Hating the USPS right now

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martinlutherbling

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So, I bought a knife off the exchange last Thursday. The seller shipped it out Friday, USPS Priority. Tracking goes up, says it'll be here on Monday. All in all a standard chain of events, one that pretty much everyone here is completely familiar with by now.

The knife departs it's acceptance point on Friday afternoon. NORMALLY, by Saturday morning my box would be sitting in New Hampshire, at the NE hub. But instead I hear nothing. Until Monday. When I find out that my box is in New Orleans, LA. A grueling 2 hour and 20 minute drive from its start point made in a mere 77 hours. Hold your applause. It leaves NOLA a few hours later. "Finally" I think, "back on track". That was yesterday at 3 AM, 31 hours ago as of this posting.
No updates since, although USPS did me the courtesy of changing "On time, expected delivery Monday" to "Delayed". Although I would've appreciated that illuminating update a bit earlier than yesterday (Tuesday) evening.

I've been shipping and receiving USPS Priority items for 10 years and aside from minor delays and tracking slip ups it's been a great service. Now, I'm pretty frustrated. My knife is now 2 days late, and I have no way of knowing when it'll actually arrive.

Feels good to get that off my chest. I figured this might be a good place for others to share or vent about their own annoying shipping stories.
 
I feel your pain.

The other day local news had a story on a USPS truck involved in a traffic accident and video showed letters and packages spilling out. My first thoughts were - Is that one my mine?! Sure looks about the right size? Zoom in! Zoom in! Can't read the label from here!
 
That's pretty ruthless. :eek: Great service for 10 years, one screw up and you hate them. Well at least you got it off your chest.
USPS to me has great service, but their tracking simply sucks, always has. But I'll take their coast to coast inexpensive 2-3 day shipping.
 
I hear you. I live in the Appalachian Mountains. Postal service here is a joke. Three day Priority is five days at best. I cringe when I stand in line at the Post Office and hear the clerk advise a customer to ship Priority so it will be there by Wednesday. I have never had a package shipped to me that was not delayed. Complaints do no good, there is no "guarantee" with Priority.
 
martinlutherbling said:
I figured this might be a good place for others to share or vent about their own annoying shipping stories.
Click to expand...

Not really. I believe General is:

Your area to discuss knives in general: Folders, Fixed blades, Swords & knife related equipment, etc. Take off topic posts to the Community Center & manufacturer specific questions to their respective forums.
Click to expand...
 
Ship a lot of stuff USPS in those priority fixed priced boxes. Had delays around Christmas, but in general I am seeing it take three days instead of two. USPS has been trimming out things to cut costs and that causes shipping delays relative to the recent past.

I might add that their tracking is very in-efficient. Sometimes there is no tracking info at all except at the shipping point..... then it's delivered.... They have shipped some stuff that I have received in very unusual paths. I think they get a break and ship via FedEx planes and they go where they go.
 
I'm having issues with them as well. I ordered a custom blade last year and moved after placing the order. I supplied my new address but they still sent it to my old one. Have forwarding in place, but it has been sitting in the undeliverable status since Monday. When I called CS they said it would be forwarded, but at over 48 hours later there hasn't been any change in status. Tried calling that PO directly but they don't have a working number WTH. Pretty pissed at a few levels about the whole issue
 
It's just anxiety. It's only noon here, but I've been nervously watching the mailbox all morning. I have a package arriving today as well. :D
 
My major problem with both UPS and Fedex is that they just leave items by the door even when people are home; never ring door bells, etc. Great way to have stuff stolen from your front door. I've had them leave things even though they were cleared marked "delivery signature required" or something to that effect.
Rich
 
Well at least you guys know where your package is. Mine is an $800 custom that is in the wind. Finally reached the PO where it is, and of course they weren't any help
 
Similar experience this week, I had a package coming from BladeHQ. Tracking showed delivery date Monday, everything was good so far. Monday, tracking showed "out for delivery" and then in the afternoon it showed "delivered". However, no package to be found. Naturally this caused me great concern, as dealing with the post office and a lost package is an absolute headache. Returned yesterday from work and sure enough it was there. I have never had a package show "delivered" but actually wasn't then show up a day later. I know now not to trust the tracking.
 
Maybe they threw it off the truck (or out of the plane) and it just has not gotten there yet!

Just kidding. Not a fun situation to be in. I have had a couple thousand dollar item "lost" in the mail and could not be found for two months. It was finally located and turned out to have been sitting in the corner of an office that somebody had just "overlooked"...

Incompetence
 
I have had my fair share of frustrations with Priority. Now, I always ship Registered if I can help it. It's slow, but it's a lot more reliable.
 
USPS has always been pretty damn good, but I think they are having some issues right now. Here's my experiences in just the last couple weeks......

1. Bought a couple knives from a friend who lives about an hour away from me. He shipped USPS Priority. Delivery scheduled for a Wednesday. Nothing on tracking and no delivery on Wednesday. On Thursday the tracking show that they were delivered the day before, on Wednesday and still no delivery on Thursday. I start freaking out thinking they were stolen. Head out to dinner around 7:30 and return at 8:30 to find the box in my mailbox. Weird scenario, but relieved that they showed up.

2. Shipped a custom pool cue worth a couple grand to have a new shaft made and to be refinished. Cue maker ships it back Priority and with Insurance on the 6th. The tracking shows acceptance for a week straight with no updates. I call on the 13th and file a claim and later that night it starts to show movement. Supposedly to be delivered today. Fingers crossed its still a 2 piece cue and not a 3 or 4 piece cue!!

3. Bought another knife from eBay and tracking shows delivery for a week ago. No updates as of yet. Don't really care on this one because its rather inexpensive one, so no worries.
 
I think they are under staffed and frequently the packages are not scanned at the different intermediate tracking locations with USPS. I have always been pretty darn satisfied with them overall (except for tracking details). I ship some pretty expensive stuff sometimes that would be difficult to replace with no insurance because the insurance cost would be out of sight and I have never lost one of these yet. Ship a few times a month like this....

Amazon ships using Fedex and USPS delivers, usually a day after the tracking suggests it would be delivered.
 
Overall, Priority is a great service, but lately most of my 2-day packages have been taking 3, and my 3-days 4. Sure, I've had a decade of mostly good experiences but you don't get bonus points from my by simply doing what you say you're going to do. Yes, $5 for 2-3 day shipping is an awesome deal, but that doesn't get them off the hook when they can't deliver within that time frame. They set their deadlines, and they set their prices.
I understand that this year they've been restructuring as less people send letters and far more get packages delivered daily. Ironically as they close offices and hubs to make up for reduced letter demand, package shipping times go up. This doesn't really make sense to me--you'd think they'd want to streamline the package shipping process to stay competitive, but instead they cripple it. That's not how you stay competitive.

The thing that makes it really frustrating is that there's no accountability. I've had packages where the tracking number never goes live arrive in 2 days. I've had packages arrive that never went past the arrival and acceptance stage on tracking. I've had maybe a half dozen packages, in the last year show up as delivered only to appear the next day, or even the day after. When I called to get info on this package, which is now on day 6 of transit, they had nothing to tell me. Last week I had a (2 day priority) package which was finally out for delivery a day late. I was home all day, checking tracking periodically. Lo and behold I get a notification that delivery was attempted but no one was there to sign for the package, and that a slip is waiting for me outside. No knock, no footsteps on the front porch, no other mail in the box, and oh yeah, no slip. So I call, talk to a dispatcher who lets me know that the carrier will be back in a little bit with my package (no explanation why he didn't leave it, but whatever). So I stay at home. For another 3 hours. No mail, no mailman, nothing. Fun.
If any other business worked so inefficiently, people would get fired. If you ordered a pizza, and they told you it'd be at your house at 6, you'd be pissed when 6:30 rolls around with no pie. And you'd be pissed if you called them and they said "Huh. Well…maybe we made it. I'm pretty sure we made it. It's probably on its way. Or maybe we're still making it. Oh and by the way, we don't guarantee 30 minute delivery, our delivery service is called '30 minute delivery'. So expect your pizza sometime. Have a good one."

To be honest, I've had issues with FedEx and UPS too, particularly with items showing as "delivered" not showing up. Amazon uses UPS and I've had 3 packages straight up get lost and never show up, and 3 or 4 show a "delivered" only to arrive the next day. My experience with FedEx has been pretty limited, but no issues come to mind. The problem is, as a seller USPS Priority is an attractive option. 2-3 days and tracking sounds great to the buyer, and $5.16 is excellent for the seller. Unfortunately I can't see that changing as the standard for the type of trading that we do.
 
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Yes, accountability is an issue. Like the government, there is no accountability with the Postal Service. You want more dependable shipping, get UPS and FedEx accounts. You pay for it.
 
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