USPS

[roborex]

It's really sad that 95% of any concern that I might have, when ordering something online, is due to USPS and not from: 

the seller 

porch pirates

FedEx

UPS

If FedEx or UPS's tracking and delivery system was as chaotic and unreliable as USPS's is they would have gone out of business a long time ago. 

[1786davycrockett]

Please elaborate and give examples.  We can't begin to assist until you provide more information.

[richard1rst]

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@1786davycrockett wrote:

Please elaborate and give examples.  We can't begin to assist until you provide more information.

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Ditto that. I send  and receive the proverbial "ton" of items by USPS  (come to think of it for as long as I have been doing this Actual tons would be a more appropriate description). While I have long accepted that Perfect is an absolute and unobtainable I very rarely have a problem. So what's yours?

[roborex · Accepted solution]

If the truth be told I was venting. I understand there isn't any solution that you, eBay, or I can enact to solve the problems USPS has. It would, quite literally, take an act of Congress to make changes.
Because you asked I'll give you a few examples. Each one of these is a different occasion:

1. A package travels a thousand miles in the wrong direction before they figure out that it's going the wrong way

2. A package gets logged in to a facility along the way,
a few hours later it gets logged out of said facility,
a short time later it gets logged into it different facility,
and right after that it once again gets logged out of the first facility again.

3. While the package is in a completely different zip code it has its status changed to "out for delivery", and then the status is changed to delivered. While not even coming close to the ZIP code I live in. I had to file a missing package report to get them to deliver it to the correct place.

4. A package has been marked as delivered (it wasn't) then the next day it shows up.

5. A package is marked as delivered "to an agent" but failing to leave any sort of notice in the mailbox or on the door explaining just who the agent is.

When a package is finally delivered USPS cleans up the tracking history on the website to eliminate all of the chaos that is USPS tracking.

Filing a missing package report on the website is that best a pain the neck. Then they updated their system and it got worse.

Anytime you file a report USPS will ask you to take a survey on how they did. Believe it or not the first question on the survey is "... Would you recommend..."
Really recommend?

The rest of the questions are blatantly formulated to sidestep the problem and will most likely be used as propaganda to make the post office look good.

Like I said if UPS and FedEx did this kind of stuff they would have gone out of business a long time ago.

[deserdog]

Shipped well over 10,000(probably closer to 15,000) items via USPS and have had very few problems. Recently I have found that USPS is delivering items very quickly, even media mail and parcel select ground, to zone 8. Many time is 2 or 3 days. And the tracking seems to be fairly on track. When you consider how many packages USPS delivers in a year, in 2021 they delivered 7.6 Billion packages, you can expect a few hickups. 

[stainlessenginecovers]

I ship 100 a month for 144 months (12 years) so that is well over 14000 packages..

All shipped USPS-100%

NOT 1 has NOT been received by my buyers. 

[murphy71605]

I worked 10 years at USPS and totally disagree with your rant. The Post Office is a massive operation and no private industry would ever want to take it on. Many don't realize how much goes in to delivering the mail 6 days a week, sorting, processing, delivering and doing it accurately throughout the entire country daily. FedEx  and UPS are completely different operations and shouldn't be used as comparisons. Amazon is starting to show many of the problems USPS has had as there reach and demand grows. Just operating the fleet of vehicles and adding any needed updated equipment puts a tremendous strain on them. I could go on and on but count me in as someone who is glad we still have the USPS.

[mike_jayroe]

a long time ago, in the early 1990's I sent a shipment from Towson, Md. for my employer. It was shipped via UPS to Chicago, Illinois. It wound up in California. It then went to Illinois and wound up back in California. After about 10 days the customer called to complain. I got an earful as I am the guy responsible for shipping. Wound up shipping new items to the customer via FEDEX, and I called UPS to return the shipment back to Towson. Could not figure out how UPS screwed up so bad.

AS to USPS, I sent one record album to Georgia (?) or somewhere in that area. It got as far as Memphis, TN okay, but sat there. After a week, I refunded the shipping costs. Several days later figuring the package was lost, I refunded the purchase price on my own. Funny thing happened. The next day the package was delivered.

Since then using media mail still again, I had two shipments, 1 to Colorado and one to the west coast get there in two days.

Go figure that one out.