now a little worried.

yesterday I called the post office that my box got picked up from. they said they were absolutely slammed and boxes were backed up at the sorting terminal because they were helping NY and NJ. so i’m hopeful that stuff will start moving again soon.

I had a package that I had shipped out on April 24 and only had the acceptance scan on it. It sat there for about a week and a half when the buyer alerted me to the issue. I opened a missing package claim this past Saturday and was hoping for the best.

I read somewhere (and I think I’ve hear it before) that sometimes adding an email address for updates helps gets things started. On Tuesday, I looked up the tracking number on the USPS website and added my email address. Later that afternoon, I received an update saying that it was scanned at the sorting facility. Since then, I’ve received several emails with progress and a delivery date of this Saturday.

Did my missing package claim move it along? Did adding the email help? Was it all a coincidence? Why was the package stuck in some kind of limbo in the first place? I have no idea, but I’m very happy it wasn’t lost or something like that. I’m in NJ, so we’ve definitely one of the states hit hard by COVID. My local USPO seems to be OK. I don’t see any packages lining around, but there are definitely fewer cashiers.

Ugh…I’ve had two customers since last night let me know their items haven’t arrived. One is meandering randomly around the country. The other has been “in transit” from the main WV hub for the last 5 days. I’m gonna have to go through and check all of my tracking for the last 2 weeks to get ahead of this.

Seller Hub shows I’ve had 4 items that arrived late since March 29th, even though they’ve been shipped on time. Fortunately Ebay is not dinging us for these at this time. They shouldn’t ever ding us for delivery time beings it’s 100% out of our control but I digress…

The few times I’ve gone to the Post Office over the last few weeks to drop off packages, the lobby traffic has looked like Christmas season with the line stretching out the door when normally there are only 1 or 2 people ever waiting. Have never been more grateful that I can print my postage at home and just drop my packages in the bin at the post office.

I want to add another vote for putting in a request for email updates on a tracking number at the USPS website. In my experience, like clockwork this step will find a “missing” package — usually in a sorting facility near the buyer’s home state — within a day or two. I usually do this after a buyer sends me a “where’s my item” message and it resolves the issue fast enough.

The exception to this rule is that it doesn’t really work for international packages, which is probably not an issue for those of you who use global shipping. But I ship a lot of smalls, so using first-class international and charging buyers a flat shipping rate makes sense for me. Unfortunately, I have had two international packages disappear in the last month and needed to refund the buyers. One package was supposed to go to Canada and somehow got misdirected to Madrid where it disappeared.

I hope it’s not the start of a trend. Fortunately, my local New Jersey post office has been business as usual. One place of normalcy in my life amidst all the uncertainty. The grocery store, on the other hand, makes me glad to be a scavenger and to have already had lots of extra pantry staples and stuff in the freezer.

Most of the time, USPS service is really good. Recently USPS was a little slow but now service seems almost back to the normal.

But, next Monday is Memorial Day and a postal holiday, so service may slow a bit again.

For a couple of weeks now, I’ve been sending email shipping notifications to most of my buyers and plan to continue this until after the holiday.

I had to refund the buyer for non-delivery for the first time in a long while. Granted, it was Media Mail and the buyer was impatient at two weeks. I’m glad it wasn’t an expensive book. Asked for a trace and never got a reply from USPS.