Strange shipping route with item I bought

[alonzo916]

This item was supposed to be here on the 2-3-17. I waited a couple days to see if there was just a delay. I check back today and for some reason it is now in New Jesrsey... the seller was located in Nevada, and I'm California. The shipping shows it was in california for a couple days too. Any idea what happened?

[posting_hitch]

I'm in So. Cal. I once sold an item to a buyer who was in San Francisco. Pretty simple, right? Yeah .... No.

The item first bounced around among three post offices / sorting centers in San Bernardino / Riverside Counties, eventually landing in Los Angeles. Then, from L.A., it somehow made its way to .... Provo, Utah! LOL. Yeah, Provo, Utah. Why it needed to travel to Provo, Utah, in order to get from So. Cal. to Northern Cal., is beyond me.

So, once in Provo, the package hung around for a couple of days, finally turning up in San Francisco about three or four days after it should have been there.

Most of the packages I've sent have made it to their destinations in a timely fashion, and have taken routes that made some sense. But every now and again, USPS sends a package via the scenic route. Who knows why. But I suspect that, eventually, someone at the New Jersey facility will recognize the mistake, and will send the package off on its way to you.

[slyders_finds]

USPS says by doing this it makes the US operation run smoother as a whole. With the cost of diesel fuel and using more USPS employees I dont see how. It's annoys impatient buyers understandably.  

[deserdog]

I once had a buyer in Fl. I am in Ca. Mailed out the package. It arrived at the sorting ffacility in Fl. then went to a sorting facility in OH, then back to the same soting facility in Fl. and. then finally on to the buyer. 

And just recently I had a buyer in OR buy a book. I mailed it out. It went to the sorting facility in Bell, Ca. Then to the sorting facility in Federal Way, WA. Then from Federal Way WA to Richmond, CA. then from Richmond on to Portland OR, finally!

[alonzo916]

Very strange... do you sellers get complaints from buyers when this happens?

[posting_hitch]

I always stay on top of tracking information for my sales, and, when I notice an anomoly that looks ike it's going to lead to a problem, in terms of a timely delivery, I'll message the buyer and let them know that something's wonky with tracking.

And I have to say, my buyers have been really nice about it, and appreciate my having messaged them to alert them to the shipping problem. I think most of them understand that, once a seller has handed a package off to USPS, or any other carrier, the fate of the package really is out of the seller's hands, both literally and figuratively. I haven't yet had a buyer who was angry about "the long and winding road" his/her package took, and none of them have left me anything but positive feedback for the transactions.

[apache.falls]

it got bumped

[ttran101]

I'm not here to complain or anything but this is seems to be very inefficient. I'm a buyer and I track a package shipped to me recently. The thing is I should have ask the seller to see if I could pick it up myself because he/she is in the same city I live in (Marietta, GA) but I was too busy and let it shipped. The package is routed to Memphis, TN and then Atlanta and back to Marietta, GA. That's a complete circle. Weird.