Having trouble with the USPS?

Beemermark said:
The USPS has been a quasi-private entity for decades, passed by I don't know (and don't care) Congress. All private businesses are required by federal law to "pre-fund" their pensions plans to a per-determined level.
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Pre-funding 75 years of retirement benefits means that benefits for those future employees that are yet to be born are being pre-funded. What private entity (and USPS is not a private entity) has to do that? What Federal entity is doing that?
 
Having lived in at least 8 states and many different cities I think it has a lot to do with the local service. FedEx were I currently live is terrible. Packages are always thrown on the front porch even if signature is required. I've had a couple packages stolen (nice Minolta CLE coming back from repair was the worse one). UPS and USPS are great. With the Pandemic deliveries are slower than normal.
 
No problems until recently.

I tracked a battery charger I ordered going the wrong direction (Northeast instead of Southwest) and then stay in one place for over a week before it finally moved through the system (slowly) to me. Things that once took three days to arrive now take over a week. I ordered a camera strap over a week ago from a source I've used several times. I tracked it and found it was shipped but never left the origin post office. It's been there 7 full days without moving.

I have no problem with the mail carriers on this route. But the recent changes by the new Postmaster General, who has no previous experience with the USPS, limiting OT for employees and requiring mail be returned to the office if it cannot be delivered on time...well, that's deliberately putting a big bottle neck in mail delivery IMO. Again, it's politicians playing politics with people.
 
The new PG is called a 'logistics executive,' according to the Washington Post article linked above. He's not a politician.

Here is the internal document that the Post published, but that no one would go on the record to confirm.

My friend who recently retired as a local postmaster (30 years at the post) indicated that the document looks legit.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/cont...-33442338d1cc/?itid=lk_interstitial_manual_14

Clearly there are big problems internally, if one has to actually put in writing:

"The right mail must go on the right truck -- every time."

It also says: "As we adjust to the ongoing pivot, which will have a number of phases, we know that operations will begin to run more smoothly and that delayed mail volumes will soon shrink significantly."

Looks to me like the new PG is attempting to right a seriously sinking ship.

He's got a difficult task ahead.
 
farlymac said:
Today the mail carrier claimed I wasn't home to receive a package that needed to be signed for, left a sticker on the door, and vamoosed it out of the building. This package came from Slidell, LA and made it here in good time for once, now I have to wait another day and make a trip to the Post Office to pick it up.

And this is not the first time it has happened. We had one carrier who utterly refused to deliver packages, and would walk into the building with a bunch of pink stickers rubber banded to his wrist already filled out with the "No one home" excuse.

But that's not the half of it. Lately my packages have been getting routed all over the country. I live in just about the middle of the eastern seaboard states, and the mail just seems to whiz by here for some reason. My latest one coming from south Florida went through Orlando, then was sent on to New Jersey before making a u-turn back to Roanoke. Currently I have a package that came from Indianapolis, IN via Columbus, OH, then went to Orlando, FL. I've had a package that was dropped off at a post office 70 miles east of here. The one that really took the cake was coming from San Antonio, TX and first went to the US Territory of Guam which is clear on the other side of the Earth.

I do believe that all the political shenanigans that have been going on with the USPS management have now finally caused a major disruption in the smooth flow of mail, which is just setting them up for closure by the ruling party. That will be a sad day. They've already dropped any guarantees of timely delivery per their Priority and Express services.

Anybody else experiencing delivery issues with the USPS?

PF
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Yes - I've experienced all of this. Since mid-March, I've found that any time a signature is required, the carrier leaves a sticker on my door; I then need to go to the post office the next day to sign for it.

And as a seller, I've had packages go out that have gotten hung up in their system somehow (when I file a tracking order with USPS they claim the package is lost) long enough that I've had to issue refunds to buyers - only to have the package suddenly appear and be delivered as long as 30-days later!

I've found many buyers are more understanding than I'd been willing to give them credit for, so I'm now not as quick to issue refunds. And I am now requesting packages be sent to me with no signature required.

Welcome to the wonderful world of COVID-19 and an under-staffed postal service!!!!

Now your idiot politicians want all mail-in ballots. Yea - that'll work!!!
 
splitimageview said:
Looks to me like the new PG is attempting to right a seriously sinking ship.

He's got a difficult task ahead.
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I'm still not clear how the USPS ship is "sinking" other than due to the unrealistic demands made on them to pre-pay 75 years worth of future benefits for future unborn employees. It's not like their revenue is dropping!

Even in this thread (as well as across the nation) people are largely satisfied with USPS. 91% of Americans have a favorable opinion of the USPS, and that is consistent across party lines.

My concern is that many small businesses that we depend on for photography (and/or livelihoods) here use USPS extensively to do business. The current plans will create a serious dent in their profitability if not outright threaten their existence. Offshoring and online sales can be a threat, sure, but this seems like an own goal.
 
Seems like all package shippers take no responsibility at all for lost, damaged, mis-delivered, and stolen parcels. Both shippers and recipients suffer. Throw into the mix outright thieves who ship bricks instead of gear or when buying lie that they never received the item to get a refund from paypal and the honest folks, as usual get shafted.
It is worse than Kickstarter, and that is saying something.
At least with inexpensive items well run businesses make up for all the crap.
I ordered a camera skin from Aki-Asahi and after three weeks it hadn’t arrived. He indicates on his site to contact him if not delivered after a certain time. I emailed him and he sent out a replacement right away. He said if the original also finally arrived to not worry about it. The replacement arrived on time and sure enough five months later the original shipment finally showed up. That business is a class act all the way.
 
zuiko85 said:
...Aki-Asahi ... That business is a class act all the way.
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I agree. He's very decent to deal with. Many years ago I was looking to recover an M7 (this was before he offered that option) and he sent me a sheet of material so I could cut out my own pattern (which I managed to do) at no charge. Really great people!!!
 
splitimageview said:
Whoa! I hope your M4P arrives safely, if late...

Would you mind sharing the contact info you used for the postmaster? Do you mean *THE* postmaster general, or your local postmaster?
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The M4-P was delivered!

@splitimageview: it's:

Postmaster General Louis Dejoy
475 L'Enfant Plaza SW
Room 4012
Washington DC 20260-2200

You can also get the email address from Google.

Going to the top gets results. Also works with corporations. I write to the CEO.
 
ninadp said:
I'm still not clear how the USPS ship is "sinking" other than due to the unrealistic demands made on them to pre-pay 75 years worth of future benefits for future unborn employees. It's not like their revenue is dropping!
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On the contrary:

"The Postal Service was losing money at an unsustainable pace before the COVID-19 crisis, but it has seen a precipitous drop in revenue since. For this fiscal year, which ends Oct. 1, the USPS is predicting a revenue loss of $13 billion due to COVID-19. That’s on top of the nearly $9 billion the USPS had been losing annually before the pandemic. "

Clearly things need to be restructured in terms of the health benefits, no doubt about that, but that's not the only thing that needs fixing...
 
Overall I'm pretty happy with USPS, except I think their shipping charges (for the little people like me) are too high - the same for UPS and Fedex though.
 
Congress really screwed over the Postal Service by making them fund 75 years of pensions.

I started using USPS for shipping cameras about 15 years ago when I discovered that if FedEx or UPS lost a camera, they fought you tooth and nail to not pay off on the insurance that was purchased for the shipment. USPS never did that, so I trusted them much more than the other two. I've had very good success shipping USPS for the last 15 years, until this past couple months. Especially the last few weeks. Numerous packages taking over twice as long to reach their destination than what was promised. Talking to my local postman, they're being told to just leave mail at the hub that previously they made sure got out.

I'm completely convinced this all has been caused by the new Postmaster General, Louis Dejoy.

Best,
-Tim
 
In my little town here in Oregon the local Post Office staff is always very willing to dig back into stacks of packages that couldn't be delivered for lack of P.O. box parcel lockers to hand me something after I've been notified by e-mail that it couldn't be delivered. Mail delivery overall has been very timely and efficient even during the current difficulty.

I can't say that about the cross-country shipping of packages, which sometimes show up as sitting in odd cities in the middle of the country for a day or two without explanation. I assume that it is a lack of long-haul truck drivers that results in tractor-trailer rigs waiting for a driver in Omaha or Iowa or Oklahoma City or even Los Angeles, to cite some recent delayed shipments. All of these cases were shipments from eBay, so this may just be normal for third-class parcel post, but when modern tracking allows me to look up where a package is with almost no effort, sometimes the delays in progress look worse than they should.

Scott
 
Our service changed up in the last month or so. We have a Priority package yesterday morning at 7am at the local post office, and is scheduled to be delivered tomorrow. We live in a medium sized city about 1 mile from the main post office - normally we would have gotten it today - or even yesterday. So a package that would normally take 2 days is taking 4.

That’s just one instance. We have the same mail guy as we’ve had for the last five years. He delivers now at a completely different time. His schedule was changed for some reason, again about a month ago. Don’t know if it is related to anything specific or what, but definitely different.
 
Postal Service overhauls leadership as Democrats press for investigation of mail delays. Lawmakers want the inspector general to examine Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s cost-cutting measures and investments.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy unveiled a sweeping overhaul of the nation's mail service late Friday in a typical news dump. The two top executives overseeing day-to-day operations were removed according to the reorganization memo. Democrats in Congress are calling for an investigation of DeJoy (who owns stock in UPS) and the cost-cutting measures he has put into place that have slowed mail delivery and ensnared absentee ballots in recent primary elections.

Twenty-three postal executives were reassigned or displaced. Analysts say the structure centralizes power around DeJoy, a former logistics executive with no postal service background. DeJoy is a major donor to President Trump and the reorganization memo released Friday evening de-emphasizes decades worth of institutional postal knowledge.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/08/07/postal-service-investigation-dejoy/

Best,
-Tim
 
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