I'm a buyer with a package not moving for several days in Akron (that has me extremely worried due to fragility of the item), and a few months back, I had a Tennessee shipment take 14 days for priority. Half the plants didn't make it, but the seller was cool. Most of the time, packages are moving though steadily but very, very slowly. Sometimes they are sent to the wrong state or town causing more delays, and some go across the country a couple of times before making it here. A handful of things we've bought from this venue and others are taking up to two weeks for priority, but usually right around ten days. It's time for eBay to send out an alert and place a notice on auctions explaining that the USPS isn't reliable right now. I dread the number of sellers who are going to end up in trouble over something beyond their control.
Unfortunately, I can't trust Fedex either. They've been misplacing packages, misdelivering, lying to make up reasons for things being late, and they even caused one of my shipments to be stuck eternally at the Fedex hub. When the shipper sent my item, Fedex decided they didn't like the shipping label's UPC code. They printed another and put it on the box. Four hours later, they marked the item undeliverable due to having too many labels on it. *grumble* I don't think any shipping service is working correctly right now.
Good luck, and may you have understanding buyers. The key is to stay in communication and not let them feel like they're alone in the frustration. They might have short fuses because it's very frustrating and worrisome, but most folks just want to know the seller has their back if the item doesn't arrive or is messed up when they get it. I've only had one seller do that to me when the package was actually completely lost and not in the system for a month. Everyone else has been really good about contacting their post office and trying to get answers.
I was told that the key to getting packages unstuck is to have the seller contact the post office if it hasn't ever shown up in the system and talk to a manager and to sign up for tracking info through email and text. There's a GPS on everything, so eventually things get found. Some of these hubs are having problems getting employees to process the mail that can't go through the machine. I've also heard the new machines don't take every size of usps priority box now.
Hopefully you guys haven't lost packages in the protests. I've heard most of the packages lost were on UPS trucks though.
